factcheck, on obama and his 'deficit dodge'.
http://factcheck.org/2012/09/obamas-deficit-dodge/
some excerpts:
'President Obama is falsely claiming that his administration’s policies are responsible for “about 10 percent” of the deficits “over the last four years.” The cumulative deficit during that time is nearly $5.2 trillion. Obama signed two bills — the 2009 stimulus and the 2010 tax cut — that alone cost $1.6 trillion during that time, or nearly a third of the cumulative four-year deficit
Obama’s response leaves the false impression that President George W. Bush and the 2008 recession are responsible for a whopping 90 percent of the deficits in the last four years.
It’s true that Obama “inherited the biggest deficit in our history,” as he said on CBS. By the time Obama took office in January 2009, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office had already estimated that increased spending and decreased revenues would result in a $1.2 trillion deficit for fiscal year 2009, which began Oct. 1, 2008. In a detailed analysis of fiscal year 2009, we found that Obama was responsible for adding at most $203 billion to the deficit, which in the end topped $1.4 trillion that year.
But that was just the first of four years of trillion-plus deficits.
The last three budgets fall squarely under Obama. And, during that time, the federal government ran up deficits of $1.3 trillion in 2010, $1.3 trillion in 2011, and about $1.2 trillion in the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30 — for a total of nearly $5.2 trillion in deficit spending.'
---------oh, and the 'unfunded
bush war'??:
'The
Obama administration was authorized to spend $160 billion in 2010 (Table 1-4, “Defense-war related”)
and $159 billion in 2011 (Table 4, “Overseas contingency operations”) on the two wars — each more than the $140 billion that was authorized in 2009, which was Bush’s last budget. Obama significantly increased troop levels in Afghanistan in both years.
CBO says budget authority for the Afghanistan war jumped from $38 billion in 2009 to $87 billion in 2010 and $98 billion in 2011.
Obama requested $115 billion for both wars in 2012. The cost from 2010 to 2012 is more than $400 billion, excluding interest.
But Obama bears more responsibility than he is willing to accept, and misrepresents the Treasury analysis to minimize his responsibility.'