posted July 28, 2011 06:05 PM            

I posted this chart in another thread:
please take a moment to look at it.

Now the way I figure it, most of the interest payments of the debt we are looking at was generated during 8 years of the Bush Cheney reign. The 'raising the debt' ceiling hoorah that you may have heard about is the pay back of old debt, and the interest payments.

Currently we have a Republican party that is taking zero responsibly for making good on the debt. Look at the numbers. Two policies *War and *Tax cuts that were on the credit card generated 3.2 Trillion worth of debt. Think about how much money that is. The word trillion gets thrown around these days, many people have little concept of how much money that really is. It is a million million, or 1,000 billion.

You know what is making me really angry? That we are always the ones that have to pay.

Holding the govt hostage for not paying this debt racked up -- over 5 trillion by the party refusing to pay it. That makes me really angry. If it makes you mad too I urge you to call your representatives and Senators and tell them to pay it!

Our economy tanking effects the global banking situation. Our interest rates will go up, as well as a whole host of nasty details that I am quite sure everyone is aware of.

email or call- let your voice be heard.

**

some say that it will take a market crash for the pubs and baggers to rush forward and sign a bill, that is after the artificial crisis has already done irreparable damage. And the corporatists have imploded the hill chat line themselves.

posted July 28, 2011 06:27 PM            

jwhop
posted July 28, 2011 04:20 PM
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Need I remind you that demoscats took control of the Congress in January 2007...and that's when the stuff started hitting the fan?
demoscats have increased the national debt about $5 Trillion since Pee-Lousy and Reid took over and later...O'Bomber.

Now, they want to borrow more than $2 Trillion more...and they don't want to reduce spending a penny. In spite of what they now say, that's not what they were saying a few months ago.

jwhop

posted July 28, 2011 04:22 PM
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Well, I don't know what happened to Node's thread, comments and charts.
But, this was my response.

kat
Registered: Apr 2009
posted July 28, 2011 04:24 PM
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yes the republicans and conservatives love to ignore the fact that a good deal of "obama's debt" was actually carried over and placed on the books that GW somehow couldn't find or didn't know how to write in...
but this trend has been going on since the 50s. read buckminster fuller's "critical path", written in 85 and covering the process of establishing government entities paid for by the taxpayer only to be legally syphoned off into the corporate sector for profit...his estimate was that since 1980 no president has really had any option except to manoever within a very SEWN UP environment. AND that since 1980 we have, basically, been broke.

i agree, it's not just the white house that should be hearing from us. in fact that is probably the LEAST efficient way to get heard, since they would be so overwhelmed as to be unable to DO anything with the information received...

katatonic

posted July 28, 2011 04:27 PM
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lol it was here a minute ago..! NODE CAN YOU REPOST??? that was a really good one!
and sorry, jwhop, but you only ever use the congressional party as an out when it suits you. reagan worked with democrats and gets all the credit? clinton had repubs on his back so he gets none??????

back to the drawing board with you!

jwhop

posted July 28, 2011 04:30 PM
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Sorry..but nothing I said on this thread..whatever thread it is...had anything to do with Reagan or Kommander Korruption.
IP: Logged

AcousticGod

posted July 28, 2011 04:30 PM
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Node's chart is correct. Most of Obama's spending has had something to do with the prior administration.

katatonic

posted July 28, 2011 04:34 PM
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the chart is on this thread http://www.linda-goodman.com/ubb/Forum26/HTML/000853.html
i was referring, jwhop, to the fact that you take every opportunity to blame the DEMOCRATIC congress when someone mentions a failure on the part of a REPUBLICAN pres, but you do NOT give them credit when the outcome was better...

posted July 29, 2011 07:34 AM            

Contains no cuts to Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid...

Will reduce budget deficits by $2.2 trillion through 2021 according to the CBO, almost three times the reduction contained in Mr. Boehner’s plan.
The plan satisfies no one on the left ideologically, especially since less than one-fifth of Americans support the approach of reducing the U.S. debt solely by means of budget cuts.
His proposal to garner savings via military draw down will be difficult to implement. It is popular though~ with the general public that is.

When the president has been willing to give Republicans what they want __ like offering cuts to entitlements __ Republicans have rejected his offers. It seems as though to pass the House, a bill can’t simply contain substantial cuts, it has to be able to be portrayed as a rebuke to the president.

I saw video of Mr Boehner speaking with Matt Kibbe of Freedom Works [the real "tea Party"] that made me want to throw up in my mouth a little.

