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Thursday, August 30, 2012

Tangent on "Republicans caused the debt" - FB conversatoin

I posted this:  My good friend S.B. posted this link, which blames the Bush tax cuts for the huge national debt. Here's one of the many things wrong with it - Revenues taken in by government increased substantially after the tax cut:
2003 -- $1.782 trillion
2004 -- $2.880 trillion
2005 -- $2.154 trillion
2006 -- $2.407 trillion
2007 -- $2.568 trillion (four-year increase of 44%) 



Republican National Convention: The one graph you need to see before watching www.washingtonpost.com

Me: The budget deficit in 2007, driven by the final budget passed by a Republican Congress, was $163 billion -- within striking distance of balancing.

R.W.: They always fail to mention how much SPENDING increased.

S.B.: sure, let's LOOK at how much federal spending increased under each president...

https://wickershamsconscience.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/government-spending-5pres.png%3Fw%3D700




 http://talkingpointsmemo.com/images/slowest-spending.png




Me:  See, R.W.? All you have to do is shift the 25% spending increase of Obama's first year into Bush's term. And then when the budget is the 25% plus 1.3% in each following year, there is very little spending growth under Obama.

S.B.: actually, if you're talking about the stimulus, my understanding is that the footnote indicates that stimulus/TARP funds initially pushed by the Bush admin but delivered under the Obama admin were ASSIGNED to Obama. I.e., he's being given credit/blame for those costs despite the fact that the ball was set in motion under Bush.

Me: Obama clearly liked the stimulus, and supported it, and doubled down on it. He as a senator voted for every budget.

However, we are veering from the point of my post, which was to illustrated the bounty of tax revenue to the government AFTER the tax cut.

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