President Bush Ruined the economy!!

I place most of the blame for the economy on President Bush and then the Congress.

Bush didn't do anything to control spending. Even with a Republican Congress for 6 years. He gave out 12 vetos vs Reagan 78 and Clinton 37. His first veto was in 2006 for stem cell research. He didn't lift a finger to control spending.

This is from 2004:

President George W. Bush is now on his way to becoming the first full-term president since John Quincy Adams (1825-1829) to not veto a single bill. The result is a congress that has been completely unconstrained in satiating its appetite for pork and corporate welfare. In response, Democratic challenger John Kerry has maligned alleged spending cuts and called for even higher taxes and spending. The consequence is that we now have two parties competing to see which can grow government faster.

It also says:

Since 2001, even with record low inflation, U.S. federal spending has increased by a massive 28.8% (19.7% in real dollars)—with non-defense discretionary growth of 35.7% (25.3% in real dollars)—the highest rate of federal government growth since the presidencies of Richard Nixon and Lyndon Johnson. This increase has resulted in the largest budget deficits in U.S. history, an estimated $520 billion in fiscal year 2004 alone.

www.independent.org...

This was in 2004 and his massive borrowing and spending has us in over 10 trillion dollars in debt in a 13 trillion dollar economy. It's like Bush looted the wealth of the country.

Tax breaks went upward and he didn't control spending. So you have unfunded mandates and massive debt.

This is what is hurting the economy. There has always been Wall Street greed and people buying things they can't afford.

When we switched to free trade and globalization, we moved from a producer based economy to a consumer based economy.

This meant we borrowed and consumed and that's actually a win-win situation. Governments hold are debt while we consume their goods.

When the debt gets too big we move to a debt based society because governments will not want to hold our debt if our debt starts to outweigh our consumption. This is why you need to control spending and you can do this with the veto pen.

Now we have to spend alot of money on infrastructure and alternative energy because we have to become producers again to pay off the debt.

Just imagine if the debt was 4 trillion dollars, we could handle a downturn in the housing market.

Sometimes I think Bush knew what he was doing. For some reason the powers that be want the collapse of the economy. Bush borrowed and spent and he grew government at the same time while making sure the tax code sent the money he was borrowing upward.

Here's some more:

George W. Bush, despite all his recent bravado about being an apostle of small government and budget-slashing, is the biggest spending president since Lyndon B. Johnson. In fact, he's arguably an even bigger spender than LBJ.

“He’s a big government guy,” said Stephen Slivinski, the director of budget studies at Cato Institute, a libertarian research group.

The numbers are clear, credible and conclusive, added David Keating, the executive director of the Club for Growth, a budget-watchdog group.

“He’s a big spender,” Keating said. “No question about it.”

Take almost any yardstick and Bush generally exceeds the spending of his predecessors.

When adjusted for inflation, discretionary spending — or budget items that Congress and the president can control, including defense and domestic programs, but not entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare — shot up at an average annual rate of 5.3 percent during Bush’s first six years, Slivinski calculates.

That tops the 4.6 percent annual rate Johnson logged during his 1963-69 presidency. By these standards, Ronald Reagan was a tightwad; discretionary spending grew by only 1.9 percent a year on his watch.
www.mcclatchydc.com...

Mod Edit: All Caps in Titles– Please Review This Link.

[edit on 11/30/2008 by Gools]

and yet this is how Bush see's himself

Bush wants history to see him as liberator of millions...

great article, quite enjoyed it

star/flag

yup ...but..that's like saying the sky is blue. i think everyone realizes that except for the hardcore neo-cons. it's going to be interesting to see however, how much obama is going to able to change. there are some very powerful forces that are going to push back against him screwing with the wealthy.

reply to post by jimmyx

Originally posted by semperfortis
So you are not blaming the Congress who sponsored, supported and passed the spending bills? You are just blaming the President for not vetoing them....?

Interesting

you are right about the "blame"...but it does tend to look like the republicans haven't done anything for the middle class and the poor for along time. i voted for bill clinton both times, but i was still p*ssed off about GATT and NAFTA. that screwed alot of hardworking americans out of their jobs, and i can never forgive him for that. i think any and i mean any company that fires amercian workers and then sends those exact same jobs off to foreign countries should be taxed heavily when any of those foreign made goods be brought back into the states to be sold. and "F" the companies that don't like it.

reply to post by Dodecahedral

I place most of the blame for the economy on President Bush and then the Congress.

Spending by itself is not the problem. Spending more than you bring in is the problem. However, having said the obvious, the economic crisis we have today stems from a sequence of actions, which were actually started by liberal Democrats, such as Obama:

Here was the first step:
isentinel.us...

n 1977, the Community Reinvestment Act was signed into law by President Jimmy Carter. This law requires financial institutions to offer credit, including home ownership opportunities, to under-served populations. Translated, the Community Reinvestment Act forced financial institutions to offer credit – mortgages – to unqualified borrowers. To add teeth to this law, provisions were included to punish financial institutions that did not embrace the horrific business practice of lending money to those unable to pay it back.

