Letter: A short memory

is going to sound pretty good really soon. Most states are already paying more than that, and supposedly, President Osama can't do anything about it. Those are soon going to be the good old days. I wonder what Osama would do if we were attacked by terrorists now. Ignore it?

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have a republican congress and senate that got things done in the 90's ? We can't seem to get anyone in Washington to agree on anything . We need a new President willing to stop the spending. It's not a money problem it's a spending problem.When the Govrement gets out of the private businesses andthe waste of money on green energy we will all be better off. This should be up to private investers to lose their money on.

George Bush ain't running for president in 2012.

You left out a few things...no you left out a lot of things...but that is what you do.....short incoherant one liners..with no numbers to back it up.

Commentary Magazine
In Bush v. Obama, Bush Wins

According to Reuters:

President Barack Obama attacked the economic policies of his Republican predecessor George W. Bush in Bush’s home state … as evidence of the way Republicans would operate if given power in Nov. 2 U.S. congressional elections.

At a fund-raising event for Democrats in Dallas, where Bush now lives, Obama said the former president’s “disastrous” policies had driven the U.S. economy into the ground and turned budget surpluses into deficits.

Obama defended his repeated references to Bush’s policies, saying they were necessary to remind Americans of the weak economy he inherited from Bush in January 2009.

“The policies that crashed the economy, that undercut the middle class, that mortgaged our future, do we really want to go back to that, or do we keep moving our country forward?” Obama said at another fund-raising event in Austin, referring to Bush’s eight years as president.

So President Obama describes his predecessor’s policies as “disastrous.” Just for the fun of it, let’s do compare the two records, shall we?

In the wake of a recession that began roughly seven weeks after President Bush took office, America experienced six years of uninterrupted economic growth and a record 52 straight months of job creation that produced more than 8 million new jobs. During the Bush presidency, the unemployment rate averaged 5.3 percent. We saw labor-productivity gains that averaged 2.5 percent annually — a rate that exceeds the averages of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. Real after-tax income per capita increased by more than 11 percent. And from 2000 to 2007, real GDP grew by more than 17 percent, a gain of nearly $2.1 trillion.

As for Obama’s claim that Bush “turned a budget surplus into a deficit”: by January 2001, when Bush was inaugurated, the budget surpluses were already evaporating as the economy was skidding toward recession (it officially began in March 2001). Combined with the devastating economic effects of 9/11, when we lost around 1 million jobs over 90 days, the surplus went into deficit.

Rather than whine incessantly about the situation, President Bush proposed policies that triggered the kind of sustained growth that saw the deficit fall to 1 percent of GDP ($162 billion) by 2007. Indeed, before the financial crisis of 2008 – which I’ll return to in a moment — Bush’s budget deficits were 0.6 percentage points below the historical average. (My former White House colleague Keith Hennessey eviscerates Obama’s assertion that we faced a “decade of spiraling deficits” here).

Now let’s consider Mr. Obama’s record: an unemployment rate of 9.5 percent, with 131,000 jobs lost in July, during our so-called Recovery Summer (Vice President Biden promised us up to 500,000 new jobs a month back in April). The overall unemployment rate, incorporating people who want jobs but did not look during July, is now 16.5 percent.

According to J.D. Foster, Obama’s “job deficit” — the difference between current employment and the jobs Obama promised to create by the end of 2010 – stands at a staggering 7.6 million workers. The 2010 deficit is $1.471 trillion, or 10 percent of GDP, while the debt is $9.2 trillion, or 62.7 percent of GDP. (From January 20, 2001, to January 20, 2009, the debt held by the public grew $3 trillion under Bush, from $3.3 trillion to $6.3 trillion; in 20 months, Mr. Obama will add as much debt as Mr. Bush ran up in eight years.) And let’s not forget that the Obama administration passed an $862 billion stimulus package and assured us that unemployment would not exceed 8 percent; instead, unemployment topped 10 percent – a figure higher than what the Obama administration said would occur if the stimulus package wasn’t passed.

Sales of new homes collapsed earlier this year, sinking 33 percent to the lowest level on record (new home sales rose in June from May’s historical low, but the overall pace was still the second slowest on record, the Commerce Department reported.

Not surprisingly, the Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index now stands at 50.4. As a reference point, a reading above 90 indicates that the economy is on solid footing, while above 100 signals strong growth. We also learned on Tuesday that the Federal Reserve, downgrading its assessment of the economy, announced that the pace of recovery is “more modest” than it had anticipated. “The Fed noted that high unemployment, modest income growth, lower housing wealth and tight credit were holding back household spending,” according to the Wall Street Journal.

