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The reason Obama had such an issue passing stuff with a Democratic Congress is because he tried to hold true to being a post-partisan president who didn't simply follow his own party blindly. Obama would throw in things that Republicans wanted for the sake of being fair, which pissed off the Democrats enough to either abstain or vote against bills.
^ What Jakebert said. Obama's biggest fault was trying to actually be fair, which he also campaigned on, in an unfair, bullshit system.
Bush didn't pass a single budget in 8 years, in large part due to interparty bickering, and he had Congress for a lot longer than Obama did. If Bush couldn't do it, I don't know what exactly you expected of Obama. He's a politician, not a magical unicorn cloaked in rainbows.
My life has changed a lot for the better under Obama. I'm sorry for you that yours hasn't. I have health insurance now where I could not have gotten it on my own before. Life. Changing.
I'm glad to hear that. As for me, my life has gotten much worse, as Obama couldn't save the economy in time to save my house, as it was short-sold. He couldn't keep the economy good enough for my dad to get a better or equal job to the one he lost. And my family has decided that we shall not go to museums, events, or other things until we have a better financial situation. I loved Obama's ideas at first. But I hate them now; they didn't work.Quote:
Originally Posted by Little_Miss_1565
My mom hasn't been able to find a job since Bush was president, but he's also the one that crashed the economy. My mom's also about to short-sell her house, and my dad declared bankruptcy (but he's really the only one to blame for his problems.
Obama can't fix what's wrong with this country in one term that Bush broke in two terms. It's ridiculous for anyone to expect he'd have fixed it by now, or for all this crazy people who are trying to hold Obama responsible for all their hopes and dreams for the world. Projecting those sorts of expectations on anyone is a recipe for failure.
I agree its crazy to expect Obama to change things in 4 years.
One decision I have to back him for was bringing troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Also - TOOK DOWN OSAMA ! haha
>itt: people have magical expectations about how a man can control congress and fix economies in short time spans.
Obama campaigned on the promise of cutting the deficit in half and never having unemployment over 8%. One way to get the deficit under control is to have a sound budget. UE has never been below 8% and he has added $6 trillion to the debt. I am no fan of Bush, but he had 911 to deal with. He fucked things up too, no doubt. Obama said he could handle the job...he can't. That's obvious. He has to go.Quote:
Originally Posted by Little_Miss_1565
Bush fucked up the country for 8 years and Obama has been in office for 4. You can't fix 8 years of bullshit in 4 years. We survived Bush, you can survive Obama.
Bush was no genius but what exactly did he fuck up? Barney Frank gutted the housing maket under Bush for sure...all started by "everyone deserves a home" bullshit. Here is some light reading for you.
You'll never get a good paying job from a poor man, you can't spend yourself into wealth and you can't tax a nation into prosperity.
Who Spent More? Average Bush Vs. Average Obama Spending Per Day Proves Obama Most Reckless And Irresponsible EVER. From NPR via the Weekly Standard:
In his State of the Union address tonight, President Obama will reportedly issue a call for “responsible” efforts to reduce deficits (while simultaneously calling for new federal spending). In light of the President’s expected rhetorical nod to fiscal responsibility, it’s worth keeping in mind his record on deficits to date. When President Obama took office two years ago, the national debt stood at $10.626 trillion. It now stands at $14.071 trillion — a staggering increase of $3.445 trillion in just 735 days (about $5 billion a day).
To put that into perspective, when President George W. Bush took office, our national debt was $5.768 trillion. By the time Bush left office, it had nearly doubled, to $10.626 trillion. So Bush’s record on deficit spending was not good at all: During his presidency, the national debt rose by an average of $607 billion a year. How does that compare to Obama? During Obama’s presidency to date, the national debt has risen by an average of $1.723 trillion a year — or by a jaw-dropping $1.116 trillion more, per year, than it rose even under Bush.
How much in deficit spending did Bush spend on average per day during his presidency? It’s pretty easy to figure out: $607 billion/365 days = $1.66 billion per day. That’s a lot of spending, Georgie. Shame on you!
But compared to Obama’s $5 BILLION of deficit spending per day? Obama spent well over three times more per day every single day than did Bush.
If you want to argue that Bush looks bad, fine. Bush looks bad. But Obama looks positively vile.
The article proceeds to present another way to calculate deficit spending by going a little deeper into the weeds:
In fairness, however, Obama can’t rightly be held accountable for the 2009 budget, which he didn’t sign (although he did sign a $410 billion pork-laden omnibus spending bill for that year, which is nevertheless tallied in Bush’s column). Rather, Obama’s record to date should really be based on actual and projected spending in fiscal years 2010 and 2011 (plus the $265 billion portion of the economic “stimulus” package, which he initiated and signed, that was spent in 2009 (Table S-10), while Bush’s should be based on 2002-09 (with the exception of that same $265 billion, which was in no way part of the 2009 budgetary process).
