How Bush isn't responsible for the FY 2009 budget

Lets talk about the United States budget for Fiscal Year 2009.

The left has tried repeatedly to blame Bush for the FY 2009 budget, and most of the time, this would be completely legitimate.  After all, when Obama came into office, it was in the middle of FY 2009.  So logic would dictate that whatever budget was in place when he came into office, he had no say over.  Moreover, one would think that the previous president had his voice in the FY 2009 budget.

But then you'd be wrong.
Let me explain.  As soon as the Democrats came into office, they started ignoring Bush's budget.  By the time Bush turned in his FY 2009 suggestion, it was dead on arrival.
Then the Democrats proposed their budget.

They loved their budget compared to the president's budget, because it didn't involve cuts:


When the Democrats proposed their budget, Bush similiarly declared it dead. This is from Feb 2009,  Bloomberg:

Democrats postponed work on the appropriations bills last year after they were unable to reach an agreement with former President George W. Bush on how much to spend on domestic programs. Bush had demanded lawmakers freeze most domestic spending. Most federal agencies, except those related to defense, have been funded by a stopgap measure that expires March 6.

Democrats did vote on the "idea" of the budget in March of 2008.  However, it was a non binding budget... meaning, it meant nothing.  According to USA today:

Democrats gave final approval on Thursday of a budget blueprint for 2009 that rewards domestic agencies and the Pentagon with generous budget increases while leaving wrenching decisions about curbing Medicare costs and increasing taxes to the next president.

The House approved the $3.1 trillion budget plan by a 214-210 vote; senators passed the measure Wednesday. The nonbinding measure does not go to President Bush but instead sets guidelines for future action by Congress.

The House-Senate compromise relies on questionable assumptions to predict a small budget surplus by 2012 after seven years of deficits under the Republican president.

Wait... what was that?

The next president actually will inherit a deficit in the $400 billion range, or higher, under current estimates. Some Wall Street economists fear record deficits of up to $500 billion.

Republicans lamented the lost opportunity to tackle the biggest budget challenge: the rapidly spiraling cost of Medicare, Social Security and the Medicaid health care program for the poor. The Democratic plan would not impose any cost-cutting on them.

Democrats are generous, however, in the near term with the annual spending bills passed by Congress. Over the five years of the Democratic plan, appropriated spending would rise $241 billion. In line for large increases are education, energy and public works.

Huh.   Okay.
Here's the vote in the house:

	Yeas	Nays	PRES	NV
Democratic	214	14		7
Republican		196		3
Independent
TOTALS	214	210		10

It appears as though the Republicans were solidly against the Dems non-binding budget proposal.
And of course, the vote in the Senate:
Where you'll find that only 2 Republicans voted for it.

So instead of freezing spending, Democrats passed parts of the budget piecemeal in order to keep the government going.  But that's not all.  Democrats waited until Obama got into office, and then passed the final portion of FY 2009 under him... in March 2009!  Again, via Bloomberg:

The U.S. Congress gave final approval to a $410 billion spending bill that includes an overall 8 percent budget increase for some federal agencies and thousands of congressional pet projects.

The Senate approved the so-called omnibus measure on a voice vote, sending it to President Barack Obama for his signature. Moments earlier, the bill cleared a procedural vote 62 to 35. The House approved the plan Feb. 25.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, said before passage that he was “very” surprised at how long it took lawmakers to reach agreement on the legislation. He said the bill will provide needed funding increases for federal agencies that saw too many lean budgets during former President George W. Bush’s administration.

Please note that Harry Reid wrote that there were "too many lean" budgets under GWB.  Now, with Obama in charge, he was much happier, and fatter.

HR 1105 caused a little bit of a ruckus over the pork laden in it.
But you might wonder who actually voted for it?
Well, here's the roll call of the House:

	Yeas	Nays	PRES	NV
Democratic	229	20		4
Republican	16	158		4
Independent
TOTALS	245	178		8

Huh.  Seems kinda lopsided.  Like.... like there were a ton of Republicans voting against it.
But maybe that was just the house?

Here's the final cloture bill in the Senate:

Of the 62 "Yeas", only 8 were Republicans.
Which means this bill swept through, despite Republican opposition.

If you say that either Bush or Republicans were responsible for the FY2009 budget, you are beyond wrong.  You're in that special category of dishonesty or ignorance.

