The Stimulus Seems to have failed

[Vermonter]

LOL! Are you so far to the left that you are unreasonably distrustful of anything Fox News reports? Or are you just uninformed? Surely you don't deny that the current debt is at least $11 trillion? Indeed, many would say Fox News was being generous … that it's now really over $14 trillion (http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/BPDLogin?application=np ). And given that, surely you won't deny that to reach almost $19 trillion in ten years will only require a cumulative deficit over ten years on the order of $8 trillion? In which case, look near the top of the first table (S-1) in this source from the Whitehouse: http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/budget/fy2012/assets/tables.pdf . Notice that it indicates a cumulative deficit based on the budget from 2012 to 2021 of $7.205 trillion dollars. Fox did say "nearly" $19 trillion. And as to Fox News' claim that deficits will not fall below $600 trillion in any given year of that period, just look at the first table in that Whitehouse source … the fourth row. The lowest deficit is $607 billion. And regarding the claim that interest on the debt will go from $200 billion to over $844 billion over the next decade, just look at the bottom of Table S-4 in that Whitehouse link. It lists the net interest in 2011 as $207 billion and in 2021 as $844 billion. See? You just have to stay informed, Vermonter, to lose your automatic distrust of anything FoxNews.

I think it's rather disrespectful for you to assume anything about me or my political leadings. But, as I can see, you've already lumped me in with the people who disagree with you. That's fine. I get my reports from several sources, and I never assume any one of them have the whole story, including Fox. I do know, however, that Fox tends to be very anti-Obama, something which is extremely transparent. I'm fine with that, and as such, expect them to be misleading when they deem it necessary. As such, I have a distrust for any particular news organization that has a heavy political leaning one way or the other, whether it be Fox, CBS, NBC, CNN, or other. Unlike you, I don't have blinders on to focus on one particular thing as if it's the Truth (tm). I'm as critical with the Obama administation as I was with the Bush administration. Note, however, that critical does not mean "disagree with everything they say". It's simply being critical and asking for fact-checking on all sides.

Oh I disagree. I think your political persuasion has a lot to do with how uninformed and unreasonably distrustful you are. I just hope that my pointing that out gives you reason to perhaps reassess your politics. I'm trying to help you.

You can certainly take a crack at it if you'd like, but I wouldn't want you to waste too many precious braincells on that mystery. I don't need your help at all, but I appreciate your specious offer. If you continue to guess wrong, is it unfair to say that you're...Stuck On Stupid?

 

[BeAChooser]

Bushes last Budget came in at a $1.4 trillion deficit.

You just can't help lie, can you, lomiller?

Here was Bush's last budget ... the one submitted in February of 2008 for FY 2009:

http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy09/browse.html

http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy09/pdf/budget/tables.pdf

It states a projected deficit for FY 2009 of 407 billion dollars.

They then ignore the fact US spending hasn't increased significantly.

Liar. Bush presided over a $2.5 trillion increase in the public debt through 2008. The increase in public debt in 2009 is the SHARED responsibility of Bush, who started a string of expensive bailouts, and Obama who accelerated that behavior. Obama is responsible for at least a trillion dollars of the 2009 debt increase. Obama's FY2010 and beyond budgets are projected to add debt at the rate of well over $800 billion a year, on average, through the next decade. That's clearly *significant*.

The biggest single increase to the US budget under Obama has been including the costs of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq which Bush was running off the books.

Liar. While Bush did fund the wars through emergency supplementals (not the regular budget process), that spending is included in the annual deficit numbers I cited earlier. The numbers that Obama projects for the lowest years of deficit are not even close to matching Bush's highest deficits.

And here's the effect of the war on the deficit:

http://libertyworks.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Wars-not-paid-for.gif

As noted: "During the Bush years deficits were 2.7 times more than war costs. Obama’s first two deficits total almost nine times more than war costs. If there were no war at all Obama’s first two deficits would still total $2.4 trillion, the largest in U.S. history, after adjusting for inflation."