How do Bush and Obama compare on closer inspection? Just about like they do on an initial glance. According to the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, during his eight fiscal years, Bush ran up a total of $3.283 trillion in deficit spending (p. 22). In his first two fiscal years, Obama will run up a total of $2.826 trillion in deficit spending ($1.294 trillion in 2010, an estimated $1.267 trillion in 2011 (p. 23), and the $265 billion in “stimulus” money that was spent in 2009). Thus, Bush ran up an average of $410 billion in deficit spending per year, while Obama is running up an average of $1.413 trillion in deficit spending per year — or $1.003 trillion a year more than Bush.
Obama, of course, has said the economy made him do it. But the average inflation-adjusted deficits through Obama’s first two fiscal years will be more than ten times higher than the average inflation-adjusted deficit during the Great Depression. Even as a percentage of the gross domestic product, the average deficits in Obama’s first two fiscal years will more than three times higher the average deficit during the Great Depression. The fact that Obama’s deficits have, by any standard, more than tripled those of the Great Depression, cannot convincingly be blamed on the current recession.
And none of this even takes into account Obamacare, which the Congressional Budget Office says would increase spending by more than $2 trillion in its real first decade (2014 to 2023) — and which, even under very rosy projections, the CBO says would increase the national debt by $341 billion by the end of 2019.
It’s not often that one gets to hear a call for “responsible” fiscal stewardship from someone whose deficit spending is outpacing President Bush’s by more than $1 trillion a year — yet that’s apparently what we’ll get to hear tonight. But President Obama’s actions tell another, far clearer, story about his commitment to deficit reduction.
So let’s recalculate based on the deeper analysis. Bush’s deficit spending was $410 billion a year divided by 365 days, which equals $1.1 billion per day. Versus Obama’s deficit spending, which has been $1,413 billion a year divided by 365, which equals $3.87 billion per day. That is 3.5 times more spending every single day from Obama.
Now, particularly dumbass liberals often try to argue that George Bush somehow made his war spending “off budget.” That is such a pile of crap it is unreal. Who controls the spending? CONGRESS DOES. Congress ALWAYS had the power to cut off funding for the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars any time it wanted. And the simple fact of the matter is that Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi – who controlled the Senate and House respectively – agreed on how to handle the funding of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. It was DEMOCRATS who did not want to be in the position of having to either support war funding and enrage their base or vote against it and enrage the American people. So it was NOT George Bush who took war funding “off budget,” it was Democrats who were afraid to be held accountable. And every penny that Bush spent on the war and on everything else ultimately showed up in his spending and in his debt.
The problem is that there are truly stupid people who have no clue how government works and live in a world of lies.
The federal government is twice as large as it was ten years ago. And Bush is partly responsible for this, no question about it. But it is 30% larger than it was just two years ago, and therefore Obama’s share of this increase is huge in relation to Bush’s.
We can’t go on like this. We will soon be going the way of the Dodo bird.
Democrats offered no plans – NONE. ZERO. – to deal with the fact that Medicare will be bankrupt and collapse in 2016. That is less than five years away. But it’s actually much worse than that. For example, as recently as December 2010, the estimate was that it would go bankrupt “as early as 2017,” according to CBS reporting. Which is to say that it is going broke a lot faster than the experts have been anticipating; and it easily could go broke by 2014 instead of 2016.
And Obama has no plan. He has completely abdicated any leadership whatsoever. He offered a budget that was so ridiculous (it would have added $12 trillion to the debt) that not even ONE DEMOCRATS would vote for it. It failed 97-0 in the Democrat-controlled Senate. Just how massive a failure is Obama? And since then he has offered NOTHING but fearmongering and demonization.
We desperately need leadership. We desperately need a plan. And Obama – who is supposed to be seeking to rally the nation behind a common cause – is instead merely offering demagogic partisan speeches. When he is not spending American into bankruptcy and financial implosion.
Update: Before this article was published, I came across this angle on the same issue:
Obama: More than Twice the Debt in Half the Time as Bush
by House Committee on Ways and Means
A recent “infographic” released by the White House tries to assign the blame for our massive debt and deficits to former President Bush and Republican Congresses. However, the graphic conveniently omits President Obama’s record and his plans for the fiscal future of our country. If the President had his way and his Fiscal Year 2012 budget proposal was enacted, here is what a comparison of the increase in public debt would look like:
SORRY>>>NO GRAPH...I suck at cut and paste...
As the graph above shows, the debt held by the public increased $2.4 trillion between 2000 and 2008, from $3.4 trillion to $5.8 trillion. Under President Obama’s budget proposal, the debt held by the public is projected to increase $6.1 trillion between 2008 and 2012, from $5.8 trillion to $11.9 trillion.
That means that President Obama will more than double the debt accumulated under President Bush in half the time. Twice the debt in half the time: courtesy of the Obama Administration.
Pretty much no matter how you slice it, Obama is a big government socialist out to bankrupt America faster than anyone who ever came before him.
Even Romney agrees that you can't just stop government spending in a recession. Cutting the deficit becomes a near impossibility in the face of a stalled economy. Remember from history class how we got out of the great depression?