To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (547819 ) 2/4/2010 6:52:34 AM From: Alighieri Read Replies (2) | Respond to Koan, Bush's yearly deficits never went much above $400B. 1. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the baseline 2009 deficit the Bush administration bequeathed to the the country when it left office was about $1.2 trillion. This includes another one-year patch for the alternative minimum tax and a supplemental appropriation for activities in Iraq and Afghanistan. These two changes alone added about $200 billion to the 2009 baseline. Given the state of the economy at the end of 2008 and the first two quarters of 2009, Bush almost certainly would have proposed a stimulus plan of his own. Remember, Bush was the president who in early 2008 proposed and pushed a $150 billion stimulus plan when the economy didn't appear to be as bad as it eventually became. He's also the president whose economic team successfully pushed for TARP as Wall Street did its own version of the China Syndrome and who did nothing to stop the Federal Reserve from borrowing for the AIG bailout. 4. If you believe some commentators, a more tax-oriented stimulus package like the one they say would have been proposed under a Republican president would have had a bigger and faster economic impact than the spending increase and tax reduction plan enacted this year. If that's true, the 2009 deficit under a Bush administration would have been perhaps another $100 billion higher this year as the federal government collected less revenues this year than would otherwise have been the case.
