No Bush was the ATM In Chief!!
This post is in reply to Harrisons post on JustPolitics @
http://harrisonprice.com/2009/07/09/obama-atm-in-chief/
Bush Spending Spree
Ok, Uhm… I am a little confused about your post. You say Obama has spent trillions of dollars in the short time he has been in office! Sure I agree but he is only fixing the mess that Bush has caused. This is not just a reply but also a post to make sure that everyone understands why Obama is spending so much money. When President Bush was in office he made a bad choice to go to war. I understand that one can make bad decisions at times and I’m not undermining his capacity as president as I know that everyone can make mistakes.
On the other hand it was bushes responsibility to make sure that what he was doing was well researched as 300Million people trusted his judgment. I don’t understand how some people are so hard on Obama since he has only been in office a short time.
I mean think about it, people struggle to keep a business afloat or even their household because of crazy spending and lavish lifestyles. Yes, some people cant help that they are struggling but I have seen to many ”poor” people that own 4 Televisions, Play stations and other amenities that if they were smart they wouldn’t have bought and invested the money somewhere else. Allot of below poverty people also spend 7-14 dollars a day on cigarettes yet they complain about not having money. Off course Obama is spending allot he has to dig us out of the hole that our former president and we the people ourselves have caused.
So Harrison 
Think about it. How about you, me or anyone else in this country try to fix the economy try to fix it without spending a cent or making some drastic changes. Extreme changes have to happen otherwise this will happen again in 10, 20 & 30 years and each time around it will be worse until one day we completely fail.
Bush was a big spender, one reason why I never voted for him. But let’s not forget it was not his decision to go to war. I seem to remember a majority of the Senate voting “yes” and only a few of them ever bothered to read the intel on Iraq before the vote yet once the war went badly they suddenly grew a spine and starting complaining.
As far as spending and the economy, the problem is that our economy relies on consumer spending, much of it borrowed, to support jobs. This cannot continue and the binge must end even if it results in an economic realignment.
I couldn’t agree more. Truthfully Bush is considered the worst president ever to take office, though some would argue he is not there are too many points against him to really see any good. The spending that Bush has become accustomed to has inevitably been the fall of the United States, we were picked up gracefully by former president Clinton, and had the road paved for the president to follow (Bush), but somehow he managed to screw everything up. I understand the argument with the attacks on 9/11, but would the people that died during them have wanted the U.S. to suffer more lives in their name?
Just my point of view on things, I could be wrong, but I don’t think I am.
@ Harrison
We have not gone to war. Legislation is needed in order to formally go to war, but the president does not need approval to deploy troops, which is what he did.
So, if the problem was created by Bush, and the problem we are defining is excessive spending, then Obama’s solution to this problem is to spend more??? Obama’s change is more of the same, just on steroids??? I am no big fan of Bush, but at least when he says we are spending this money to go to war, we went to war. With Obama he says we are going to spend this money, so we can spend this money. He might make up some completely unmeasurable reason for why we are spending a trillion dollars we don’t have. Where are all those jobs this was supposed to create? The unemployment rate keeps rising.
This economic crisis could have been fixed in ways other than quadrupling your average Bush deficit. We could have let the market sort things out rather than copy FDR and Japan of the 1990s who both prolonged economic declines by decades through government intervention. This would have been painful, but less painful than prolonged depression. I also wouldn’t be opposed to Obama going into debt if he had an exit strategy for how to pay for it. Unfortunately for democrats raising taxes isn’t a solution here. Ask Harrison how well recent tax increases in California have helped them reduce their budget deficit. Perhaps the worst legacy of Bush’s that Obama seems to be mimicking is to boldly rush into a quagmire with no exit strategy. If it is so clear to everyone that Bush was so stupid, why is everyone so quick to defend Obama for being as equally stupid.
Ok, you actually did make a valid point there.. But it still takes money to make money. You can fix say GM without huge investment first but nonetheless I do agree with you that the spending is going just a little bit overboard. I hope that they find a way to fix this problem or we are going to have an even bigger problem.
The concept that it takes money to make money is true in the context of a capitalist economy. Obama doesn’t seem to be too interested in the economic model of capitalism. In what way is the money that he is spending going to generate a return on invested capital? It is arguable that he is soaking money out of the private sector, which is far better at taking a dollar and turning it into a dollar and change than the government.
I have no idea where Obama supporters get such confidence in the abilities of the federal government. Do you not get annual statements from the social security administration that spell out in clear math that every dollar sunk into social security will be worth 78 cents when you retire.
It also takes money to lose money.