I'll simplify it for you: Obama himself never said that unemployment would not go over 8%. That number is pulled from a projection from the chairwoman of the president's council of economic advisers and the vice president's top economic adviser before Obama was even president! Now, no doubt that that projection turned out to be way off, but it's very deceiving to say that Obama himself said unemployment would never go over 8% if the stimulus was passed. Do you have a video to back up that statement?
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-town-hall-elkhart-indiana If we don't act unemployment will approach double-digits, implying if we do act unemployment shouldn't approach double digits. True, only his employee who was pushing his agenda on his behalf said 8%, but what he said was pretty close.
That's not even addressing the fact that the stimulus that was ultimately passed was quite different from what Obama initially wanted. A lot of the direct spending was removed in favor of tax cuts, which IIRC, accounted for about 40% of the total package.
What Obama said wasn't "pretty close," it wasn't even remotely close. However, despite the facts, there are many people out there, including two in this very thread, who will assert over and over again that "Obama himself" said that unemployment wouldn't go over 8%. That's what you get for watching Fox "News," you just don't have a strong grasp of facts.
Which was the republicans fault, right? You can't pick and choose his words. Of course Obama didn't pull the number 8% himself. He did however go with the massive spending plans to prevent it going over 8%. Here are a couple of undeniable facts: He chose to pursue democratic agendas over the economy. He was more interested in passing a deeply divided health care law that many on both sides believed is ineffective. There is only one thing that is too big to fail...and thats healthcare. Now its guaranteed to fail because its a horrible plan and the opposition that will come against it. Now the government will need to spend a couple trillion more when it does fail in the next decade or two. His other huge mistake was allowing more banks to merge. If the industry is too big to fail, why would you allow them to get even bigger???
Your definition of undeniable facts doesn't fit the real world definition of undeniable facts. He didn't pursue Democratic agendas over the economy. The health care law has a direct effect on the economy, and is a positive for our deficit. If you want to talk about passing partisan agendas over the economy we can look at the GOP stand off to increase the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, their insistence at maintaining subsidies for oil companies and the like.
I didn't say it was the Republicans fault. I was just pointing out that, in addition to only being a projection, the 8% was a projection based on a different stimulus plan. It's really hard for me to take you seriously after such a ridiculous statement. Just as there are some Obama supporters here who try to blame everything on his predecessor, there are ridiculous people among his opposition who try to blame him for everything. Explain to me how it is Obama's fault for allowing more banks to merge, when the major acquisitions were: Bank of America - Merrill Lynch in December 2008 Wells Fargo - Wachovia in October 2008 JP Morgan Chase - Bear Stearns in June 2008 JP Morgan Chase - Washington Mutual in September 2008 Do you see why it's ludicrous to blame Obama for these mergers? (Hint: Obama's inauguration date was January 20th, 2009)
yup, but what do you expect from folks who are in it for their own power and wealth instead of doing what is right for the country. politics sucks.
Massive logic fail... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Material_conditional [rquoter]By definition of "→", the compound p→q is false if and only if both p is true and q is false.[/rquoter]
It depends on what spending you are talking about. If you are talking about the spending on the tax cuts for the wealthy they aren't doing well. If you are talking about the spending for the stimulus it has succeeded by pretty much any model out there. It prevented a huge collapse in the nation's economy, and has kept unemployment from being 12-13%. The problem with it is that it wasn't targeted enough, and not large enough. Look at how successful FDR's program was. http://www.slate.com/id/2209781/ That was a stimulus that was much larger. Once they stopped the stimulus too early and there was a setback but the stimulus then was highly successful.
What's obvious here is the economic downturn was much much worse than any of us thought. Obama did fail in promising to keep UE under 8% and of course that failure is pointed out boisterously by the ignorant who have no other leg to stand on when citing fiscal responsibility given the last 3 GOP presidents drunken spending. The "porkulus" as the aforementioned ignorant call it had barely any stimulus to speak of. It failed because it took too much from the conservative playbook and was mostly tax cuts, a series of bailouts for states budgets, and the largest part was A BOOKKEEPING ENTRY the annual AMT patch necessitated because of Reagans's middle class pillaging in '86. The (AMT) tax was created in 1969 to prevent the very rich from using the many loopholes then available to avoid all federal income taxes. How did the tax's reach expand? In 1986, when President Ronald Reagan and both parties on Capitol Hill agreed to a major change in the tax system, the law was subtly changed to aim at a wholly different set of deductions, the ones that everyone gets, like the personal exemption, state and local taxes, the standard deduction, certain expenses like union dues and even some medical costs for the seriously ill. At the same time it removed and revised some of the exotic investment deductions. A law for untaxed rich investors was refocused on families who own their homes in high tax states. At the insistence of Senate Republicans, nearly $70 billion of the $787 billion economic recovery plan, enacted in February 2009, reflected the bookkeeping cost of adjusting the alternative tax for a year. Democrats said they would have preferred to address the A.M.T. separately, as the patch was seen as having little stimulative effect. http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/a/alternative_minimum_tax/index.html These deficits was created very simply. Massive tax cuts that somehow missed the memo about the Laffer curve and didn't increase tax revenues, Medicare Part D rammed through a total GOP House and Presidency allowing Big Pharma to charge 30% more for the same drugs then states are charged under Medicaid. (Wouldn't you think the federal government would have greater purchasing power and demand better economies of scale than individual states? Nah) the Iraq war, and two recessions the last of which was almost a full scale depression. The only spending issues here are surprise, surprise the two largest areas of the budget healthcare and defense. Obama already addressed healthcare with reform THAT WILL REDUCE THE DEFICIT. I believe I can speak for most Dems and say that we are disapointed that defense spending has not been cut seriously enough. Could be worse though, we could have that Ryan Plan for Prosperity POS: According to an initial analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), they found that by the end of the 10 year budget window, public debt would actually be higher. CBO projected under current law the debt would balloon to 67 percent of GDP by 2022; “under Ryan’s plan, the CBO expects it to rise to 70 percent.” Ryan had to reassure conservatives “disappointed that his plan still adds $8 trillion in debt while failing to balance the budget for at least two decades.” http://thehill.com/homenews/house/154147-ryans-58-trillion-cuts-put-on-fast-track http://www.theatlantic.com/politics...private-share-of-health-care-spending/236904/
