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Politics : Liberalism: Do You Agree We've Had Enough of It? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ann Corrigan who wrote (133096)	5/19/2012 9:52:27 AM
From: Hope Praytochange	3 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 224705

Look What Obama's Bragging About Now Budget: President Obama boasts on Twitter that spending, taxes and deficits are all below where they were when he took office. The truth is, he inherited a bad situation and made it worse. Think Progress, the George Soros-funded left-wing advocacy group that's always ready and willing to lend Obama a hand, has put together a chart that, it claims, proves that the president has been a good fiscal steward. Federal spending, it says, "is lower now than it was when President Obama took office." Not only that, but "taxes today are lower than they were on Inauguration Day 2009." And as icing on the cake: "The deficit this year is going to be lower than what it was on the day President Obama took office." The group came to this conclusion by comparing the Congressional Budget Office's forecast for fiscal 2009 — made just before Obama was sworn in — to the one it just released for fiscal 2012. Trouble is, the picture Think Progress paints is completely misleading. It's true that Obama inherited a bad economy, but it was starting to bottom out just as he was sworn into office. That recession, as all do, boosted federal spending, cut federal tax revenues and swelled the deficit. But since taking office, Obama's policies have made everything far worse. And that's abundantly clear if you compare the rest of the CBO's 2009 forecast to Obama's actual results. In each and every year, Obama spent far more than the CBO had projected, took in far less in revenues — not because he cut taxes, but because of the lousy recovery — and produced much larger deficits. Whereas the CBO projected spending in 2012 would be 21% of gross domestic product, for example, Obama now pegs it at 24%. That, mind you, would have been far worse had Republicans not put the brakes on further "stimulus" spending. Deficits as a share of GDP, meanwhile, have come in almost twice as high as the CBO projected just before Obama took office. And the government has piled on more than $5 trillion in additional debt. Obama can't blame the deeper-than-expected recession on these dismal results. The real problem has been the extremely poor recovery he engineered. Whereas the CBO's January 2009 forecast put GDP growth in 2011 at 4.4%, it came in at a mere 1.7%. This year, GDP growth is running at half the rate the CBO predicted. Unemployment, too, is doing worse. When Obama took office, the CBO expected unemployment to be down to 6.8% by now. Thanks to Obama's failed economic policies, it's still above 8%. Does Obama seriously expect us to thank him for any of this?