The choices are but 2. Now why is that??

Painful cuts, --or-- draconian cuts.

If the debate was never framed as a perfunctory ceiling raise, which is kind-of like a cost of living increase for the government - hence they do it all the time. Then why were all of the additional packed bags on this trip not anything positive? why was spurring demand not part of the equation? If we are to treat government like a business then demand must rise. Why not forclosures as part of the discussion, or a serious convo about military complex and homeland security waste?

We need overhauls and more thatn simple trimming tis true. However:

I have mentioned before that a tiny army of lobbyists descended on wash to make sure the Dodd-Frank Financial reform law was neutered, and defunded. Of the hundreds of reforms in the law only 38 have been implemented, and the street is back to pre-08 levels of sangfroid.

Earlier this week, Politico published a piece outlining the vast disparity in the ad war over the debt ceiling.

quote:

---

Republican-aligned groups have run over $21.2 million in attack ads highlighting Democrats as irresponsible drivers of the national debt, and elevating the debt ceiling as a top priority. Meanwhile, groups on the left have spent about $30,000 on ads calling out Republicans on the debt, with one hitting lawmakers for “recklessly risking default.”

---

~and

Since the end of the Bush presidency, shadowy right-wing groups, many of them formed for this very purpose, have primed the public with a sophisticated public relations campaign to shift the national discourse to a focus on debt reduction. Many of these groups do not appear partisan, and have figured out ways around registering their activity with the Federal Elections Commission (so the true extent to their ad-buying is rarely recorded):

You can hear what channel people are tunned to just by the repetition of the rhetoric--that comes from these groups. Right now a popular one is that the President has become irrelevant... which totally cracks me up.

well, I'm going to stop there, for the moment.

posted July 31, 2011 05:05 PM            

The effect is realized in the next term as more citizens becomes aware of their purchasing power and contribute to national debt.

Go figure and break down the total debt and you will ralize that majority of the debt is owed to the Americans (SSN, loans, etc etc ) and not to foreign powers like China and Japan.

posted August 01, 2011 06:12 PM            

"Recently we have seen our government debt grow by $3.4 trillion during the first 29 months of the Obama administration -- the equivalent of about $4 billion per day."
Leonard Lance on Sunday, July 17th, 2011 in a column

Rep. Leonard Lance recently criticized the Washington establishment for spending the nation into a fiscal crisis.

In a July 17 column, Lance (R-7th Dist.) blamed both sides of the political aisle for driving up government debt , but also singled out President Barack Obama.

"Recently we have seen our government debt grow by $3.4 trillion during the first 29 months of the Obama administration -- the equivalent of about $4 billion per day," Lance wrote in the column published on CourierPostOnline.com.

PolitiFact New Jersey checked whether government debt has increased that much since Obama took office -- and whether the president is responsible. We found Lance’s statistics are correct, but Obama’s role in debt growth is more difficult to pin down.

There are two types of government debt: one includes debt held by the public and the other includes debt held directly by the government, such as in trust funds for Social Security and Medicare. Collectively, those two types of debt make up gross national debt.

Lance’s spokeswoman, Angie Lundberg, said the congressman was referring to debt held by the public.

Obama took office on Jan. 20, 2009. From then until July 15 -- the most recent data available at the time Lance made his statement -- publicly held debt increased more than $3.4 trillion, from more than $6.3 trillion to more than $9.75 trillion, according to U.S. Treasury Department data.

That’s a $3.75 billion increase per day. Round up and it’s "the equivalent of about $4 billion per day."

So, Lance had his numbers right. But is Obama responsible for that increase?

Lundberg said Lance didn’t "lay blame on how we acquired that debt, just stated the fact." But Lance highlighted the debt growth during Obama’s tenure, so we’ll look at how much the president is at fault.

Let’s note that when Obama took office he inherited all the debt accumulated by his predecessor, President George W. Bush.

An April report by the nonpartisan Pew Fiscal Analysis Initiative analyzed the difference in the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office’s projections of publicly held debt and the actual debt from 2001 to 2011. The report found that about two-thirds of debt growth -- expressed as a percentage of the gross domestic product -- during that time resulted from new legislation, some of which was enacted under Bush.

The report said the Bush tax cuts, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the 2009 stimulus are three of the five "most significant legislative drivers" of the debt, but also notes that "no single policy or piece of legislation, however, is overwhelmingly responsible" for the increase.

