Most liked posts in thread: Just a Second here.....!!

:cornut:

 

So then you do believe in time machines?

 

President Barack Obama has repeatedly claimed that his budget would cut the deficit by half by the end of his term. But as Heritage analyst Brian Riedl has pointed out, given that Obama has already helped quadruple the deficit with his stimulus package, pledging to halve it by 2013 is hardly ambitious. The Washington Post has a great graphic which helps put President Obama’s budget deficits in context of President Bush’s.

What’s driving Obama’s unprecedented massive deficits? Spending. Riedl details:

* President Bush expanded the federal budget by a historic $700 billion through 2008. President Obama would add another $1 trillion.
* President Bush began a string of expensive finan*cial bailouts. President Obama is accelerating that course.
* President Bush created a Medicare drug entitle*ment that will cost an estimated $800 billion in its first decade. President Obama has proposed a $634 billion down payment on a new govern*ment health care fund.
* President Bush increased federal education spending 58 percent faster than inflation. Presi*dent Obama would double it.
* President Bush became the first President to spend 3 percent of GDP on federal antipoverty programs. President Obama has already in*creased this spending by 20 percent.
* President Bush tilted the income tax burden more toward upper-income taxpayers. President Obama would continue that trend.

* President Bush presided over a $2.5 trillion increase in the public debt through 2008. Setting aside 2009 (for which Presidents Bush and Obama share responsibility for an additional $2.6 trillion in public debt), President Obama’s budget would add $4.9 trillion in public debt from the beginning of 2010 through 2016.

UPDATE: Many Obama defenders in the comments are claiming that the numbers above do not include spending on Iraq and Afghanistan during the Bush years. They most certainly do. While Bush did fund the wars through emergency supplementals (not the regular budget process), that spending did not simply vanish. It is included in the numbers above. Also, some Obama defenders are claiming the graphic above represents biased Heritage Foundation numbers. While we stand behind the numbers we put out 100%, the numbers, and the graphic itself, above are from the Washington Post. We originally left out the link to WaPo. It has now been added.

CLARIFICATION: Of course, this Washington Post graphic does not perfectly delineate budget surpluses and deficits by administration. President Bush took office in January 2001, and therefore played a lead role in crafting the FY 2002-2008 budgets. Presidents Bush and Obama share responsibility for the FY 2009 budget deficit that overlaps their administrations, before President Obama assumes full budgetary responsibility beginning in FY 2010. Overall, President Obama’s budget would add twice as much debt as President Bush over the same number of years.




Hmmm....looks like the next 4-5 Presidents will be paying on Obamas credit card bill :mad5:

 

Somebody should link to that article; it's an eye opener. As we become a nation built on entitlement, someone has to pay for those entitlements--that will be us to a small degree, and out children to a greater degree.

Obama is doing what Roosevelt did in the 30's with the "New Deal"; every time there is an economic downturn, he's "priming the pump." In Roosevelt's time, it only made matters worse economically in the long run (those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it--that old cliche applies). The only thing that bailed the country out economically was World War II. If you look the current spending curves, and the way it diverges from government income, those curves resemble, to a smaller degree, what happened during World War II. But this time around, Europe isn't destroyed, neither is Japan, and China is a dominant manufacturer. At the end of World War II, the U.S. was undamaged, had ramped production up to unprecedented levels while the rest of the world was devastated, and subsequently was in a position to rapidly recover. That's not the case now, and we'll suffer from it.

I scratch my head at what's going on. Seems everyone wants to be taken care of, instead of taking care of themselves. As we sink more and more into the entitlement mindset, I suspect initiative and creativity will sink along with it, leaving fewer and fewer to pay for these entitlements....

 

Budget 2011: Past Deficits vs. Obama’s Deficits in Pictures | The Foundry: Conservative Policy News.

 

Simple:

1-Freedom comes with responsibilities.

2-No reponsibilities come with no Freedom.

It's your choice America; choose one.


I choose #1.

 

:cornut: WOW!!!! This is great.opcorn:opcorn:opcorn: As a 4 time combat soldier,I'll leave y'all with the following.It is the soldier,not the reporter,who has given us freedom of the press. It is the soldier,not the poet,who has given us freedom of speech.It is the soldier,not the campus organizer,who has given us freedom to demonstrate.It is the soldier who salutes the flag,who serves beneath the flag,and whose coffin is draped by the flag,who allows the protester to burn the flag. by Father Denis O'Brien,USMC Jason

 

Why haven't you mentioned Hoover? His preoccupation with reducing deficits turned deepened the depression. Most economists believe that deficit spending is necessary in a recession. It is the only way out.

Much of what Obama had to spend was mandated by what earlier administrations did. The financial disaster was well underway when he took office. Much of the spending he has done as been to try to recover.

My udnerstanding is that Obama changed the accounting for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan so that it shows up in the deficit. The Bush Admin. had left it out through some accounting mechanism. Am I wrong about that?

Education spending is an investment in the future strength of the USA. For a very longtime, we have done a poor job with our education system. As a result, many high-tech industries have had to rely on highly educated people Immigrating to the USA. As China and India are developing, there is less incentive for those people to come here. We lost our dominance in manufacturing, we are losing it in high-tech.

 

And, for what it's worth, not all the Founding Fathers did.

But they DID think that freedom from The King was worth agreeing to disagree on this topic, a necessity in order to unite the colonies and make independence possible... and then they created a Constitution with a mechanism to fix this later. And we did. A good bit earlier than most other countries, I might add.

