?$%&#@!!!
I just read this post from Gateway Pundit, who as usual, perfectly expresses the incredulity and horror ("Unreal. This is infuriating.") that is an everyday staple in the Age of Obama. #2 son then entered the room and this real-life conversation followed:
Me: "I think Obama might be insane!"
Son: "That's charitable of you."
But honestly: How could a sane person say the following:
President Barack Obama gave his sternest warning yet about the need to contain rising U.S. deficits, saying on Wednesday that if government debt were to pile up too much, it could lead to a double-dip recession.
With the U.S. unemployment rate at 10.2 percent, Obama told Fox News his administration faces a delicate balance of trying to boost the economy and spur job creation while putting the economy on a path toward long-term deficit reduction.
His administration was considering ways to accelerate economic growth, with tax measures among the options to give companies incentives to hire, Obama said in the interview with Fox conducted in Beijing during his nine-day trip to Asia.
“It is important though to recognize if we keep on adding to the debt, even in the midst of this recovery, that at some point, people could lose confidence in the U.S. economy in a way that could actually lead to a double-dip recession,” he said.
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3 comments:
Obama is likely laying a down a media track of "cautioning" against deficit spending, so that he can say "I warned you about it." The fact that he "warned" against deficit spending while indulging in it a record-breaking levels is one of those inconvenient facts that he hopes will be ignored or that he can dance around by talking vaguely of saving the US economy etc.
I notice this happened during a Fox News interview. I also wonder if Obama is capable of sticking to his ideological guns during interviews, or if he's so adverse to criticism and conflict that he just says whatever will go down with that particular party.
Maybe it's Strangelove syndrome. He is valiantly and heroically trying to talk his left hand out of strangling himself.
I think it's considerably more likely that - having been stuck with a 1.2 trillion dollar deficit by the previous administration, he's trying to get spending under control.
I'll just quote conservative economist Bruce Bartlett:
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"According to the Congressional Budget Office's January 2009 estimate for fiscal year 2009, outlays were projected to be $3,543 billion and revenues were projected to be $2,357 billion, leaving a deficit of $1,186 billion. Keep in mind that these estimates were made before Obama took office, based on existing law and policy, and did not take into account any actions that Obama might implement.
Now let's fast forward to the end of fiscal year 2009, which ended on September 30. According to CBO, it ended with spending at $3,515 billion and revenues of $2,106 billion for a deficit of $1,409 billion.
To recap, the deficit came in $223 billion higher than projected, but spending was $28 billion and revenues were $251 billion less than expected. Thus we can conclude that more than 100 percent of the increase in the deficit since January is accounted for by lower revenues. Not one penny is due to higher spending.
It should be further noted that revenues are lower to a large extent because of tax cuts included in the February stimulus."
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Seems to me that the conservatives talking about out of control spending need to start spending time talking with conservatives who actually understand economics.
"But the stimulus was massive spending...!!" I hear you cry.
Not really. Here's Bartlett again:
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"ccording to the Council of Economic Advisers, as of August the actual budgetary effect of the February stimulus was to reduce revenues by $62.6 billion and raise spending by $88.8 billion."
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Bartlett is hardly big on the stimulus bill - but at least he's honest about the spending issue. All this handwringing about spending coming out of the right is eye-poppingly hypocritical considering the current deficit was the direct result of a Republican administration.
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