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Comment by Vivtek | Hacker News Reader

Astounding. Where was this alarmism while the Republicans were spending money in the Middle East like drunken sailors and we were in the last recession?

Oh - sorry. Military spending is always OK. My bad.

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Two wrongs don't make a right here, but if there's going to be a coming crisis, it's going to be a bipartisan crisis that both parties are very much responsible for. I think you'd find that most Americans - Democrats, Independents and Republicans are unhappy with how much was spent under Bush, but by the same token, I don't think it's unreasonable to note that the deficit under the Obama administration last year alone was $1.074 trillion dollars while the Bush administrations had an average annual budget deficit of about $104 billion per year.

Let me repeat and rephrase given how stunning it is - the Obama administration's deficit last year alone was greater than all the deficits combined under the Bush Administration including all the war spending. I think it's fair to argue that last year was unusual but deficits are also projected to remain high for the forseeable future and the Obama administration has additional significant spending programs in the years beyond his current proposed modest spending freeze.

EDIT - I erred - I used an average of 104 billion under the Bush administration when it was an average of 104 billion under the 12 years of the Republican controlled budgets which extends into Clinton's last administration. However the data including, I believe, war expenditures can be found here (excel file): http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/108xx/doc10871/Historicaltables20...

I don't understand your numbers in relation to what Wikipedia has to say on the issue. How does your number relate to these? If at all?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt

2001 $144.5 billion 1.4%

2002 $409.5 billion 3.9%

2003 $589.0 billion 5.5%

2004 $605.0 billion 5.3%

2005 $523.0 billion 4.3%

2006 $536.5 billion 4.1%

2007 $459.5 billion 3.4%

2008 $1017.0 billion (proj.) 7.4%

I think it's a shame we let Pay As You Go expire in 2002. It seemed to be working pretty well to keep spending under control.

I made a mistake. It's an average of 12 years - where Republicans controlled the budget when they controlled the House - data from CBO here: http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/108xx/doc10871/Historicaltables20...

That said, the numbers are still gargantuan in terms of the increase. If I'm not mistaken though, the CBO numbers include the war numbers.

I think a better compromise would have been to allow for a line item veto which would have also also helped to greatly keep spending under control.

For a more explicit graphic have a look here: http://instapundit.com/79840/ - a comparative of deficits under the Bush administration and what's being currently projected by the CBO/White House.

I agree on the line item veto. Deficit spending is so institutionalized at this point that we need real legislative checks & balances on spending. For the last ~30 years both parties have done it. The only point of contention is which party does it more. As long as it remains a political issue I don't see a good solution. For Pay As You Go I like the idea that you simply cannot spend this money. You can go back to your home district and tell the people you didn't vote for X, Y, Z because it was illegal to overspend. The system we have now makes spending too much of a political tool. We can't trust them to use it wisely.

Indeed,

Despite all the ideological noise, one might actually find a tremendous amount of commonality in policy between the administrations.

It's worth noting also that a good portion of the Obama debit has involved making good the implicit guarantees which the Bush administration issued on Fannie etc debt.

I'm not in favor of this but it wasn't cooked up by the democrats out of whole cloth - it merely continued the direction things were already going in.

Our current wars are actually heavily funded through emergency spending bills, which are off-budget and not included in deficit calculations.

Edit: Also, the 2009 deficit of $1.2 trillion was announced on Jan 7, 2009, two weeks before Obama took office. http://money.cnn.com/2009/01/07/news/economy/cbo_2009_budget...

The people need to stop believing the Democrats and Republicans are on different teams. They are on the same team -- the powerful elite.

Do not hesitate to believe that the wars are good for both parties. Only one congressman voted against the war and he is a republican.

I previously pointed out that people did object to Bush's deficits.

Now I'll show that Obama's deficits are significantly larger.

Bush's worst deficit, less than $500 B was in 08, and that includes the bailout. From 04 to 07 Bush's deficits, including the war, were decreasing.

Obama predicts a 2010 deficit of 1.6T. He claims that it will drop to 1.3T in 2011, but that relies on economic recovery that he's consistently overestimated.

Here's a report on Obama's recent predictions - http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE60U1PZ20100201 .

Here's the historical data (on debt, not deficit). http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/histdebt/histd...

And here's an graph which compares Obama's plans and CBO predictions to Bush's "accomplishments". This graph is outdated and actually understates what we've learned since about the Obama deficits.

http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/files/2009/04/obamadebt....

> Astounding. Where was this alarmism while the Republicans were spending money in the Middle East like drunken sailors and we were in the last recession?

It is interesting to see someone use the "Bush did it, so it's okay" defense. (If it wasn't okay when Bush did it, then bring up Bush isn't an argument.)

However, even the snark is wrong because there was alarmism and criticism from the right and left. See for example http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9WKimKIyUQ&feature=playe... which, according to http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/jan/24/super-bowl-ads-c... was produced by moveon.org for the 04 superbowl (cbs declined to run it).

What? Moveon.org isn't complaining this time?

I don't know about Moveon. But Evan Bayh, my Senator, is suddenly all about the fiscal discipline this year. I never heard from him earlier. So I am really pissed at the selectivity of the fiscal discipline mavens, because I personally would rather have functional health care for my family than be outspending the rest of the world on war.

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