Blogger Dave Johnson has posted three interesting charts of the economy that shows that the harsh criciticsm of President Obama’s handling of the economy is unfair — particularly when compared to George W. Bush’s handling of the economy.
Johnson writes, “We all want to fix the terrible problems the country has. But it is so important to know just what the problems are before you decide how to fix them. Otherwise the things you do to try to solve those problems might just make them worse. If you get tricked into thinking that Obama has made things worse and that we should go back to what we were doing before Obama — tax cuts for the rich, giving giant corporations and Wall Street everything they want — when those are the things that caused the problems in the first place, then we will be in real trouble.”
Spending
Deficits
The Stimulus and Jobs
These charts are meaningless. The second chart is labeled Budget Deficit but it only shows the annual deficitis, not the total deficit. It shows a deep decline in annual budget deficits starting this year. However, those are future projections that are unlikely to be realized as liberals demand to spend more. Even more importantly, even if these projections come true, the overall deficit will increase. The annual deficits are a real danger. The bigger danger is when the overall deficit is so large that the bankers downgrade the debt (one has aleady) and the country has to pay higher interest, creating an even larger debt. At some point this country is going to have continual surpluses for decades on end or the country will collapse. Of course, I believe that is the goal of many people.
Rick, it sounds like you are saying “yes, the deficit is growing at a slower rate than under Bush, but that’s not fair”. I think you’re half right. :) I agree the projections are B.S. Let’s look at what actually happened. The trends are actually pretty positive (relatively speaking… not nearly as positive as we need…) since Bush left office. But it’s hard to take credit for “things suck less than they did”.