It took George W Bush about a year and a half to turn the Clinton economy around...

[kentuck]

It appears that Trump may take even less time to turn around the Obama economy?

Bush came into office talking about how the surplus was the "peoples money" and they deserved to have it back in a huge taxcut. He almost accomplished it in the first year but by end of the second year, we were returning to huge deficits. (It had been forecast that if we had stayed on the growth and tax path that we were on, we would have paid off our entire debt by 2011) The debt is now unofficially at $21 trillion dollars. So much for having a balanced budget!

Now, the brilliant economist, Donald Trump, has his own plans on how to make America great again and people with money bought it for awhile. Now the exuberance is becoming a "sobering up" party. The questions about tax and trade policies are being re-questioned? The stock market doesn't like it and it's just a matter of time until the entire economy faces the reality of a dumbass in the White House.

[marybourg]

1. I think you mean "destroy "

in each instance.

[NewJeffCT]

7. Yes, "destroy" or "tank"

or similar. "turn around" *can* imply that it was turned around for the better.

[MichMan]

2. 9/11 had a major role

[apnu]

6. See karynnj's post below (nt)

[MichMan]

9. No mention whatsoever of 9/11

[Gothmog]

3. Trump is destroying the Obama economy

[karynnj]

4. The Bush/Clinton story is more complicated ... and shows Bush as more dishonest than this

In 2000, the dot.com bubble was already deflating. In earlier years, that bubble caused many people who bought stock in those companies saw their net worth - as seen in their stock portfolios - surge. This led to them spending more - lifting many sections of the economy. In addition, as they sold stock that had rapidly increased in value, they had big capital gains, that they were taxed on. That was why the deficit became a surplus years before the economic plans predicted.

Here is a wikipedia article that has a graph that shows this bubble. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com_bubble Note that it peaked in early 2000. (Consider how this impacted Al Gore running that year.) Before Bush entered office, it was clear that the economy was retreating. This meant that they KNEW that the surplus seen in the late 1990s was likely to disappear as people who bought later in the dot.com boom would not have the gains the earlier buyers had and many actually had loses when they sold.

With this as a backdrop, they pushed a tax cut bill - knowing it would return us to a deficit. Then they pushed a second tax cut bill (the estate tax one) on which they had 50 votes and Dick Cheney. In 2003, they had to fund the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The Democratic version of that tax bill, that Kerry and Biden pushed, would have rolled back some of the these tax cuts just for the top 2% that had not yet happened to pay for it. Bush indicated that that version would be vetoed. The bill that passed had no funding source, adding it directly to the deficit.

At the time, Paul Krugman noted that 2003 was the only instance of the country being in a major war AND lowering taxes at the same time. ( This was also the series of bills that were "too complicated" for our media to explain in 2004.) What is abundantly clear is that the ONLY time the Republicans care about the debt is when Democrats want to fund anything to help anyone.

[Igel]

8. The deficit was a given.

The downturn was sufficient.

The tax cuts were sufficient.

War spending was sufficient.

The flip side to your argument, equally valid, is that all those in 2001 claiming Bush II kept us from having the budget surplus we were expected to have in 2002 were also wrong. The projection was based on there being no downturn, but as was often pointed out *before* the election, all the indicators said recession. NBER formally declared (later) to have started something like 10 days after * took office. Before changes in policy, before legislation. And pretty much as expected before the election.

[apnu]

5. So much winning. Sick of it yet?

Seriously. This isn't something to be proud of. "Look ma! I broke the economy faster than W!"