Because of the Community Reinvestment Act, any financial institution that wants to expand or merge – any financial institution that has earned the right to grow because of its utilization of good business practices – has to prove it has complied with the Community Reinvestment Act otherwise the growth move can be blocked through regulation set-up to enforce the law. ACORN, under the guise of affecting “affordable housing for the poor” routinely employs intimidation tactics (both physical and verbal), public charges of racism and threatens to use the Community Reinvestment Act to block business expansion. These actions have enabled ACORN to extract hundreds of millions of dollars in loans and “organizational contributions” (read: bribes) from America’s financial institutions.

Step 2:

Indisputably, the actions of ACORN, in their intimidation of financial institutions that make up the mortgage banking
industry, serve as the chief catalyst for the mortgage crisis and the financial meltdown we are experiencing today. By coercing the mortgage banking industry into lending to those who were unqualified to borrow, ACORN instigated the collapse of the housing market
and, as a result, is directly responsible for qualified borrowers – you and I – being unable to secure legitimate lines of credit today.

Step 3:

But how does this relate to Barack Obama?

Barack Obama’s Connection to ACORN

When a young Barack Obama was first starting in his career as a “community organizer,” he caught the eye of Madeleine Talbot, the Chicago chapter head of ACORN. Talbot was so impressed with Obama’s organizational skills in his effort to attain asbestos abatement at a low-income housing project that she invited Obama to help train her own staff in the art of community organizing.

In an article by Toni Foulkes, a Chicago Acorn leader and a member of Acorn’s National Association Board, published in Social Policy titled, Case Study: Chicago — The Barack Obama Campaign, Barack Obama is cited as being a key figure in ACORN’s yearly leadership-training seminars. Foulkes also exposes the fact that the much-touted Project Vote campaign which Obama takes credit for organizing was, in fact, in direct partnership with ACORN.

Barack Obama was retained to represent ACORN in a legal action regarding an Illinois law addressing what has come to be known as “motor-voter” voter registration. He was intentionally and specifically sought because of his days working with Madeleine Talbot.

After Obama officially left ACORN and began to craft his political career he tapped into his time at ACORN to field his volunteer staff. Having trained many of the ACORN leaders in Chicago there was a well-spring of enthusiasm for his candidacies throughout the organization, candidacies that include his 1996 congressional campaign, his 2000 State Senate campaign, his 2004 US Senate campaign and today’s 2008 presidential campaign. It should be noted here that Obama sought and received endorsements from ACORN’s political arms for his political contests.

A minimal effort into researching then Illinois State Senator Barack Obama’s pet projects reveals that on several occasions he introduced legislation complimentary to ACORN’s goals including legislation addressing the municipal living wage and the financial sector. And when Obama sat on the boards of the Woods Foundation and the Joyce Foundation he was afforded the wherewithal to direct grants to ACORN, which he did.

Finally, 2 plus 2 equals step 4:

Putting Two-and-Two Together

There are many, including HotAir.com’s Ed Morrissey, who will rightly point out that,

“It’s important not to get too carried away with the ACORN connection in the collapse. The real trigger came when Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac began buying up all of these loans and converting them into securities.”

But a gun doesn’t shoot without bullets and ACORN’s manipulation of the mortgage banking community in securing low-interest loans for unqualified borrowers manufactured the “bullets” that were shot by the gun owned by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Every crisis begins with a single act but most often that act remains hidden in the shadows of the crisis. It took years to uncover the mechanics of the September 11th, 2001 attacks yet we understood all those years of planning and training in a single moment. Hitler’s rise to power didn’t begin with his ascension to chancellor, it began in a Munich beer hall years before. And the movement that is incrementally facilitating the encroachment of socialist democratic ideology in the United States didn’t start in the 1960s, it started circa World War I.

In the case of the mortgage crisis and the subsequent financial meltdown that has caused hundred-point slides in the stock market in recent days, it started with training people – community activists and their coordinators – how to coerce financial organizations into employing bad business practices by providing loans to people who could never, ever pay them back.

Barack Obama trained Madeleine Talbot’s budding ACORN staff how to organize people to action. He returned yearly to provide yearly leadership-training seminars. And after ACORN employed the practice of coercing financial institution into providing low-interest loans to unqualified recipients Obama served as their legal counsel.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac may have acted as the mechanism for the initiation of today’s financial crisis, but ACORN and Barack Obama exist as the genesis, the single act that morphed into financial catastrophe for our country and, very likely, the world. To deny this elementary fact is to employ the math that got us into this mess.

reply to post by Dodecahedral


Actually, the economy was doomed to failure.

