H/T Weasel Zippers
Washington Times
written by Paul Bedard
Tuesday January 31, 2012
Most of the soaring $1 trillion federal deficit is the blame of President Obama's spending and political deals according to a pro-Obama think tank that pegged former President George W. Bush's responsibility at just 35 percent.
While opening its analysis by blaming Bush and showing pictures of Senate GOP leaders, the Center for American Progress said that the other 65 percent of the deficit surge came on Obama's watch, a combination of high spending, extension of the Bush tax cuts and additional defense spending.
"The analysis reveals that events that occurred before January 2009, including the onset of the Great Recession and increased spending—especially on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq—attributed to 35 percent of the swing from surplus to deficit," said the center founded by long-time Obama advisor John Podesta.
"The remainder of the deterioration did happen after 2009, but mostly because of lower-than-expected revenues. While some of the decline in revenue resulted from the continued economic weakness, the majority of it, about $335 billion, is the direct result of the tax deal signed into law in December 2010, which extended all of the Bush tax cuts," said the group.
While he was pushing the tax deal that December, Obama said that the cuts for middle-class Americans were being held hostage by GOP demands that reductions for high-earners be kept in, though he convinced his Democrats to OK the compromise by calling it a "good deal for the American people."
Still, CAP says the deficit is Bush's fault because of his tax cuts. The group, well-known for its authoritative reports, said that "together, events that occurred before January 2009 and the decline in tax revenues account for about 83 percent of the difference between what the 2012 deficit actually is and what it was expected to be five years ago."
No matter who is to blame, the deficit is unhealthy. The Feds in 2007 had predicted that the nation would enjoy a $170 billion surplus today, but then the bank crisis hit, the wars continued and Obama passed bailout and stimulus plans which he says saved the nation from a second Great Depression.
The author of the report, Michael Linden, explains that tax cuts are starving the nation.
"Tax cuts are far more to blame for our current deficit than any increases in spending,” he said. “And if we continue to pile up tax cuts on top of tax cuts, it will have the same effect in the coming decade as it did in the last one: huge deficits and a growing debt.”
In defending Obama, he added, "The narrative that an 'Obama spending spree' caused our deficit problem is utterly false."
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