Monday, February 15, 2010

FOD

I'm Sick of "Inherited"

The Washington Post babbled again today about Obama inheriting a huge deficit from Bush, blah blah blah. Amazingly enough, a lot of people swallow this nonsense.

So once more, I'll try a short civics lesson.
Budgets do not come from the White House. They come from Congress, and the party that controlled Congress since January 2007 is the Democratic Party. They controlled the budget process for FY 2008 and FY 2009, as well as FY 2010 and FY 2011. In that first year, they had to contend with George Bush, which caused them to compromise on spending, when Bush somewhat belatedly got tough on spending increases. For FY 2009, though, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid bypassed George Bush entirely, passing continuing resolutions to keep government running until Barack Obama could take office. At that time, they passed a massive omnibus spending bill to complete the FY 2009 budgets.
And where was Barack Obama during this time? He was a member of that very Congress that passed all of these massive spending bills, and he signed the omnibus bill as President to complete FY 2009.
Let's remember what the deficits looked like during that period:
If the Democrats inherited any deficit, it was the FY 2007 deficit, the last of the Republican budgets. That deficit was the lowest in five years, and the fourth straight decline in deficit spending. After that, Democrats in Congress took control of spending, and that includes Barack Obama, who voted for the budgets. If Obama inherited anything, he inherited it from himself.
In a nutshell, what Obama is saying is I inherited a deficit that I voted for and then I voted to expand that deficit four-fold since January 20th.

3 comments:

USA_Admiral said...

I agree, completely.

InsomniacSeeker said...

Tell it, sister!

Angie Lee said...

We know this, but the 52% is a wee too bit brain-dead or drunk on the Kool-Aid to get it. Besides, how many people in this nation actually get an education in civics - a REAL education - when most of us are cranked through the public school system's meat grinder? I didn't know shit after leaving high school, and I was one of those brain-dead idiots for a while, until I woke up and realized how they were playing me for the fool I was.

My arse was in the SOS office the next day, changing my voter registration to Republican.