Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tonto who wrote (33291)	2/25/2009 11:02:16 AM
From: TimF	3 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

Yes, Obama's taking the reins, but what he's been doing with them so far is hardly "fiscal responsibility".

To: tonto who wrote (33291)	2/25/2009 2:55:20 PM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Respond to of 71588

Re: "Yes, I know you like his prediction. That has already been covered." You would be WRONG in that assumption then, tonto. I don't 'like' or 'dislike' 'PREDICTIONS'. Bush made EXACTLY THE SAME PREDICTION ('will cut the deficit in half...') if you will recall. What 'I like' is ACTUAL RESULTS! There has not yet been any time to see ACTUAL deficit results for President Obama's policies (will be several years...) but the Bush results are in for his eight year span and they are not good. Even Heritage points that out: Average Federal Deficit as a Percentage of GDP, by Administration --- Source: Deficits from FY 2009 Historical Tables, Budget of the United States Government, Table 1.2. No, tonto... what I "like" is ACTUAL RESULTS, not bloviating. And, at this very early date, there is AT LEAST ONE ACTUAL RESULT in President Obama's proposed budget that I (and you, i would suspect!) can be VERY HAPPY ABOUT: He has ENDED a lot of the budgetary lying, the budget flim-flam (such as keeping our War Spending 'officially' "off the federal budget", and other budget smoke and mirrors tricks.) That's real.... ...here are three kinds of tricks that his predecessor used in order to pretend to be on a path back to fiscal solvency. They sound childish, but they fooled most of the country. (I am skipping the wilder claims, that didn’t fool as many people.) Obama and his team are voluntarily giving up these tricks, even though he probably won’t get much credit for it: * Trick #1: Omitting from future budget estimates the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Every year, for the past 5 years, the expensive wars have continued; and every year the White House and its allies in Congress pretended that this was a surprise. Obama is putting the estimated future costs of the wars into the forecasts right now. * Trick #2: Pretending in every succeeding budget forecast that you will allow temporary tax cuts such as the “AMT patch” to expire in a few years, thereby bringing in more tax revenue, even though everyone knows you will renew them when the time comes and this is in fact your declared policy. The White House forecasts will now include honest forecasts of future taxes. Gone also will be the similar trick of pretending in the budget forecasts that the government will in the future cut Medicare payments to doctors even though you have no intention of doing so (because it would result in the doctors dropping out of Medicare). * Trick #3: Using as the base line for a promise to “cut the budget deficit in half” an artificially high budget deficit that you yourself proposed. This is what Bush did in the fine print of his promise in the 2004 campaign. (Not that he cut the budget deficit at all, in the end. But we will get to actual policies below. Right now we are just talking about ways to fooling the press into reporting misleading claims with a straight face.) Obama has explicitly said that he plans to cut the deficit in half relative to the $1.3 trillion deficit he inherited, not relative to the much higher deficit that will occur in the coming fiscal year as a result of the recession... that is, as a result both of inevitably lost tax receipts and of the fiscal stimulus that Obama correctly deemed necessary to moderate the recession’s severity. This choice of benchmark was brave. After all, he would have been within his rights to say that because he inherited the recession from his predecessor, the corresponding rise in the deficit in 2010 should not count as his responsibility....