Consider this as well: according to the Obama administration’s own projections, in the first term we’ll see an average unemployment rate of 9.0 percent, real GDP growth of 1.1 percent, federal spending as a percentage of GDP at 24 percent, budget deficits as a percentage of GDP at 7.8 percent, and the deficits as a percentage of GDP at 6.2 percent (see here).

These projections are, across-the-board, depressing.

Now, unlike Obama, whose intellectual dishonesty can be striking at times, some of us are willing to concede that things need to be placed within a proper context. Obama took the oath of office in the wake of a financial collapse that made every economic indicator much worse; it’s only fair to take that into account. But even here, in characterizing what happened, Obama has to present a cartoon image, distorted and disfigured, pretending that it was wholly and completely the fault of President Bush and Republicans.

In fact, it was a complex set of factors that both Republicans and Democrats were complicit in. In addition, it’s worth noting that Democrats were in control of Congress beginning in January 2007 — and Congress is where legislation, including appropriations and tax legislation, is passed.

Second, spending would have been much higher during the Bush presidency if Democrats had their way. To take just one example: Democrats proposed creating a prescription-drug program as an alternative to the one Bush proposed that would have cost a projected $800 billion over 10 years. The Bush prescription-drug law was originally expected to cost half that amount — and today it costs a third less than initial projections because it uses market forces to drive prices down (see here and here).

Third, Democrats bear the majority of the blame for blocking reforms that could have mitigated the effects of the housing crisis, which in turn led to the broader financial crisis.

As Stuart Taylor put it in 2008:

The pretense of many Democrats that this crisis is altogether a Republican creation is simplistic and dangerous. It is simplistic because Democrats have been a big part of the problem, in part by supporting governmental distortions of the marketplace through mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, whose reckless lending practices necessitated a $200 billion government rescue [in September 2008]. … Fannie and Freddie appear to have played a major role in causing the current crisis, in part because their quasi-governmental status violated basic principles of a healthy free enterprise system by allowing them to privatize profit while socializing risk.

The Bush administration warned as early as April 2001 that Fannie and Freddie were too large and overleveraged and that their failure “could cause strong repercussions in financial markets, affecting federally insured entities and economic activity” well beyond housing. Bush’s plan would have subjected Fannie and Freddie to the kinds of federal regulation that banks, credit unions, and savings and loans have to comply with. In addition, Republican Richard Shelby, then chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, pushed for comprehensive GSE (government-sponsored enterprises) reform in 2005. And who blocked these efforts at reforming Fannie and Freddie? Democrats such as Christopher Dodd and Representative Barney Frank, along with the then-junior senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, who backed Dodd’s threat of a filibuster (Obama was the third-largest recipient of campaign gifts from Fannie and Freddie employees in 2004).

So Obama and his party bear a substantial (though not exclusive) responsibility in creating the economic crisis that Obama himself inherited.

Even if you set all this aside, Obama entered office knowing what he faced, including a deficit and debt that was exploding. And rather than promote policies that accelerated economic growth and began to address our fiscal entitlement crisis, Obama went in exactly the opposite direction. For example, Obama succeeded in passing a massive new entitlement program (ObamaCare) rather than trimming existing ones.

Upon taking office, George W. Bush inherited an economy heading for recession and championed policies that made things better; upon taking office, Barack Obama inherited an economy in a deeper recession and championed policies that have made things worse. That is a key different between the two.

The problem for President Obama is that he and his party cannot escape the record he has amassed. As Karl Rove has written:

Voters know it is Mr. Obama and Democratic leaders who approved a $410 billion supplemental (complete with 8,500 earmarks) in the middle of the last fiscal year, and then passed a record-spending budget for this one. Mr. Obama and Democrats approved an $862 billion stimulus and a $1 trillion health-care overhaul, and they now are trying to add $266 billion in “temporary” stimulus spending to permanently raise the budget baseline.

It is the president and Congressional allies who refuse to return the $447 billion unspent stimulus dollars and want to use repayments of TARP loans for more spending rather than reducing the deficit. It is the president who gave Fannie and Freddie carte blanche to draw hundreds of billions from the Treasury. It is the Democrats’ profligacy that raised the share of the GDP taken by the federal government to 24% this fiscal year.

This is what Obama has done now that he has been given the keys to the car (to use a favorite metaphor of his). He’s taken us from a ditch, one largely of his and his party’s making, and driven us into the side of mountain.

On his worst day, the economic decisions by Obama’s predecessor were better, more responsible, and more enlightened that anything President Obama has done.