Have you ever heard of the Federal Reserve? Do you know how the FED came to be and how the FED works? The FED is the reason why our economy is failing.

Not the Bush Admin, they were just puppets.

Originally posted by semperfortis
So you are not blaming the Congress who sponsored, supported and passed the spending bills? You are just blaming the President for not vetoing them....?

Interesting

Yes, the Congress has some blame but Bush could have controlled spending with the veto pen.

Congress will always spend if you let them and that's why we give the President the power of the veto especially with his own party in charge of congress for 6 years.

Bush and the Congress need to explain why they borrowed and spent so much money.

Look at this:

President George W. Bush and the current administration have now borrowed more money from foreign governments and banks than the previous 42 U.S. presidents combined.

Throughout the first 224 years (1776-2000) of our nation’s history, 42 U.S. presidents borrowed a combined $1.01 trillion from foreign governments and financial institutions according to the U.S. Treasury Department. In the past four years alone (2001-2005), the Bush Administration has borrowed a staggering $1.05 trillion.

"The seriousness of this rapid and increasing financial vulnerability of our country can hardly be overstated,” said Rep. John Tanner (TN), a leader of the Blue Dog Coalition and member of the House Ways and Means Committee. “The financial mismanagement of our country by the Bush Administration should be of concern to all Americans, regardless of political persuasion.”

www.house.gov...

Bush has given us pre-emptive wars, economic collapse, massive borrowing and spending and now bailouts. This has been 8 years of DISASTER!!

reply to post by ProfEmeritus


Thank you for stating very historically correct facts and were the real problem arose.

It was every SOB in office after Ford that is responsible for this mess. It's not just the Presidents, but the members of the House and Congress. Bush maybe be somewhat stupid in some areas, but he alone could have possibly laid out the plans for this financial mess. He had help from the last 32 years that got us to this point.

reply to post by jimmyx

i voted for bill clinton both times, but i was still p*ssed off about GATT and NAFTA. that screwed alot of hardworking americans out of their jobs, and i can never forgive him for that

Therein, lies the problem. For those that think that Obama will really do anything to change NAFTA, let's look at his new administration, and those that were in the Senate when the vote was taken in 1993.

www.senate.gov...

Biden (D-DE), Yea Vice President
Daschle (D-SD), Yea- Secretary of Health and Human Services
Clinton, H -supported NAFTA- Secretary of State.
Gore, Al- potential enviromental Czar or UN amb.-was Clinton's VP
Richardson, Bill -commerce Secretary
-from his own website:
NAFTA critically important for US as well as Mexico. (Nov 2005)
source:www.ontheissues.org...

Of course, there is Obama himself:

he memo, written by a Canadian embassy official and leaked to the AP, claims that the campaign's top economic adviser Austan Goolsbee assured him that Obama's anti-NAFTA remarks "should not be taken out of context and should be viewed as more about political positioning than a clear articulation of policy plans."

Both parties are completely in bed with big business, and neither would do anything to lessen NAFTA. So much for change.

Originally posted by hinky
reply to post by ProfEmeritus

 

Thank you for stating very historically correct facts and were the real problem arose.

It was every SOB in office after Ford that is responsible for this mess. It's not just the Presidents, but the members of the House and Congress. Bush maybe be somewhat stupid in some areas, but he alone could have possibly laid out the plans for this financial mess. He had help from the last 32 years that got us to this point.

Nope,

This is Bush's fault.

We could handle any structural problems if the debt was under control.

Bush has given us a debt of 10 trillion plus and we have a 13 trillion dollar GDP.

This means are debt is starting to outweigh our consumption. Now we have to produce again because other countries will not hold are debt.

If Bush would have controlled spending and he didn't borrow and spend so much money, we can handle any structural problems.

There was no reason for Bush to borrow more money than 42 Presidents combined from foreign governments.

There was no reason for Bush not to control spending with the Veto pen.

I's like Bush borrowed our wealth and childrens wealth and gave out tax cuts. That was fine but he didn't control spending. So he borrowed our wealth, sent the wealth upwards through tax cuts and then grew government so for 8 years the government was not paying any bills just charging the credit card.

This is why states and governments are having trouble. There's unfunded mandates from Bush and Congress growing government. There's no money to pay for anything because our wealth has been borrowed against for the last 8 years.

reply to post by dalan.

Have you ever heard of the Federal Reserve? Do you know how the FED came to be and how the FED works? The FED is the reason why our economy is failing.

The Fed aided and abetted, but again, the ultimate cause was allowing people who COULD NOT AFFORD to pay back the loans, to receive them. Standards that HAD been in place to prevent such loans, were FORCED by the people I mentioned to be loosened or IGNORED, with severe penalties to any lender that FAILED to APPROVE SUCH LOANS.