Pick one.

Maddow: Obama's deficit reduction is solid???

From Real Clear Politics.... you need to watch the video:

It is completely delusional.

I debunked the idea that Republicans were responsible for the FY 2009 spending here, and you can read all about it.  But the important take away is that FY 2009 didn't actually have a budget.  Why?  Because the left wanted to wait until a president who was more friendly to spending came into office.
That man's name was Barack Obama... and Reid was so glad:
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, said before passage that he was “very” surprised at how long it took lawmakers to reach agreement on the legislation. He said the bill will provide needed funding increases for federal agencies that saw too many lean budgets during former President George W. Bush’s administration.

Go figure... Democrats get into office and add $400 billion in spending.  This isn't the stimulus, btw.  It was just $400 billion in spending that they tacked onto the original spending.
So Democrats, and Barack, are responsible for FY 2009.

But wait, you say, spending did decrease since FY 2009.
Let me show you this chart that explains it all:

Year----Revenue--Spending--Difference

2000---2,025.2----1,789.0----88.34%

2001---1,991.1----1,862.9----93.56%

2002---1,853.1----2,010.9----108.52%

2003---1,782.3----2,159.9----121.19%

2004---1,880.1----2,292.9----121.96%

2005---2,153.6----2,472.0----114.78%

2006---2,406.9----2,655.1----110.31%

2007---2,568.0----2,728.7----106.26%

2008---2,524.0----2,982.5----118.17%

2009---2,105.0----3,517.7----167.11%

2010---2,162.7----3,456.2----159.81%

2011----2303.5----3603.1----156.42%
Source

What did you notice?
If you're like me, you noticed that revenue dropped from FY 2000 to FY 2003.  But then it went up.

Which seems counter-intuitive, since there were tax cuts in 2001 and 2003.  How do tax cuts result in an increase in revenue?  Ask any supply sider, and they'll explain.

Secondly, note when the difference between revenue and spending really skyrockets.  It starts rising in 2008 (after Democrats take over congresss), but just takes off like a bullet in FY 2009.

Go figure... right?
Now yes... its dipped a little since then.  But...

It was supposed to.  TARP and the stimulus were both supposed to be one time expenses.  So in theory, after FY 2009, the difference between revenue and spending should have gone back to FY 2008 levels.  Yes?

But we spent MORE - even though the stimulus and TARP were not included - in FY 2011, then in FY 2009.  How the fuck did that happen?
Ergo, to say that Obama decreased the deficit is true only if you forget that FY 2009 had a huge amount of additional spending in it... and that FY 2010 did also.  It also requires you to forget that TARP was mostly paid back.  Soooo where did that money go?  Shouldn't the difference go down significantly?

Catching up with some links.

Investor's .com came up with a list of 20 ways that the health care bill will take away our freedom. My 'favorite';

6. You must buy a policy that covers ambulatory patient services, emergency services, hospitalization, maternity and newborn care, mental health and substance use disorder services, including behavioral health treatment; prescription drugs; rehabilitative and habilitative services and devices; laboratory services; preventive and wellness services; chronic disease management; and pediatric services, including oral and vision care.
You're a single guy without children? Tough, your policy must cover pediatric services. You're a woman who can't have children? Tough, your policy must cover maternity services. You're a teetotaler? Tough, your policy must cover substance abuse treatment. (Add your own violation of personal freedom here.) (Section 1302).

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former CBO director, explains the faulty math in the CBO's 'costs' of health care in the NY Times:

Gimmick No. 1 is the way the bill front-loads revenues and backloads spending. That is, the taxes and fees it calls for are set to begin immediately, but its new subsidies would be deferred so that the first 10 years of revenue would be used to pay for only 6 years of spending.

Even worse, some costs are left out entirely. To operate the new programs over the first 10 years, future Congresses would need to vote for $114 billion in additional annual spending. But this so-called discretionary spending is excluded from the Congressional Budget Office’s tabulation.

The worst part about it is that in Douglas' opinion, the CBO should have been more critical of the spending.

Speaking of spending, Social Security finally hit the point of no return... where outlays are more then revenue. We are now also running a Social Security deficit:

This year, the system will pay out more in benefits than it receives in payroll taxes, an important threshold it was not expected to cross until at least 2016, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

But we need to spend more on social programs. Right.