They then ignore the fact most of the deficit came from revenue shortfalls caused by the economic slowdown and tax cuts that Republicans insisted on as part of the stimulus (then voted against anyway)

It's Obama and his socialist policies that are now prolonging the recession … making it worse than it had to be and perhaps turning it into a depression. It's Obama's policies that has made the new norm for unemployment nearly 10%. And history proves that tax cuts do stimulate the economy.

In fact, were Obama to do what Grover Cleveland did, we'd probably be back to the old norm of unemployment in no time. The Depression of 1893 was one of the worst in American history. Unemployment went from 4% to over 12%. GDP dropped 10%. But unlike Bush and Obama, Grover Cleveland opposed government intervention, so the government did little to intervene. In fact, Cleveland cut taxes and spending. And that economic crisis was over within 6 years with unemployment back down to 5% and the economy booming. Get a clue.

How about the recession of 1921? It was an extremely sharp deflationary recession following World War I. Unemployment rose over 700% in one year (to nearly 12% according to one source). Production fell 23% and the stock market dropped 18%. Yet within two years, it was over, unemployment had returned to what was considered full employment and the economy was booming. What happened to make this possible? President Harding cut government spending by 40%, instead of massively increasing it. He lowered taxes and reduced regulation, all of which helped America's entrepreneurs and capitalists create jobs and push the economy to recover. Harding's free market policies (and then Calvin Coolidge's) led to the Roaring Twenties, known for technological advances, women's rights, the explosion of the middle class, and some of the most rapid economic growth in American history. All of this without a stimulus. Get a clue.

And stop lying about economics and history, lomiller. You only embarrass yourself.

 

[BeAChooser]

http://www.gallup.com/poll/146147/Gallup-Finds-Unemployment-Mid-February.aspx

February 17, 2011

Gallup Finds U.S. Unemployment Up to 10.0% in Mid-February

Now granted … that's non-seasonally adjusted but still ...

 

[BeAChooser]

I think it's rather disrespectful for you to assume anything about me or my political leadings.

Well you did leap into this thread on the side of Obama's supporters (taking an obvious crack at me) without knowing much about the facts or why I say Obama is Stuck On Stupid (you'd actually have to read the thread to understand that and I doubt you did, given you're posting history). In any case, I'm sorry if I drew the wrong conclusion from your residing in Vermont, home of socialist Bernie Sanders, and hope you have a nice day.

 

[BeAChooser]

Another example of Stuck On Stupid:

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0211/49763.html

Pelosi: Stimulus 'definitely worth it'

… snip …

“We’re very, very proud of it,” she told reporters Thursday. “It was definitely worth it.”

Democrats seem incapable of learning. Works for me.

 

[BeAChooser]

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/02/the_obamacare_real_estate_boom.html

Investor's Business Daily reports that due to ObamaCare, Health and Human Services is on track to become "the first $1 trillion federal agency."

And the bigger they get, the more wasteful they are.

 

[BeAChooser]

http://money.cnn.com/2011/02/17/news/economy/stimulus_bill/index.htm

Where's the stimulus?

February 17, 2011

NEW YORK (CNN) -- A bill to jump start the economy. That was the main idea behind the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, better known as the "stimulus bill," which became law two years ago today.

However, the nation is still waiting for the bill's promised jolt.

… snip …

[excuses, excuses, excuses]

Isn't this just what we've come to expect from the liberal media?

 

[BeAChooser]

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2011/02/17/whs_jay_carney_stimulus_goals_have_been_met.html

White House press secretary Jay Carney says the Recovery Act added several million jobs and lowered the unemployment rate. According to Carney, the "goals" of the stimulus package "have been met."


Looks like the new guy may be even stupider than the last guy. In fact, one begins to wonder whether Stuck On Stupid is a requirement for serving in the Obama Whitehouse?

 

[BeAChooser]

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/gov-t-has-borrowed-2966055-household-oba

February 17, 2011

The federal government has borrowed an additional $29,660 per household in the United States since President Barack Obama signed his economic stimulus law two years ago.

That brings the total national debt to $125,475.18 per household.

But of course under democrat thinking, only a small portion of households will actually have to repay that debt.

So the extra debt accumulated by the households that will have to repay it is far more than $29,660.

