Between 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq, Katrina, bailouts, spending and tax cuts the total bill for the 43rd President is $11.5 trillion with a deficit of $1 trillion left. http://articles.moneycentral.msn.co...ush-era-11-point-5-trillion.aspx#pageTopAchor
I think when history judges Bush in terms of economics, it will be very harsh. Reckless deficit spending and then leaving a huge mess with very few options to his successor as a result...extremely disappointing how the Bush Administration handled the American economy and by extension the world economy.
$11.5 trillion dollars. What a waste. If Bush had spent some of that money on domestic terrorism, instead of sending our defenses to Iraq. He could have saved the 9/11 victims.
A waste yes, but the rest of that statement is just ridiculous. We do miss that democrats have supported this spending spree. It has been a complete government failure when it comes to budgeting.
Yeah... not bad. If Obama were to only spend 150 million dollars each day in office, it would take him 210 years to spend 11.5 trillion.
Wrong Bush. The calculations are just bizarre, though. If you add up the cost of the total federal budgets during Bush's term, you get $20.3T. But that's not what they do. They arbitrarily assign some expenditures (and tax cuts, which aren't a cost), to Bush, including some that they project that Obama will add up. Examples: Obama's proposed stimulus is charged to Bush. $2 Trillion of not yet spent money for Iraq and Afghanistan is charged to Bush. Most of that won't be incurred unless we get bogged down in a long drawn-out police action in Afghanistan. If that happens (which I expect), blaming it on Bush will be like blaming Eisenhower or Kennedy for the cost of the Vietnam War.
You'd think this would be enough "stimulus" for the economy. Apparently not. Economists say we need a trillion dollar stimulus. Do they not realize we already have an 11 trillion dollar stimulus ongoing? We are already doing Keynesian-style deficit spending. I don't think the additional trillion that Obama will sign is going to work, it's just going to put us further into debt.
building bombs, giving tax breaks to the rich, etc., doesn't create that much in terms of ongoing benefit. building schools or highways does.
Tax breaks to rich was supposed to trickle down but it didn't work. Alot of money went to Iraq's defense, roads, and other infrastructure projects instead of the USA. Obama will actually spend it on OUR infrastructure instead of building up the economy of foreign countries. During the recession, Iraq hasn't been hurt that badly, because of the all the money that came from our taxpayers. Their government has a budget surplus.
That's ridiculous. Not that Bush is a great money saving president, but that's ridiculous nevertheless. They are gonna add Katrina and Rita (aka natural disasters) and 9/11 (aka terrorist activities) onto Bush's tab to prove how badly he manages the budget? So in other words, if a Democrat president (or even a different Republican one) presided over such events, those expenses wouldn't have occurred? That's outright ludicrous. Blame Bush for the messes he caused (e.g. Iraq) but don't blame him for those he didn't. It makes one sound nothing more than a partisan twerp. If he really was that bad you wouldn't need to put a spin on it.
This is a pretty simplified analysis...first off the "11 trillion dollar stimulus ongoing" is the cost of projects dating back to 2001, so it's not exactly "ongoing". Second, I'd like to see your math on why an additional stimulus won't work. I would say that an additional trillion in domestic consumption/projects would have a significant impact on the economy, why do you think it would not.
True, not all the 11 trillion is ongoing, but but we are already deficit spending to the tune of 8.3% of gdp. If that isn't working, I don't see why spending another 800 billion will work and making that 10% of gdp or so will work. That is my question- we have been deficit spending for a while, we even had a couple wars, we still fell in recession. Now we want to try this new idea of deficit spending, but it's not new, we've been doing it this whole time. Other reasons are as theoretical the the keynesian spending theory-one argument is for the government to finance the new spending, it will have to borrow the money, leaving less money for private investment and consumption. And so on. Also, I'd like to see your evidence in history of deficit spending actually working to get an economy out of a recession.
I doubt that Al Qaeda were the first ones to plan a 9/11 scale attack. We have alot of enemies, and the CIA and FBI aren't going to announce every attempt. Intelligence was available before 9/11. If the administration had acted on it, there wouldn't be a 9/11. In July, the govt was told the attack was coming in weeks.
