Democratic deficits are dangerous - Republican deficits are harmless...

[kentuck]

Since Ronald Reagan, until the present, we have run up $13 trillion dollars in debt. The only President to balance the budget was the conservative Democrat, Bill Clinton.

When Reagan took office, the debt was less than $1 trillion dollars. When Bill Clinton left office, the debt was about $5.5 trillion. When George W Bush left office, the debt was about $11.2 trillion dollars. At present, it is about $14 trillion. Barack Obama has presided over about $3 trillion dollars of debt in less than 3 years.

Of course, the deficit is the cost of government programs minus the revenues coming into the government. The last deficit of George W Bush was about $1.2 trillion dollars. Barack Obama has not been able to make a dent in that inherited deficit. Why?

This is the point where Republicans and Tea Partiers stop thinking. It does not compute. To them, Barack Obama is a reckless, big-spending, dangerous liberal.

There was no economic collapse. The stock market did not sink like a rock. People did not lose trillions of dollars in the stock market. Everything was just fine until Barack Obama came along.

There was no need to spend money on a stimulus. Never mind that we were losing jobs at a rate of 750,000 per month! Never mind that no one was investing. Never mind that the brightest economists, conservative and liberal, agreed that the economy was freezing up rapidly and needed a stimulus. Republicans and Tea Partiers do not buy that argument.

The economy and the stock market should have been left alone. The invisible hand of the market would have worked. We would be in a much better place today if Barack Obama had not interferred with the marketplace. The automobile companies should have been permitted to go under. That is what the Tea Party believes. Bet the farm. Put all the money on the table. Little Jo from Kokomo. Baby needs a new pair of shoes. Roll the dice!

.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

1. When Chimp left office it was higher.

Obama put it on the books.

[upi402]

2. Repukes make the mess, and Dems clean it up

to the chorus of Republicans yowling like scalded cats that we don't clean up after them right.

aaargh!

[kentuck]

4. I think it is safe to say..

...that if Barack Obama had been left a $260 billion dollar surplus, as was George W Bush, that we would not be running these huge deficits at this time. No one could start with a deficit of $1.2 trillion dollars and with an economy going off the cliff and the stock market sinking like a rock, and then balance the budget in 2 or 3 years. No one. No one!

[upi402]

7. You're right, I sure don't envy Obama's job

And don't say I could do better - if full information would change my thinking. From what I know, I would have done things very differently in the 1st 100 days honeymoon especially.

Certainly Obama is not batshit crazy like BushCo was.

[KittyWampus]

3. IOIYAR

[CrossChris]

5. For thirty years their talking heads beat up on liberals, and we didn't do enough.

Now, all the pieces are about to fall like dominos. Just based on this contrived hatred of the group of people who wants to keep billionaires from gutting the country.

[damntexdem]

6. GOP deficits are primarily mental.

And their other harmful deficits follow from that: fiscal deficits, moral deficits, compassion deficits, common sense deficits, civic deficits, and so on and on.

[get the red out]

8. GOP Deficits tend to blow up

As new and more powerful ways to kill people in the Pentagon budget and over foreign countries in the form of war.

[On the Road]

9. The Shameless About-Faces are Absolutely Appalling

I can't see how any of these critics can do this with a straight face.

There is a debt issue, but by blocking tax increases and military cuts, the Republicans are preventing the only avenue for actually dealing with it.