 

[BeAChooser]

So how's that stimulus working out for you JREFers living here in the US?

 

[Vermonter]

Well you did leap into this thread on the side of Obama's supporters (taking an obvious crack at me) without knowing much about the facts or why I say Obama is Stuck On Stupid (you'd actually have to read the thread to understand that and I doubt you did, given you're posting history). In any case, I'm sorry if I drew the wrong conclusion from your residing in Vermont, home of socialist Bernie Sanders, and hope you have a nice day.

Oh, I do support Obama in this. The arguments against him have been rather amusing, and you seem to be entirely resistant to actual facts in favor of rhetoric, given the general reactions to your posting style and habits. I actually really like Bernie, he's a cool congressman and a good voice in Vermont.

 

[BeAChooser]

Oh, I do support Obama in this.

So you believe, like Pelosi, that The Stimulus has been a success? And that Obama really has halved the deficit from when Bush was President? I see.

I actually really like Bernie, he's a cool congressman and a good voice in Vermont.

And an admitted socialist. I see. I really do see.

 

[timhau]

Edited by Tricky: 

Edited for rule 12.

 

[lomiller]

I'd like to see how Fox got those numbers to begin with, then I'd like to see how they compare to numbers that the White House put together. Whether or not I'm a liberal or a leftist isn't really your concern, but I'm certain you'll be more than willing to lump me in with the people that you don't like simply because they disagree with you.

Just a few more examples of what I was saying, you can find them all discussed in this very thread, he is just betting that people who haven’t read it won’t notice if he repeats them despite have been debunked more then once already.

Here was Bush's last budget ... the one submitted in February of 2008 for FY 2009:


It states a projected deficit for FY 2009 of 407 billion dollars.

The 2009 US budget ended in deficit of $1.4, yet he wants to say it's Obama's fault Bush didn't get the numbers right.

Liar. Bush presided over a $2.5 trillion increase in the public debt through 2008. .

True obviously but has nothing whatsoever to do with spending increased under Obama, the point he was attempting to “prove”.



View his response the suggestion Bush didn’t include the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in the budget

Liar. While Bush did fund the wars through emergency supplementals (not the regular budget process), that spending is included in the annual deficit numbers I cited earlier. The numbers that Obama projects for the lowest years of deficit are not even close to matching Bush's highest deficits.

Apparently the fact they were off budget proves they were not off budget, and in case you were wondering no, off budget expenses do not show up in the deficit, rather they go directly to the debt. As you can see he wants to use spending, deficit and debt interchangibly as if they mean the same thing.

It's Obama and his socialist policies that are now prolonging the recession … making it worse than it had to be and perhaps turning it into a depression.

Now he’s trying to pretend the first 13 months of the recession didn’t occur under Bush, and ended 6 months after Obama took office, and only 1 month after the stimulus money started to flow.

 

[lomiller]

Edited by Tricky: 

Edited response to modded post.

 

[BeAChooser]

Originally Posted by BeAChooser

Here was Bush's last budget ... the one submitted in February of 2008 for FY 2009:
… snip … It states a projected deficit for FY 2009 of 407 billion dollars.


The 2009 US budget ended in deficit of $1.4, yet he wants to say it's Obama's fault Bush didn't get the numbers right.

And why shouldn't the deficit increase be as much Obama's fault as anyone else's? Afterall, the 2009 budget was submitted by Bush in February 2008 before the bank and mortgage crisis unfolded, and FY 2009 ended in September 2009 so Obama was President for 8 of the 12 months in FY 2009. And it was Obama who submitted and passed the nearly 800 billion dollar stimulus bill in February of 2009 and the earmark loaded 2009 Omnibus Appropriations bill in March 2009 (which actually funded the government through September 2009) over the objections of republicans.

in case you were wondering no, off budget expenses do not show up in the deficit, rather they go directly to the debt.

