Congressional Budget Office Confirms We Have a Revenue Problem Not a Spending Problem
Tax cuts, wars, recessions and spending are the primary culprits in the current U.S. budget deficit mess, analyses of Congressional Budget Office data show.Radical right-wing Republicans have been engaged in an all out message war to convince the American public that it is out of control spending that is the problem. The problem is the spending they did without rising revenue to pay for it and on top of that crashing the economy. You cannot solve a problem if you cannot identify what the true problem is. There was no reason for America to trust conservative voodoo economics ten years ago, there is even less reason to trust Republican voodoo economics now.
The Washington Post reported Sunday the United States went from projected annual surpluses in January 2001 that the CBO said would have wiped out the nation's debt within several years to owing more than $14 trillion with trillions more on the horizon because of choices made by both Republican and Democratic political leaders.
The Post said while polls show most Americans blame wasteful federal programs for the red ink, routine bumps in defense and domestic spending account for only about 15 percent of the problem.
Two recessions torpedoed the stream of income tax revenues that had the government on solid footing. The combination of tax cuts under President George W. Bush and President Obama and recessionary losses totaled about $6.3 trillion in revenues that never appeared, the review of CBO data shows.
Bush administration spending decisions added 12 percent and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan piled on $1.3 trillion, the Post said.
The addition of a prescription drug benefit for Medicare recipients under Bush added another $272 billion while Obama's economic stimulus contributed $719 billion, or 6 percent of the total shift, the analysis of CBO data by the non-profit Pew Fiscal Analysis Initiative found.
A separate Washington Post analysis of CBO information found the Obama administration policies added a total of $1.7 trillion. Bush-era policies account for more than $7 trillion, the Post review found.
President Bill Clinton's treasury secretary, Robert Rubin, told the Post the best idea for the surplus would have been a reinforcement of Social Security, but the idea of reducing taxes was very appealing.
"The problem was a whole other part of the political spectrum wanted to use the surplus for tax cuts," Rubin said. "They said they wanted to give the people back their money. Of course, it was also the people's debt."
Fox News’ Bret Baier Helps Divert Credit For Bin Laden’s Death Away From Obama To George W. Bush
Bret Baier hosted a lengthy special report on the death of Osama Bin Laden late last night/this morning in which he seemed to be doing his best to make sure that President Barack Obama didn’t get too much credit for doing what President George W. Bush had failed to do: hunting down and killing Bin Laden. First, Baier offered no challenge as Bush’s former chief of staff, Andy Card, repeatedly suggested that Obama owed at least part of his success to Bush’s efforts. Then, while talking to a Democrat, Baier said, “Obviously, this is a bi-partisan win.”President Obama, who approved the plan as Commander-in-chief, to kill Bin Laden was gracious enough to give Bush some credit. Why he always feels the need to reach out to radical right-wingers is a mystery. President Obama's attempts at bi-partisanship will never be paid back in kind.
Predictably, Card offered faint praise to Obama for the accomplishment. Card said we owe a great debt of gratitude to our military and intelligence community. He added, “I also really praise the resolve that President Bush had and also the resolve that President Obama demonstrated.”
Would that be the same resolve President Bush demonstrated when he said in 2002, “I truly am not that concerned about (Bin Laden)?” The L.A. Times reported,
"I was concerned about him when he had taken over a country," Bush continued. "I was concerned about the fact that he was basically running Afghanistan and calling the shots for the Taliban. But once we set out the policy and started executing the plan, he became -- we shoved him out more and more on the margins. He has no place to train his Al Qaeda killers anymore."
Or how about Bush saying in 2006 that capturing Bin Laden is “not a top priority use of American resources?”
