Too often recently, we hear suggestions that this President and the Republican party have fallen prey to the sort of carefree spending for which Democrats have always been known.

Republicans shouldn't acknowledge and/or admit to reckless deficit spending under GWB in an unqualified manner as though he were a careless and unnecessarily big spender.

In so doing they overlook four major expenditures which were made that were unique during this President's tenure in office:

1. 9/11

2. Hurricane Katrina

3. Iraq & Afghanistan

4. Implementation of our domestic security/homeland protection program

Previous Administrations did not have to fund such budget busters and let's hope that similar emergencies don't arise in the future.

These expenditures were not made carelessly or frivolously but out of necessity in a responsible, statesmanlike fashion.

Also, let's not ever forget that Congress drafted the legislation required and sent it to the Oval Office for signature and approval.

Conservatives, in particular, should make it a point to vigorously defend the expenditures rather than capitulating to baseless and ill founded attacks from the media and other left wing mouthpieces.

the budget and spending should be a line item veto tool for the President. Those who pay taxes are the only ones who benifit.

well we can not do that, so, let's drop all income taxes and flat tax a sales tax. everyone pays. wow what a concept. The President can cut away the pork, and each carrys the load. I like it.

GWB will be blamed for everything BHO fumbles. GWB must write the book and tell all.

 allow me to Love America

While it's unfair for the AP to pick and choose budget items to criticize, the fact is, spending has been out of control the past eight years.  I personally like GWB, but he has done little or nothing that could be construed as fiscal responsibility.  Whether or not the extra expense went to military action and security at home is of little bearing.  If those things are so critical, then we must make other budget sacrifices or we simply dig ourselves a bigger financial hole.

So long as the deficit increases at such an alarming rate, then someone is dropping the ball in Washington.

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Hunting down the RINOs at: http://www.rinosafari.com

Pretty soon, the MSM will have to move away from blaming Bush for everything. What date do you predict Obama will come responsible for his administration? My guess is somewhere around 2016.

Election 2008-God's way of showing us that elections count.  

The left is well aware of the facts on the return to budget deficits - they have simply decided (again) that revisionist history, and the MSM, are one.

Dean Baker, CEPR, is a much respected, by the MSM, left of liberal economist. The MSM (I note, the LA Times and those like Bill Moyers) go to him often in their effort to support their socialist agenda. In fact he's so far left that he has been more than willing for going on 10 years now to call a duck a duck, even when the duck was a Democrat - such as:

"The level of negligence of the nation's political leaders [Clinton era] in ignoring the stock bubble exceeds anything since the days of Herbert Hoover."

Noel noted the hit the budget took from the capital gains tax revenue which dissappeared from the federal budget. While, from the beginning, the MSM was looking to blame it all on Bush it was well understood how the many moving parts had been severely damaged by the economic crash in the last years of the Clinton era. In response to a query from your's truly, Dean Baker explained the obvious (my bold):

Dear Gary,

At its peak in February of 2000, the value of all corporate equities, including privately traded shares was a bit over $17 trillion (this data comes from the Federal Reserve Board). Assuming that that market fell by 50 percent at its July lows, this implies a loss of $8.5 trillion. I believe the lower numbers that are often cited refer to either a shorter time stretch or a more narrow measure of stocks.

As far as the second question, the budget projections for 2002 assumed about $120 billion in capital gains tax revenue. We don't have the final numbers yet, but my guess is we probably will see something closer to $20-30 billion. There were also substantial revenue losses at the state level, especially California.

This, along with the fallout from the recession, has been a far bigger cause of the return of deficits than the Bush tax cuts. These cuts raised the deficit by about $30-$40 billion in both 2001 and 2002. You're right that this part of the tax cut was put in at the insistence of the Democrats.

To my mind, it was a good policy. The tax cuts have helped to maintain demand through the down turn. The economy would have been worse off without them. I would not say the same about the rest of the tax cuts.

I hope these comments are helpful.

regards,

Dean

They're still helpful, Dean. 

I might add, there was also a big hit from corporate tax revenue, which fell from $207 billion in 2000, to $132 billion by 2003.

What's more startling is that the Clinton administration, in it's predictions of coroporate profits had missed for 8 straight quarters prior to 2001, missing each subsequent quarter by a larger number - finally coming up short by 43% for the 3rd quarter of 2000. The economy had been shrinking for two years before Bush took his seat. The economy would take off, following full implementation of the Bush tax cuts in 2003 - with federal tax revenue soaring some 44% from 2003-2007.

(;~> gary

Bush thought he would spend and the libs would like him. Movie night with Teddy, it didn't move'em, Teddy still dislikes Bush. All the compromises that spent money and increased the deficit, dems still tried to defeat Bush, they weren't going to comprise.

What's needed is a budget freeze, cuts where they can be made. An across the board tax cut, everything; business, personal, cap gains, etc.

If that doesn't work, Marshal Law, let the military run things. I would feel less threatened by generals than Obama and the Move-On crowd.

You can't be serious!!!!!

I remember quite well the fiasco that President Reagan inherited from Smilin' Jimmy. It took a while to straighten it out but the MSM bashed and downgraded the Reagan and Bush economy right up to election day in late 91. The day after Clinton won his first term the MSM declared the economy was great and gave Clinton the credit.

After that Clinton rode the economy into the ground with his tax increases and Pres. Bush had to start over. Pres. Bush will be blamed for everything that goes wrong for the complete four years of Hussein"s reign. The tax increases and strangulation regulations of the democrats will be ignored.

To quote Jimmy Neutron, "Hang on it"s going to be a bumpy ride".

It's kinda like pissing in the wind, ain't it?

I haven't decided whether these idiots in the press convolute the economy on purpose, or whether they just don't get it. A little of both I think.

On the face of it, I can see why liberals would hold to the creed that lower taxes means less revenue. It would seem to make perfect sense, until you realize that higher taxes stagnate the economy. Much like a city, if the economy ain't growing, it's dying.

We can bring up the micro points of the economy, and explain the cause and effect of such until the cows come home, but the public at large will end up with eyes glazed over. The MSM know this, and ignores these points. Part of the conservative stragegy in the long run must be true economics classes, taught by honest economists, as early as junior high. We are churning out less than competent people when it comes to the basic "3 R's". When it comes to economics, we are letting loose utterly defenseless people out into the world.

"This
liberal would be all about socialize -- uh, uh, would be about
basically taking over and the government running all of your companies."-Maxine Waters 2008

To the liberal, entitlements are necessary, cannot be touched, and are actually so expected and so great that they're automatic in the budget, so just toss them aside as a topic and start at zero, and only talk about things above zero.  To the liberal, entitlements in the budget are similar to having $500 in your checking account that's unmentioned, so when your account shows $0, you really have $500, but that $500 is purposefully forgotten about.

Defense of our nation?........Baaaaaaaaah, optional, don't really need that nonsense.  Killing the budget.  Constitution?  What's that?

From 2004-2007 the deficit was shrinking each year and was on track to show a balanced budget by 2009 if the trend continued, yet for some reason the Media has failed to talk about this.