We also spoke with five experts from different Washington, D.C.-think tanks. The general consensus was that while Obama can’t be saddled with all of the growth in debt since taking office, he is responsible for some of the increase.

Michael Linden, director for tax and budget policy at the liberal Center for American Progress, argued that the debt attributable to Obama would be the amount accrued from legislation Obama signed, including: the stimulus package, extension of the Bush tax cuts -- though he notes that was a bipartisan deal -- and his budgets.

"It’s difficult to tease out exactly how much" that’d account for, Linden said, "but it’s definitely not the whole $3.4 trillion."

Kevin Hassett, director of economic policy studies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said Obama’s policies are to blame for most of the change in spending that contributed to debt growth, but not most of the change in revenues. Assigning blame for either entirely to the president would be wrong, he said.

Isabel Sawhill, a budget expert with the centrist-to-liberal Brookings Institution said Obama and factors outside his control are to blame for rising debt. "Obama’s actions to fight the financial crisis and the recession did add to the deficits and debt but are not the major culprits," she said in an email, citing "a persistent gap between spending and revenues, largely because of the aging population and the growing cost of health care."

Marc Goldwein, policy director of the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, highlighted some legislation Obama signed that added to the debt, but said the economy is a factor.

Let’s review.

Lance correctly stated that government debt held by the public grew by $3.4 trillion during Obama’s tenure.

But experts said that while Obama can be blamed for some of that increase, he isn’t responsible for it all.

posted August 03, 2011 09:49 AM            

There was a lot to do...including rebuilding the US military after the worst president in US history almost destroyed America's ability to defend America.

Then, there was the problem of rebuilding the US economy...after the worst president in US history had come close to destroying it too.

Then, there was the cost of defeating the Soviet Union..which consisted of building up US military power, introducing new weapons and convincing the Communists they could not possibly win.

Of course, Barack Hussein O'Bomber has easily eclipsed Jimmy Carter as the worst president in US history. Let's call O'Bomber...Carter II on steroids.

posted August 03, 2011 04:37 PM            

you mean _=>>
The Chart That Should Accompany All Discussions of the Debt Ceiling?
sorry no dice. How old are we today? Three>?

quote:

---

It's based on data from the Congressional Budget Office and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Its significance is not partisan (who's "to blame" for the deficit) but intellectual. It demonstrates the utter incoherence of being very concerned about a structural federal deficit but ruling out of consideration the policy that was largest single contributor to that deficit, namely the Bush-era tax cuts.

An additional significance of the chart: it identifies policy changes, the things over which Congress and Administration have some control, as opposed to largely external shocks -- like the repercussions of the 9/11 attacks or the deep worldwide recession following the 2008 financial crisis. Those external events make a big difference in the deficit, and they are the major reason why deficits have increased faster in absolute terms during Obama's first two years than during the last two under Bush. (In a recession, tax revenues plunge, and government spending goes up - partly because of automatic programs like unemployment insurance, and partly in a deliberate attempt to keep the recession from getting worse.) If you want, you could even put the spending for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in this category: those were policy choices, but right or wrong they came in response to an external shock.

The point is that governments can respond to but not control external shocks. That's why we call them "shocks." Governments can control their policies. And the policy that did the most to magnify future deficits is the Bush-era tax cuts. You could argue that the stimulative effect of those cuts is worth it ("deficits don't matter" etc). But you cannot logically argue that we absolutely must reduce deficits, but that we absolutely must also preserve every penny of those tax cuts. Which I believe precisely describes the House Republican position.

After the jump, from a previous "The Chart That Should..." positing, an illustration of the respective roles of external shock and deliberate policy change in creating the deficit.

UPDATE: Many people have written to ask how the impact of the "Bush-era tax cuts," enacted under George W. Bush and extended under Barack Obama (with the help, as you will recall, of huge pressure from Senate Republicans), is divided between the two presidents. I don't know and have written the creators of the chart to ask. (They have responded to say: it indicates the legacy effects of the changes made by each Administration. For instance, neither Bush nor Obama is credited with the entire cost of Pentagon spending or entitlements, but only the changes his Administration made, up or down. By this logic the long-run effect of tax cuts initiated by Bush is assigned to him, as any long-run effect of savings he initiated would be too.)

But to me it doesn't matter. As I said above, the point of the chart really isn't partisan responsibility. It is the central role of those tax cuts in creating the deficit that is now the focus of such political attention. Call them the "Obama-Extended Tax Cuts" if you'd like: either way, a deficit plan that ignores them fails a basic logic, math, and coherence test.

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