Spending
Government spending increased dramatically under Bush. It has not increased much under Obama. Note that this chart does not reflect any spending cuts resulting from deficit-cutting deals.
Deficits
Notes, this chart includes Clinton's last budget year for comparison.
The numbers in these two charts come from Budget of the United States Government: Historical Tables Fiscal Year 2012. They are just the amounts that the government spent and borrowed, period, Anyone can go look then up. Peoplewho claim that Obama "tripled the deficit" are either misled or are trying to mislead.
The Stimulus and Jobs
In this chart, the RED lines on the left side -- the ones that keep doing DOWN -- show what happened to jobs under the policies of Bush and the Republicans. We were losing lots and lots of jobs every month, and it was getting worse and worse. The BLUE lines -- the ones that just go UP -- show what happened to jobs when the stimulus was in effect. We stopped losing jobs and started gaining jobs, and it was getting better and better. The leveling off on the right side of the chart shows what happened as the stimulus started to wind down: job creation leveled off at too low a level.
It looks a lot like the stimulus reversed what was going on before the stimulus.
Conclusion: THE STIMULUS WORKED BUT WAS NOT ENOUGH!
Via TruthOut
The problem is that facts don't work against the GOP machine. They've been able to convince many Americans that the democrats are the ones who screwed up the economy. They are controlling the debate right now and Obama allowed them to do it.
ReplyDeleteAlso, if you draw a line through most of the Bush years the slope is about the same as it is now, except at the very end, which I am going to assume was probably money being thrown at the newly-nose-diving economy.
ReplyDeleteIn very broad, objective strokes Obama and Bush are the same: two wars, lots of money spent on failing banks, but not much spent on failing households, very little oversight of the financial industry and energy industry, both of which are clearly out of control, and constant spending increases pared with...tax cuts (my favorite Congressional compromise).
The difference is Bush was constantly pushing against public opinion to do this, whereas Obama is pushing back the other way, just to little avail. Not that he hasn;t accomplished a great deal (Health Care Reform), especially considering the context of his term, but many of the things that his supporters care about the most (Peace, Environmental regulation, Financial Regulation), things that he talks about with intelligence and passion, haven't actually changed that much since a Republican was in the White House.
It's like that question: "What would you do if you were President of the USA?"
People say things like end war, spend more money on education, or reduce wasteful spending, but the only real answer is: "make a lot of speeches, hold a lot of meetings and watch very little actually happen because people who give a lot of money to Congressional campaigns have way more actual power than the President."