You continue to be dishonest, lomiller. Off budget items for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars didn't show up in Bush's projected budget but they were included in the yearly deficits that I cited in post #1411 for the Bush years. Here's what American Thinker indicates the CBO reported as the deficit, with and without the Iraq war: http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/08/iraq_the_war_that_broke_us_not.html . Those numbers also agree with the chart the Washington Post published for the deficit: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2009/03/21/GR2009032100104.html , which came from CBO sources. And the with-war deficit quantities in both cases agrees with the numbers I cited earlier in post #1411. You simply don't know what you are talking about. Or are being dishonest.

 

[BeAChooser]

There's a new "gate" brewing. Actually, has been brewing for some time. Mentioned it earlier on this very thread. And guess what it's connected to? Why the failed Stimulus, of course.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2011/02/solyndra-obama-biden-stimulus-waste.html#more

February 23, 2011*

Here's a sad and revealing chronology about a U.S. president named Obama, a California company named Solyndra and, now, a congressional investigation into the administration's loan guarantee of $535 million in a failed green energy project that was supposed to create jobs.

… snip …

The story starts in the early 2009 days of the Democratic administration of Barack Obama and the hastily written economic stimulus legislation passed by the whopping Democratic congressional majorities of Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco.

… snip …

On Sept. 9 that year in a special closed-circuit TV program for the groundbreaking of Solyndra's new plant, Vice President Joe "Recovery Summer" Biden announced the signing of the $535-million federal loan guarantee, the Energy Department's first under the stimulus plan.

… snip …

The money would finance construction of a Solyndra facility, creating 3,000 construction jobs and 1,000 full-time positions in the modern plant making photovoltaic solar panels.

… snip …

Then came last November, the day after the midterm elections when everyone was focused on the historic shift to Republican control of the House. Solyndra announced then that not only was it not going to create those 1,000 full-time jobs so eagerly hailed by Obama and Biden, but it also was going to close an older factory and actually lay off 175 full- or part-time workers.

That left U.S. taxpayers holding the financial bag for nearly three-quarters of that loan guarantee, about $390 million.


But now Fred Upton and Cliff Stearns, chairmen of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and Oversight Subcommittee, have been examining the company's financials and the possibility of waste and fraud. Since its 2005 founding, it seems that Solyndra has never made a profit and its own auditor had raised serious questions that did not slow or stop the immense guarantee's approval by the Obama administration.

… snip …

Oh, one other thing: The majority owner of Solyndra is George Kaiser. He's an Oklahoma billionaire. He was also a bundler, a major fundraiser, for the 2008 presidential campaign of Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

But like the author says in conclusion … that's probably a coincidence.

Yeah. Right.

 

[lomiller]

And why shouldn't the deficit increase be as much Obama's fault as anyone else's? Afterall, the 2009 budget was submitted by Bush in February 2008 before the bank and mortgage crisis unfolded, and FY 2009 ended in September 2009 so Obama was President for 8 of the 12 months in FY 2009

So you are saying it’s Obama’s fault the economy crashed before he took office reducing US government revenue from Bushes projected $2.9 Trillion to $2.1 trillion or that Bush was planning for a nearly $500 billion deficit even before this occurred?

and the earmark loaded 2009 Omnibus Appropriations bill in March 2009 (which actually funded the government through September 2009) over the objections of republicans.

The Omnibus spending bill only covered non-DOD government departments meaning it’s negligible part of the US budget (just over $400 billion) and all it did was fund what Bush already proposed. There is no evidence whatsoever that there was any increase in earmark spending and if there was it wouldn’t have even made it past rounding error in the budget deficit.

Republican objecting to funding Bush’s budget proposals on 10% of the US budget is simply another example of them appealing “a sucker born every min” rather than looking at the deficit objectively. This is why Republicans have consistently failed as budgeting for the last 3 decades.

 

[mike3]

t it if you'd like, but I wouldn't want you to waste too many precious braincells on that mystery. I don't need your help at all, but I appreciate your specious offer. If you continue to guess wrong, is it unfair to say that you're...Stuck On Stupid?

Is using these kinds of personal attacks good debate?

 

[Piggy]

So how's that stimulus working out for you JREFers living here in the US?

As well as can be expected, I reckon.

No doubt, millions of it were wasted, but it's better than no action at all, which would have left market forces to themselves, which would have bottomed out much lower.

On the whole, I'll take it.