| | | >> But, don't you think "some" of the deficits that Obama incurred were because of policies that Bush established?
Well, yes, the wars. Had Bush not gone to war, then those deficits wouldn't have continued into Obama's terms. But we certainly could not have allowed the 9/11 attacks to occur without taking action. That would have been Obama's approach. Don't get me started on the wars -- I supported them both, but the Afg. war should have ended by now. The Iraq War was bungled by Obama as it was essentially over when he took office. So, there are a a couple ways of looking at it.
But Bush at least tried to deal with SS.
Bush got Congress to pass the TARP legislation which provided for a total of $700 Billion to save the economy. Which, IMO, it did. But we got that money back, and adding it to Bush's deficit was not the proper accounting treatment of it. In Obama's first term, it was the subject of a Prior Period Adjustment which made it an asset instead of an expense, effectively reducing the amount of Bush's final year deficit by a lot of money. Obama increase the first two years deficits by nearly a trillion dollars for "stimulus" which was a total waste of money (as stimulus usually is).
Bush's final year deficit might have been higher than the others but his share of it certainly wasn't a trillion dollars. (Keeping mind he was only in office for 1/3 of that fiscal year).
I don't think you can really break it up like that very easily, though. You see these memes going around talking about spending under Republicans being higher, and it probably is. But the things that are breaking us are Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare. And these are all Democrat programs that the Democrats have made "untouchable" so they can't be fixed. |
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