All Posts Tagged With: "debt"

“This was not a drive-by P.R. stunt, and I actually thought it might be. It was a substantive, in-depth discussion with our conference, and he’s very effective. He knows that the debt and the deficit are huge long-term problems as well and he made a compelling case. He sounded, frankly, a lot like a Republican.”

—  Representative Zach Wamp, Republican of Tennessee

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[Hat tip: Sullivan]

In his final press conference as president, George W. Bush used the forum to continue to repair his legacy. One of his more passionate defenses of his administration’s policies was of his 2001 and 2003 tax cuts.

There’s a fundamental philosophical debate about tax cuts. Who best can spend your money, the government or you? And I’ve always sided with the people on that issue.

I have to agree with him on this one — “who best can spend your money, the government or you?” He’s proven that his government surely didn’t spend my money wisely and he’s spent my future money in the process as well, racking up record deficits and a mind-numbing national debt — just look at the ever-inflating number in my sidebar. The Wonk Room noted:

We’re not going to quibble with the notion that Bush didn’t know how to spend taxpayer money. However, he decided he knew how to best spend China and Japan’s money, which he borrowed in order to finance his tax cuts for the wealthy and the war in Iraq, driving the federal debt to historic heights.

As the Washington Post noted today, Bush “has presided over the weakest eight-year span for the U.S. economy in decades”; the federal government “had a modest budget surplus when Bush took office,” but his administration ran up deficits “even as the economy was growing at a healthy pace.”

It is worth remembering that when Bush took office, it was projected that the federal government would run a $710 billion budget surplus in 2009, and that the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities calculated that Bush’s tax cuts accounted for 42 percent of the fiscal deterioration between 2001 and 2008. If Bush was indeed siding “with the people,” he had an awfully funny way of going about it.

That’s Bush’s lasting legacy when it comes to government spending and borrowing and fiscal responsibility. He didn’t know how to spend our taxes wisely, so he gave “us” tax cuts (most of which went to those who needed it the least) and continued to spend-spend-spend. His legacy will be remembered for generations to come as the government uses more and more of our tax dollars just to service — not even to pay down — our mushrooming national debt.

Thanks, President Bush! We’ll never forget you!

“Jimmie Dale Martin, Esquire” rarely disappoints when it comes to non sequitur, straw man and pull-it-out-of-my-ass hilarity. In response to one of my posts yesterday, “Indignant about the indifference,” Jimmie Dale commented…

Thank you President Bush for the low gas prices and for keeping us terrorist killing spree free.

First of all, I don’t know how President Bush can be credited for the low gas prices other than his policies that have contributed to a global economic downturn, which in turn reduced demand for oil and gas because more and more people couldn’t afford it, which led to a sudden and drastic drop in oil prices. But for the sake of argument, let’s accept Mr. Martin’s premise that this is something to thank Bush for.

What are some other things we can “thank” President Bush for? Continued

On top of the economic crisis and the hundreds of billions (a likely trillions) the bailouts will cost taxpayers, add to those numbers the looming burden of the wars were still waging. U.S. News reports:

The U.S. government has already spent $904 billion since 2001 to wage wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and both of those conflicts are far from over.

And even if the number of combat troops declines as planned, the final price tag for the wars by 2018 will be between $1.3 trillion and $1.7 trillion, according to a study released by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a nonpartisan policy research group.

As President Bush returns from his final presidential tours of the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the CSBA study warns that the additional burden of accrued interest payments could easily push that tab to $2.5 trillion, depending on how the cost is financed.

That’s a steep price, even compared with past conflicts. “In real (inflation-adjusted) terms, the war in Iraq alone has already cost more than every past U.S. war but World War II,” the study finds. Cost estimates by the administration on the eve of the war, meanwhile, proved to be wildly optimistic and unrealistic. “Costs have already exceeded initial administration estimates by roughly an order of magnitude,” the report adds.

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George W. Bush is definitely leaving behind a legacy that will be remembered for generations — an overwhelming debt that will impact taxpayers for generations to come. Heckuva job, Bushie!

That’s not how much you get. That’s your share of the debt that the government’s racking up for this bailout alone. Bloomberg.com puts the bailout into perspective…

The U.S. government is prepared to provide more than $7.76 trillion on behalf of American taxpayers after guaranteeing $306 billion of Citigroup Inc. debt yesterday. The pledges, amounting to half the value of everything produced in the nation last year, are intended to rescue the financial system after the credit markets seized up 15 months ago.

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The money that’s been pledged is equivalent to $24,000 for every man, woman and child in the country. It’s nine times what the U.S. has spent so far on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to Congressional Budget Office figures. It could pay off more than half the country’s mortgages.

“It’s unprecedented,” said Bob Eisenbeis, chief monetary economist at Vineland, New Jersey-based Cumberland Advisors Inc. and an economist for the Atlanta Fed for 10 years until January. “The backlash has begun already. Congress is taking a lot of hits from their constituents because they got snookered on the TARP big time. There’s a lot of supposedly smart people who look to be totally incompetent and it’s all going to fall on the taxpayer.”

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(H/T: Sullivan)

Mike at Okiedoke has a bailout proposal that I can really get behind:

If we leave it to Congress, CEO’s and lobbyists, we will just get evermore bits of amended gobblity-goop that results in endless taxpayer debt to bolster bad business practices.

So here’s my one-size-fits-all, nationwide socialist, U.S. corporate bailout proposal:

1. Remove government subsidies, tax breaks and loopholes for business.
2. Institute basic national single-payer health insurance for workers and families.

The country is going deeper in debt anyway, so wouldn’t it be better to use it to help U.S. companies and give health care to Americans, than just give it to the same people who created the mess?
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Yes we can!

You read that right: $3.8 trillion. That’s how much money our federal government has already thrown at the financial crisis, according to a CNBC report, which is “more than what was spent on WW II, if adjusted for inflation.”

If you are dumbfounded by the amount of money the federal government is pouring into the private sector to ease the nation’s financial crisis, it’s worth a look at how much Uncle Sam has spent on other major projects and historic events in the past, such as wars, bailouts and engineering marvels.

Thus far, only one item surpasses the $700 billion allocated to the government’s main rescue fund, what’s known as the Treasury Dept.’s TARP program. Other expenses and/or commitments, from Federal Reserve lending and guarantees to FDIC insurance fund losses to complex financial market mechanism, put the total cost at some $3.8 trillion (as of Oct. 23).

CNBC has put together a slide show of milestones in government spending.

“The fate of empires is very often sealed by the interaction of war and debt. That was true of the British Empire, whose finances deteriorated from the First World War onwards, and of the Soviet Union. Defeat in Afghanistan and the economic burden of trying to respond to Reagan’s technically flawed but politically extremely effective Star Wars program were vital factors in triggering the Soviet collapse. Despite its insistent exceptionalism, America is no different.”

— John Gray

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(Hat tip: Daily Dish)