Did you know that as part of the health care bill takeover, from now on, the federal government will be in charge of student loans? That should bring down the cost of tuition...

Ending one of the fiercest lobbying fights in Washington, Congress voted Thursday to force commercial banks out of the federal student loan market, cutting off billions of dollars in profits in a sweeping restructuring of financial-aid programs and redirecting most of the money to new education initiatives.

This is like taking the car keys away from the guy who is stumbling drunk and giving them to the guy who is passed out, and telling him, "Here... you look responsible!"

A week after the health care takeover was passed, Rasmussen did a poll. They found out the following:

One week after the House of Representatives passed the health care plan proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats, 54% of the nation's likely voters still favor repealing the new law. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 42% oppose repeal.

The only people who didn't see that coming were hard core democrats.

FY 2008, the budget passed by Dems

One of my favorite things to do is to examine what was said, in a prediction, in history.

For instance, let's say that you were wondering about the FY 2008 budget. Who passed it, and what was said about it?

The U.S. Congress on Thursday approved a $2.9 trillion fiscal 2008 budget that funds President George W. Bush's huge defense buildup while also adding money for Democrats' domestic priorities.

The budget, written by Democrats who control both chambers of Congress, received no backing from House Republicans, while only two moderate Republicans in the Senate supported it.

Okay... so from this, we know that the Democrats wrote the 2008 budget.
Furthermore, we can state that exactly 2 Republicans in congress, total, supported it.
Its worth reading the article if you have the time.

Let's keep going... shall we?
This was a non-binding budget. Meaning that Democrats knew that there was a possibility that their spending priorities would get cut off at the legs. Or as one other article stated it:

The move appears to set up a clash this September with Bush, who has yet to veto a single appropriations bill, but who seems eager to get started.

The budget was a result of a lot of back and forth, with Republicans saying that Democrats were being overly optimistic on what they thought their tax plans would bring in.
Furthermore, the Democrats were counting on 'reserve funds':

The House and Senate versions of the budget depend on "reserve funds" to pay for additional spending for such programs as children's healthcare and farm aid. With the reserve funds, Congress can avoid the hard choices that drawing up any budget, whether it's for a household or the federal government, usually entails.

There's only one catch: The reserve funds are empty.
If Congress wants to fill them, it will have to do what it has tried to avoid: cut from defense or domestic programs, raise taxes or borrow the money and drive up the deficit.

I'm going to continue researching this. But I wanted to share.

The rewriting of history: DOMA and DADT

I need to start by saying that I didn't know what the initials DADT stood for. But I ended up in an online discussion about the Defense Of Marriage Act (DOMA) when someone started to mention DADT; Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

You may have heard Bill Clinton say, recently, that he "didn't want" to pass don't ask, don't tell... but that he was forced to. He implied heavily that it was conservatives who made him do it. So lets start there.

Don't ask don't tell was passed into law in 1993. Since then, Obama has repeatedly said that he was going to repeal it. Let's go back in time.

1993 was the 102nd/103rd, congress in the house of representatives.
The 102nd congress was made up of 267 democrats and 167 republicans.
The 103rd congress was made up of 258 democrats and 176 republicans.
It would have been statistically impossible for Republicans to not only get a bill passed on their own, but steamroll it through.
The process started in the house, as the 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' policy was put into a congressional defense spending bill.

In the Senate, 22 members voted "No" on Don't ask, Don't tell. 18 of those members were Republicans. 4 senators who voted "No" were Democrats.

Here's the vote in the House for DOMA:
As expected, all but one Republican voted Yes.
Not expected? 118 Democrats voted yes, while only 65 voted no.

The next time someone tells you that Republicans made it impossible for the Democrats to oppose DOMA or DADT, please send them those links.

More debt from 2009-2011 then from 2001-2007

This is from my latest research.


US DEBT:
Jan/2001 $5.7 Trillion
Jan/2007 $8.6 Trillion

In the 6 years of Republican control, the debt was raised by 2.9 Trillion.

Jan/2009 $10.6
Jan/2011 $14.0

From 2007 to 2009, the debt rose by $2 Trillion.
2 Trillion.
In 2 years of Democrat control of congress.

Now that was NOTHING compared to the drunken spending that would ensue after a Democrat took the presidency.

By this year, this January, our debt is 14 Trillion.