The Fed SHOULD be eliminated. I agree;however the ultimate cause of our present world-wide financial crisis was the Housing crisis, and that was caused by the steps I mentioned above. This is not a partisan issue. These are the facts, and any honest economist will tell you that. There is plenty of blame to go around- the government, ACORN, the lenders, AND the buyers, who should have READ the mortgage contracts that they signed. You shouldn't make the purchase of your life without investigating the consequences, and the costs. Unfortunately, those 95% of us that did nothing wrong, and were responsible, are now stuck picking up the bill for the 5% that were responsible, and the crooked lenders and government officials walk away scott free. America, what a country!

reply to post by Dodecahedral

Nope,

This is Bush's fault.

We could handle any structural problems if the debt was under control.

Oh, please! Please take a course in ECON101, and then USGOV101, so you have an understanding of how debt works, and WHO votes on spending bills- hint- it ISN'T the President. I've laid out the facts; if you are going to dispute them, then the people on this thread deserve more than your opinion, because right now, your opinion has NO basis of fact. No one person caused this mess we are in, and any reasonable person, understands that.

reply to post by ProfEmeritus


I actually think NAFTA was fine, the problem is people didn't realize what this meant.

I thin your right about Clinton because the way they sold it was that jobs would be safe and this was a lie.

Cheap labor would send alot of jobs overseas and that was obvious. It's 12 dollars an hour and benefits vs. 3 dollars an hour and of course cheap labor will win out.

What this meant is that we moved from a producer based country to a conumer based country.

This was great because it meant we could borrow and consume as far as the eye could see because countries like China would hold our debt as long as we consume their goods.

This is why people were becoming entrepreneurs, making money off of real estate and moving to service related jos. We were living high off of the hog.

The government can't do all this massive government spending because we are not producing anything.

When the debt grows, we become a debt based country and we have to become producers again to dig our way out of this.

The Bush debt has ruined the economy and there should be a law that says the government can't go over a 7 trillion dollar debt without 85-90% of the House and Senate.

Since we switched to a consumer based economy the government has to control debt.

Originally posted by semperfortis
reply to post by jimmyx

 

Hard Core NeoCon is an Oxymoron

The term neoconservative was originally used as a criticism against liberals who had "moved to the right".[1][2] Michael Harrington, a democratic socialist, coined the usage of neoconservative in a 1973 Dissent magazine article concerning welfare policy.[3] According to E. J. Dionne, the nascent neoconservatives were driven by "the notion that liberalism" had failed and "no longer knew what it was talking about."[4]

Source

While the use of the term NeoCon is misused consistently by the Liberal Left, to do so here flies in the face of the ATS Motto..

This is the pot calling kettle black. The word 'Liberal' has become a verbal cosh since Nixon used it to attack his opponents. It's original meaning (and still it's current meaning outside the USA) is quote different to the US right-wing definition.

In any case, the generally widely accepted definition of NeoCon is as it is used in this thread, this forum and the world. i.e. A lunatic idealogue who invades country for profit under the pretext of 'freedom' *cough*.

On another note, wasn't Regan also a big spender? And now he wears a halo.

reply to post by ProfEmeritus


You don't know what your talking about.

You can't borrow and spend that much money. Bush borrowed more money in his first 4 years than 42 Presidents before him combined.

He gave out 12 Vetos vs Reagan 78 and Clinton 37.

This is how a President can control spending and set an agenda.

You don't know how government works if you don't know that.

Presidents can veto spending bills unless congress has a veto proof majority. This is Bush with a Congress controlled by Republicans for 6 years.

In a consumer based economy we can't have massive borrowing and spending because we will increase the debt.

It's just common sense.

A household doesn't buy up the store with a credit card and then spend through their savings because they will go bankrupt.

This is essentially what has happened over the last 8 years.

You don't know what your talking about. The things you mentioned could have been fixed if we had a 3 or 4 trillion dollar debt, not a 10+ trillion dollar debt with a 13 trillion dollar economy.

Where do you think that debt came from?? All of the borrowing from the FED perhaps? And if the FED wasn't loaning money with interest then I suppose there would be no problem...

Not Bush's fault, if anyone, blame Woodrow Wilson...


You don't know what you are talking about.

Congress can print our currency legally, AND INTEREST FREE!! What do you know, currency with no debts attached.



[edit on 11/28/2008 by dalan.]

[edit on 11/28/2008 by dalan.]

Completely agreed.

But isn't that the point of the FED? To get people who can't afford something to get a loan instead??



BUt then again, our officials, like you said, are allowing it to occur.

Even encouraging the lending and such...

[edit on 11/28/2008 by dalan.]