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I disagree. The "big" spending chunk for economic recovery is TARP, that was debited against Bush (TARP is a Bush program).



And, most of the TARP money has been paid back after the Bush years were over. So, that works against his record as it is in strict year-by-year accounting also.

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Most of the deficit spending was entirely Obama's choice to not try to match spending to revenues.



At Cato, I saw an interesting blog post whose bias that Obama's deficit problems are largely Bush's fault. But, what JRV said here is exactly what I left that post thinking about. Source: Click.

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The surplus was illusory, entirely the result of the Bubble-fueled tax receipts. There was never any chance it could be sustained for long as the first recession that came along would put an end to it ... which is exactly what happened a couple of months after Bush jr took office.



Exactly. People complain of short memories...

It is so completely annoying how Democrats entirely forget about the dot com bubble (that as we know now was hiding a real estate bubble) during the Clinton years. All their hub-bub about how great Clinton was because of the economy is 95% based on the dot com bubble. But, they never mention the internet.

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How anyone can be outraged at Obama is beyond me, at least at this point...


Were you unemployed and unable to pay bills I think you'd completely understand why Brown was elected. Obama's sole priority has been the health-care bill:



More, non hyped since it's post-election, information is coming out of Massachusetts. From the reports, it seems to me like a lot of the angst was based on the cosmetic process issues surrounding health care reform. Nebraska getting the corn-husker deal. The new Louisiana Purchase. Big pharma cutting a deal with Obama so we can't import drugs from other countries where they're cheaper. Unions getting their exemption from the excise tax on cadillac health care plans.

But, the whole time I've been watching that bill, the cosmetic issues have always seemed like symptons of more serious problems. With better legislation, people don't have as much room to bitch how they should get a bunch of money thrown in their pocket to support it. Because it wasn't great legislation, everyone lined up in opposition to it and back room deals were handed out in order to garner support.

I don't think the masses in Massachusetts have an understanding of the economics behind that health care reform bill. I had to dig a lot to get what understanding I've managed to come to. Most people don't do that. But, when these problems bubble up and have consequences that even the average Joe can understand without having to look into anything, then you have a problem. It's like how Palin was such a mistake. She had no time to prepare to run for the presidency and because of that she made mistakes that were so obvious, every housewife could tell they were fuck-ups.

A professional politician should not be making mistakes that any moron who sees a headline flash across the screen can tell is just plain stupid.

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in nearly everything else - wars, domestic spying, economy - he's been content to carry over Bush jr era policies and programs.



In economic policy he did differ quite a bit with the stimulus bill. A Republican president would never structure economic stimulus such that the federal govt gets to arbitrarily cherry pick projects various private project they are going to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on. It reeks of the potential for corruption. Then, we get back the numbers of to what good the money was spent on and the numbers are complete bullshit. Things like some small town spent $40K on a lawn mower and it saved 5 jobs...

A Republican would just have done an entire across the board tax cut so the people could decide where the money gets spent.