In two years, the president and congress have raised the debt by 3.4 Trillion.

Now I'm watching Democrats calling Republicans hypocrites.

Democrats and Obama have raised the debt by more in two years then the Republicans and Bush did in 6 years... and democrats have the balls to call the REPUBLICANS IRRESPONSIBLE?

A few articles on health care that I'm looking at

Look at the giddiness of the Dems in announcing health care in this article on Politico. Its downright spooky how anxious they are to take over such a large segment of the society and turn it into a bureaucracy.

Then read this article at AP (via Yahoo) on how the Democrats strong armed yet another industry:

The pharmaceutical industry agreed Saturday to spend $80 billion over the next decade improving drug benefits for seniors on Medicare and defraying the cost of President Barack Obama's health care legislation, capping secretive negotiations involving key lawmakers and the White House.

What that means is that since Barack can't actually afford to give old people all of the drugs they need, he asked drug companies to offer a price break to Medicare. That price break, of course, will be passed over to consumers. It is, in effect, an invisible tax.
Here is another scary part of that article:

While none of the changes in the prescription drug program would directly lower government costs, several officials also said the industry agreed to measures that would give the Treasury more money under federal health programs. In particular, officials said drug companies would likely wind up paying pay higher rebates for certain drugs under Medicaid, the program that provides health care for the poor.

Note: the whole purpose of the government taking over health care was to make it cheaper. Remember?

This dichotomy is kinda reflected in a recent Pew poll:

Relatively few Americans believe the country as a whole is spending the right amount on health care at this point, but there is no consensus on what the problem is. Just as many Americans say we are spending too much on health care (38%) as too little (40%).

Here is another interesting tidbit for me:

People with no more than a high school education (47%) or some college (42%) are far more likely than are college graduates (31%) to favor a complete rebuilding of the health care system.

Go figure. Smarter people don't want to lose the best health care in the world, whereas dumb people want the government to control it.
Anyway, the important thing is that the government is coming for your health care. Obama wants it. Bad. And he's not going to stop until he controls it.

Two more looks at Obama's first 100 days

The first one comes from "Factbox", a product of Reuters:

* The Dow closed at 8281.22 on the last trading day before Obama took office and closed slightly lower on Friday at 8076.29. In between, it plummeted about 1,800 points to 6469.95 on March 6 before recovering. The broader S&P 500 closed at 850.12 on Jan. 16 and ended slightly up, at 866.23, on Friday.

AND

Joblessness was 7.6 percent in January and had risen to 8.5 percent by March, the latest monthly figure. New unemployment claims have continued to rise in April.

And most importantly:

Number of appointees with personal tax issues: at least 6

How do you raise revenue in the Obama regime? Appoint more democrats into office, and make them pay their taxes.

Obama had a speech on April 29th, a Wednesday. AP Fact Checked his speech.
I can't believe that anyone is finally doing this, but I'm just glad that someone did.
On Obama's "Stimulus" bill, they write:

"...his response to the crisis goes well beyond "one-time charges."

He's persuaded Congress to expand children's health insurance, education spending, health information technology and more. He's moving ahead on a variety of big-ticket items on health care, the environment, energy and transportation that, if achieved, will be more enduring than bank bailouts and aid for homeowners.

The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimated his policy proposals would add a net $428 billion to the deficit over four years, even accounting for his spending reduction goals. Now, the deficit is nearly quadrupling to $1.75 trillion."

The rest of the Fact Check is similarly great.

For those of you who didn't understand, this is what us Tax Day protesters were upset about. Thank you to Calvin Woodward. I know that Obama fans will be littering his inbox with criticisms. I want to give him credit for good journalism.

The Democrats, and Town hall complaints

It seems like every time the democrats have a town hall meeting now-a-days, there is some person who gets up to complain about how bad their lives are.
Yet, when they are investigated by the press, we find out that they aren't as bad off as they claim.

Enter Henrietta Hughes, a woman who complained during Obama's town hall about how she couldn't make expenses.
Are we really surprised to find out that she wasn't as bad off as she made things out to be?

State Representative Nick Thompson and his wife Chene are standing by the Henrietta and her son, Corey. They spoke out against the allegations Henrietta is milking the system, even when confronted with the fact WINK News found out the Hughes' sold property, back in 2005. Henrietta and her son sold the land for $47,000 dollars. But Chene Thompson says that was all the money they had for several years and it's gone.