Unfortunately, this isn't the version of the story they teach in most schools today.

 

This kind of attitude usually comes out badly. People who approach voting with anger being their prime motivation tend to be easily exploited. Cinical politicians need only feed them the sound bytes they want to hear. Too little scrutiny is give those who would replace the objects of their hate. We tend to get very bad leaders when our focus is just getting rid of the incumbent.

 

Bingo. Slavery and our founding fathers--not only some founding fathers saw slavery as a problem, most did (on both sides of the issue). But at the time, the most important issue was creating a government like none ever before--and there were tons of fears and trepeditaion of too strong a central government versus wether the nation could remain as a whole if the states had too much power, etc., etc.

Slavery was an explosive, divisive issue at the time, the founding fathers recognized this, and were willing to sacrifice the issue--by for the most part living with it--rather than confront it head on. Even then, it was perceived as a threat to the nation, but the number one priority was to form a government. Slavery was left as a problem for future generations to solve, simply because if it was dealt with at the time of the framing of the constitution, a federal union would have been impossible.

As for the Revolutionary War, what the textbooks preach is so far off the charts to read as good fiction. It was as much a Civil War in the colonies as a war with England. But WHY we went to war is complex--for some it was noble cause, for others, it was economic. But initially, it was economic. The "patriotism" didn't come out until a little later, and a substantial number of people sided with England--hence the Civil War aspect.

Although the taxation imposed by England was onerous, people forget the reason why Britain needed money. It was for a war (The French-Indian War) the colonists demanded for their protection. The way Britain tried to raise money was incredibly shortsighted. Had England taken a different approach to taxation, importation, and exportation--one that still put money in England's coiffers--there would have been no war, at least not then.

Eventually the colonies would have had to seperate from England, but it might have been bloodless....

 

One might consider that in forming the Constitution based on individual Freedom and that everyone had the right to succeed in whatever they were willing to put their backs and minds too; the Founding Fathers created the first Country that slavery could not and would not exist for very long if the Constitution was adhered to... A Country based on Freedom will not and cannot sustain slavery.

Might even be said that when the Founding Fathers wrote and adopted the Constitution it was the beginning of the end of slavery as an acceptable practice on this planet.

 

Hmmm.....really? Spending is at it's highest levels ever on education, open the link.

http://www.heritage.org/static/reportimages/8944CCA9757394F0CCE1821F36C34E6E.gif


The California lottery was established for education, what a joke :idea: Throwing money at schools and kids has proven not to work. What kids need again is a swift kick in the butt, not coddling by some politically correct administrator :frown2: And they need new books that actually tell the truth and and don't have to be PC. Here are some more snippets to read,


# American spending on public K-12 education is at an all-time high and is still rising. Polls show that many people believe that a lack of resources is a primary problem facing public schools. Yet spending on American K-12 public education is at an all-time high. Approximately $9,300 is spent per pupil. Real spending per student has increased by 23.5 percent over the past decade and by 49 percent over the past 20 years.


# Continuous spending increases have not corresponded with equal improvement in American educational performance. Long-term measures of American students' academic achievement, such as long-term NAEP reading scale scores and high school graduation rates, show that the performance of American students has not improved dramatically in recent decades, despite substantial spending increases.

# Increasing federal funding on education has not been followed by similar gains in student achievement. Federal spending on elementary and secondary education has also increased significantly in recent decades. Since 1985, real federal spending on K-12 education has increased by 138 percent. On a per-student basis, federal spending on K-12 education has tripled since 1970. Yet, long-term measures of American students' academic achievement have not seen similar increases.


http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2008/09/Does-Spending-More-on-Education-Improve-Academic-Achievement


So, do you still think we need to throw more money at it?

 

opcorn:

 

Not exactly sure what you are saying here. The health care reform that passed was not exactly what Obama wanted. It was what Pelosi and Reid could get passed. Unfortunately, there was too much influence from the Insurance lobby. Much of what would have been useful got cut. What actually got passed does have a lot of flaws. IMO, Obama made a tactical errors early on by leaving it to Congress to create.

Instead of making positive contributions to reform, the Republicans made a political decision to try and regain power by just opposing everything that is put forward. It was a strategically clever move by the Republicans. As Obama attempts to deal with the problems caused during Republican rule, the Republicans just complain and obstruct. Sort of like one member of the family running up a big credit card bill, and then yelling at the other for writing the check to pay it.

So, you going vote for; anyone who isn't an incumbent? You going to pick someone who tapps into your anger with catchy sound bites and pretends to be anti-Washington? Yea, that's going to work out well. The lobbyists will own them in a heartbeat.

Just flipping parties wont solve the corruption problem. The Republicans have been just as guilty of lies, back door deals, etc. Politicians need vast amounts of money to get elected in our system. This makes them vulnerable to big corporations and special interest groups. Just voting incumbents out wont improve the quality of Congress. The way the system is funded is what needs to be changed. Unfortunately, that isn't as easy as casting an angry vote.

I think if you compare the Obama administration to the Bush administration you will find much more egregious lies and corruption in the Bush administration.

 

I agree that money alone wont solve the problem. However, reducing funding wont improve it. They system needs to be changed. Obama seems to be for acoutablity for teachers. This has been a pet peeve of mine since my school days. I had some really horrible teachers who shouldn't have been teaching. Our education system suffers from the same kind of lack of incentive that brought down the USSR. It needs to be reformed, but it also needs to be funded.