Re: "How many more years will people blame Bush?"
For as long as history is read there will be big black marks writ by his name.
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Re (from the editorial): The first graph shows the difference between budget projections and budget reality. In 2001, President George W. Bush inherited a surplus, with projections by the Congressional Budget Office for ever-increasing surpluses, assuming continuation of the good economy and President Bill Clinton’s policies. But every year starting in 2002, the budget fell into deficit. In January 2009, just before President Obama took office, the budget office projected a $1.2 trillion deficit for 2009 and deficits in subsequent years, based on continuing Mr. Bush’s policies and the effects of recession. Mr. Obama’s policies in 2009 and 2010, including the stimulus package, added to the deficits in those years but are largely temporary.
The second graph shows that under Mr. Bush, tax cuts and war spending were the biggest policy drivers of the swing from projected surpluses to deficits from 2002 to 2009. Budget estimates that didn’t foresee the recessions in 2001 and in 2008 and 2009 also contributed to deficits. Mr. Obama’s policies, taken out to 2017, add to deficits, but not by nearly as much.
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I am not writing about whether the two wars were a "good idea" or not. Simply pointing out that they were NEVER PAID FOR in real time.
That was a CHOICE they made. And it was a bad one, (and something we had never done before in the entire history of our nation.)
In all of our nation's big wars PREVIOUSLY our leaders had guts enough to demand that the nation buckle their belts and PAY for the wars in as close to real time as possible.
For example, LBJ and Congress (*not* a President I was ever fond of...) put a 10% INCOME TAX SURCHARGE on everyone to allow us to pay for the Vietnam War while we were fighting it. So we WOULD NOT add to the federal deficit. (He had balanced budgets).
(But Bush probably figured --- logically enough --- that he could never get enough support from the public to keep fighting if he actually asked the public, and his Party's well-heeled backers, to PAY FOR the wars... so he didn't. He *wanted* his wars and didn't want to ask the public to have a debate about 'was it worth it'.)
But, not only did Bush and Congress not even put the two war's costs into the official annual federal budgets (they thought they could hide the true size of the deficits they were running by each year putting the wars' costs in what they called "supplemental appropriations bills" which are only supposed to be for ONE-TIME expenses that are unlikely to repeat), but they ALSO, (unlike previous American practice), put every penny of the costs straight onto the national debt. They BORROWED every single penny. (By the end of Bush's years they had borrowed and paid over $1.4 Trillion for the wars... and they unfortunately did exactly the same thing with his entitlement expansion called Medicare part D. Over $600 Billion since he passed it that was added straight to the nation's deficit.
There is no "free lunch". When Bush came into office we nearly had a balanced annual budget. If we hadn't paid so much for the wars and his entitlement expansion all by borrowing we could have kept paying down the national debt and it would be HALF what it is right now, and would be on it's way to completely vanishing by 2020 in just a few years.
(So, no... Social Security and Medicare... they are 'problems' but they are NOT the whole story. If not for the profligacy of the 2000 decade they wouldn't hardly be a near-term problem at all... and we wouldn't now be spending $4 for every $3 of revenue we take in.
Being responsible and conservative and paying for the things you do is HARD.
Children (and most politicians) will ALWAYS go for a Free Lunch if you let them.
So the public is as much to blame as anyone else: we LET THEM sell us a bill of goods that we could "have our cake and eat it too"... and never have to pay for anything.
With folks like Vice President Cheney running around giving interviews telling people that "deficits don't mater" (an actual quote) then it's no wonder that the decade ended in financial disaster.
Tax cuts are NOT the problem.
The problem is cutting taxes and NOT CUTTING SPENDING at the same time. (Thinking you could have a free lunch).
And, Bush not only cut taxes (cutting revenues to the federal government) and *didn't* cut spending... but he did something EVEN WORSE: he cut taxes and he SIMULTANEOUSLY RAISED SPENDING. (The wars, Medicare part D, and other stuff.)
When you just add all that extra new spending straight to the deficit, and you cut revenues also which adds to the deficits... then interest costs on the debt start compounding and the problems get worse and worse.
There is a REASON economists now call the decade of 2000 the "Lost Decade".
>>> That decade saw the SLOWEST GROWTH in GNP since the Great Depression.
>>> There were NO net new jobs added in the private sector over the course of the decade. (And only a very slight growth in government jobs....)
>>> Federal debt and deficits (and also private debt help by ordinary citizens who were being squeezed by job loss and no increase in wages) soared.
>>> And the stock markets reflected the terrible slow-motion disaster that the decade was: from the day Bush came into office to the day he turned the keys to the WH over, the "markets" (Dow Jones, S&P) ENDED nearly exactly where they had started. NO INCREASE at all.
>>> (And the Middle Class got hurt in a big way: wages were nearly entirely stagnant over the course of the decade, while costs continued to go up. That too hadn't happened since the 1930s.)
>>> Financially it was the *worst decade* for our country since the Great Depression. WORSE than the stagflation of the 1970s (wages and incomes continued to go up in the 1970s), worse than the recession of the 1980s (the markets ended that decade higher than they started, and wages and jobs, although worse than the 1970s, at least continued to go in an upward direction. They didn't stop completely or reverse....) |