Okay... if you go through 47k in 4 years, beyond your normal $800 a month income, you're doing something wrong. I say that as a guy who has lived on less then $20k a year.
What's she spending her money on?

Hughes owes money on a loan, has her car insurance payment, a monthly storage bill and says she couldn't afford the rent.

So she not only owns a car (my guess is that's where the 47k went), but she has a storage facility. But she can't afford rent???
Folks; this is where the world has gone wrong. People who don't know how to prioritize. She's storing stuff, but can't afford her rent.
I don't know what she's storing... but if she sold some of it, she might have rent. It drives me crazy when people do this.

Going back in time: What Obamanomics was supposed to do

I've mentioned before that sometimes I just use my blog to keep tract of links.

In this case, its because someone I know is trying to argue that Obamanomics is a term that Fox News uses.
Let me make this clear; they aren't arguing that Fox News is one of many places that uses Obamanomics. They are arguing that its mostly Fox that created the term, and uses it to bash the economic policies of Obama.

So let's go over who used the term in 2008. -And while we're at it, let's see what people predicted would happen under Obamanomics.

Of course, there was the uber-conservative Firedoglake:

Obama’s tax plan will put more of the burden on the rich, he will raise the minimum wage, make unionization easier and generally help workers. The effect won’t be large, but for the poorest workers and for unions, it will be noticeable.

In this disjointed article, the author suggests that the biggest problem with Obamanomics is that Obama wants to give money back to the people... which is... bad. The author argues that the people don't know how to spend their money right. Ooookay.

August 2008, Counterpunch uses the term. They talk about how Obama has spent time speaking about deficit (cough cough!) reduction:

Obama also embraces some elements of deficit reduction in his thinking. That’s not wrong in principle. Lower deficits can strengthen the value of the dollar, making imports less expensive. Lower federal budget deficits can make it harder to justify fiscal austerity that shrinks needed social welfare, training or public investments of various kinds. Government borrowing can crowd out private sector borrowing, making investments more costly.

Thank goodness that Barack isn't raising the deficit?

Then there was The Economist, who had to say this about the president's economics:

As the battle for the Democratic nomination reaches a climax in Texas and Ohio, the front-runner's speeches have begun to paint a world in which laid-off parents compete with their children for minimum-wage jobs while corporate fat-cats mis-sell dodgy mortgages and ship jobs off to Mexico.

To be fair, he hasn't changed that economic narrative.

Mark Green, from Air America, on the Huffington Post, referring to Krugman on Obamanomics:

Also, studies have shown that the GDP under Democratic presidents has been more than 300% higher than under Republican presidents. So whenever McCain falsely aserts that Obama will raise everyone's taxes or that he'll balance the budget by 2013 despite cutting revenues by several hundred billion annually, the affirmative answer is -- Democrats grow the economy far more than Republicans. 300% more. For the most recent example, contrast Clinton and Bush.

Whew. Then the economy is getting far better. Right. errr... right?
That's the problem with Democratic predictions. Its never their fault that things didn't turn out that way.

In These Times, on Obamanomics:

Obama would certainly shift government priorities to improving job prospects and raising living standards for American workers. He proposes raising the minimum wage to $9.50 an hour, offering refundable $4,000 tax credits for college, expanding the childcare tax credit, reforming bankruptcy laws, rebuilding infrastructure, establishing a new employee savings plan and investing in alternative energy to create “millions of new green jobs.”

Reminder; his economic policies were supposed to keep the unemployment rate under 8% too. But that's just window dressing.

Here is a completely laughable article by the economic writer for the New York Times, on what Obama is planning:

All of this raises the question of what will happen to the deficit. Obama’s aides optimistically insist he will reduce it, thanks to his tax increases on the affluent and his plan to wind down the Iraq war. Relative to McCain, whose promised spending cuts are extremely vague, Obama does indeed look like a fiscal conservative.

A fiscal conservative. Who raised the debt by $3.4 Trillion in 2 years. Here was the hint... in the same article:

“I still would have probably made a slightly different choice than Clinton did,” Obama said. “I probably wouldn’t have been as obsessed with deficit reduction.”

Uh, yeah.
Well, aren't we all glad that worked out so well?