The Economic Urban Legend carefully created by Barack Obama is breaking apart. According to some polls, more Americans now hold Obama responsible for the bad state of the economy than they do Bush. Bush’s favorability ratings are climbing, while Obama’s approval ratings are tumbling. Republican candidates are running on extending Bush’s tax cuts beyond this year. And Democrats now face the prospect of losing both the House and even the Senate in the midterm election. (In Bush’s first midterm election, in 2002, as well as in 2004, Republicans gained seats in both the House and the Senate, only the second time in history that a president’s party gained seats in both chambers in back-to-back elections.)

George W. Bush’s presidency was certainly not perfect; none are. But like Truman before him, Bush’s achievements will be vindicated. Unless he changes course fairly dramatically, I rather doubt the same thing will be said about Mr Obama.

go. They disappoint and their fiefdoms fall. Not to be fatalistic but we can waste a lot of time playing the blame game. If we're prepared and use the wisdom available to all . SVB , you get the point. Read Matthew 5-6. Visit a nursing home. Yesterday's glory or stupidity are gone and we may not have tomorrow. We won't be graded on what anyone else has done and recently it seems that most folks we vote for wind up lying to us anyway. But God allowed Julius, Nero, Caligula, Bill, George, Barrack and maybe he'll allow someone else. The fussin' and feudin start when we lose focus. Sounds strange, but along the way the song Rose Garden often goes through my mind. Would be interesting to know how Christ would vote. But He was a theocrat in a monarchy. Ironic, maybe.

didn't always want to He did what Daddy ask Him too. Look what He lost and gained. I don't think He is complaining now. Remember what He told Pilate.

As I recall it was the housing bubble that got us into this mess...it was the Clinton administration who set up sub prime lending in the first place. Obama took payoffs from Freddie Mac and Fannie May then continued to bail them out with half of the TARP money. Remember one of the qualifications to staying in your home was your loan must be owned by Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae?

Before he became president Obama took 125 grand in payoffs from Freddie Mac and they got their money's worth.

The Obama administration has jacked the National debt up faster than the Bush administration did and it is now the highest it has ever been. Obama spent 2.2 trillion dollars his first 20 months in office. He has printed billions of unbaked dollars. He has escalated our involvement in wars. He is responsible for more body bags than Bush ever was.

And he has recently been bragging about what he can do in a second term when he doesn't have to concern himself with being reelected.

We need to get that madman out of there ASAP!

Sorry to break the bad news to you all.. The Reagan era revoking of depression era regulations on Insurance and Banking , SEC rules, doing 'bidness with China, etc. started the US on it's slide to todays depression. However, the Reagan tax act of 1986 does make sense- as it leveled the playing field. 2012 Dems should reinstate the bill in it's entirety- but the repubs would vote it down (it makes Super rich pay taxes)

Growth In Government Spending Under President Obama Slower Than During Bush, Reagan Administrations

For all the talk you hear about Obama’s historic spree, government spending actually hasn’t increased so dramatically under this president. The stimulus was big, but it’s over. It’s been replaced by, if not austerity (which has struck our states and cities) then a hard correction to the center.

Evidence of the cost-cutting measures employed by Obama can be found in the last several jobs reports. While the overall number of jobs created has steadily increased for the last several months, those advances have all come entirely in the private sector. Public sector jobs have actually been on the decline for much of the last year as government spending on some agencies and programs have been cut.

Economics Professor Mark Thoma provides a helpful chart on his blog that puts President Obama’s per capita spending into context, comparing it with the spending of every president in the last 40 years.

That’s likely a hard pill to swallow for Obama’s critics, who have spent years hammering his administration for record spending and fiscal irresponsibility. The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson put it best: “Going by federal expenditures…it would seem that if Obama’s a socialist, Ronald Reagan is Karl Marx with an ICBM.”

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/03/19/446990/obama-bush-reagan-gov...

#Obama2012

Could you find a more biased and slanted source happy? That one has zero credibility.

Establishment of sub prime lending.
http://www.nytimes.com/1999/09/30/business/fannie-mae-eases-credit-to-ai...

Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people

And here is where Bush tried to put a reign on it before it destroyed our economy.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/11/business/new-agency-proposed-to-overse...

I'm so glad to see happy's standard 11.7 million per hour figure (even though obama deficit spending stands at 148 mill. per hour). I'm still trying to figure out how obama is spending less the bush, but we are facing 1 trillion dollar deficits?

And to the letter writer and anyone else concerned, I have a question. If you take 99% of what the rich earn over 250 grand, and give it only to those that work and file a tax return. You would have an additional 8400 and change a year. I'm curious if thats enough to bring the happiness to your life you feel the rich have taken from you. Is it enough to pay for your health care, gas, education for your kids, retirement, etc. etc. that obama has promised. I only ask because i'm curious as to what it will take to create joy in your life. If we can all agree on a number maybe just maybe we can start working toward it.