WashPost Lets Tim Kaine Claim Bush Years Had 'Massive Deficits' -- Compared to Obama's?
Washington Post reporter Ben Pershing dropped a very bizarre sentence into his Virginia election roundup on the front page of Wednesday's Metro section. Sen. George Allen won the right to attempt and regain his seat against former Gov. Tim Kaine, and Kaine "quickly made clear how he would run against Allen in their head-to-head matchup." I simply could not believe the audacity of what followed.
“Voters already had the chance to experience George Allen’s vision during his last term in the Senate, which turned record surpluses into massive deficits, added trillions to our debt, and put opportunity for a select few ahead of opportunity for all our businesses and families,” Kaine said in a statement Tuesday night. “George Allen’s approach helped create our economic mess; Virginians can’t afford six more years.”
Let's try a little quick math from the White House charts: the average deficit of the first six Bush years (fiscal 2002 to fiscal 2007) averages out to about $279 billion a year. That is not an exemplary record, and conservatives were unhappy with it. It simply did not add up to "trillions" -- it never approached two trillion dollars.
But the average deficit since then – from fiscal 2008 to fiscal 2012, since Jim Webb beat Allen and Kaine became chairman of the Democratic Party under Obama – the annual deficit averages out to roughly $1.115 trillion a year. How can Kaine possibly say "we can't afford to return" to the Allen era? As a matter of public debt, it was clearly a more rational time.
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Comments
What? No mention
Submitted by Tugboat Phil on Wed, 06/13/2012 - 11:29pm.
of the Virginia deficits that Kaine and Mark Warner left for current Gov. Bob McDonnell?
As a Virginian, I find it bizarre that former Governor . . .
Submitted by Galvanic on Thu, 06/14/2012 - 2:25pm.
. . . Tim Kaine is going to open his fiscal spending record to scrutiny and comparison with Allen's. Kaine's deficit spending was horrendous. Were it not for the fact that our governors can only serve a single term, I'm certain that Kaine would've been slaughtered in a re-election bid.
But like any other Americans, we're susceptible to memory lapses at election time. The Arlington district keeps re-electing the corrupt Democrat Jom Moran to the House of Representatives. While I'm not a big fan of George Allen, he's much more preferrable than Kaine.
The most powerfull man in the world!
Submitted by CobraMan on Wed, 06/13/2012 - 11:53pm.
"Voters already had the chance to experience George Allen’s vision during his last term in the Senate, which turned record surpluses into massive deficits, added trillions to our debt, and put opportunity for a select few ahead of opportunity for all our businesses and families"
One Senator did all of that, eh? He must be the most powerful man in the word! I think he should run for President! He single-handily ran the entire Legislative branch of the Government! Imagine what he could accomplish as President!
By the way, what were the other Senators 99 doing all of that time, sleeping? And what about the House? Were all 435 Representatives asleep too? It must have been the Rumpelstiltskin Congress for those six years. Thank God Allen was there to cover the slack!
The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States. The US Constitution
Unless you're a fetus. The US Supreme Court
Or Anwar al-Awlaki.
They might as well sleep they
Submitted by bmacdmac on Thu, 06/14/2012 - 2:15am.
They might as well sleep they do little but spend money that doesn't belong to them.
Yep
Submitted by Galvanic on Thu, 06/14/2012 - 2:27pm.
No need to awaken Uncle Pork -- he'll just spend borrow more money against the children's college fund.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on. I
Submitted by MrSnuggles on Thu, 06/14/2012 - 12:36am.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on. I thought the government HAD to spent trillions upon trillions in order to help the middle class and keep grandma and the orphans from starving in the streets. Is spending good when the left does it but bad when the right does it?
Hope&Change Math VS Reality
Submitted by NotUrAverageJoe on Thu, 06/14/2012 - 1:57am.
-290.3 Clinton Budget deficit (1992)
-255.1 Clinton Budget deficit (1993)
-203.2 Clinton Budget deficit (1994)
-164.0 Clinton Budget deficit (1995)
-107.4 Clinton Budget deficit (1996)
-21.9 Clinton Budget deficit (1997)
69.3 Clinton Budget Surplus (1998)
125.6 Clinton Budget Surplus (1999)
236.2 Clinton Budget Surplus (2000)
128.2 Bush Budget Surplus (2001)
-157.8 Bush Budget deficit (2002)
-377.6 Bush Budget deficit (2003)
-412.7 Bush Budget deficit (2004)
-318.3 Bush Budget deficit (2005)
-248.2 Bush Budget deficit (2006)
-160.7 Bush Budget deficit (2007)
-458.6 Bush Budget deficit (2008)
-1,412.7 Obama Budget deficit (2009)
-1,293.5 Obama Budget deficit (2010)
-1,299.6 Obama Budget deficit (2011)
So far, Bush total budget deficit during his 8 years minus the interest on the debt is $2.1334 trillion. Obama's budget deficit in 3 years, minus interest on the debt is $4 trillion. It is the hope and spin of the media and the Obama Administration that the truth is useless versus a made up story about how much better and responsible Obama is over Bush.
Gov. Kaine is a lying idiot. Who's to correct the record?
Submitted by Gary Hall on Thu, 06/14/2012 - 1:58am.
Gov Tim Kaine: “Voters already had the chance to experience George Allen’s vision during his last term in the Senate, which turned record surpluses into massive deficits.
What turned the surpluses to deficits (2001-2003) was the economic fallout from the collapse of the dot.com bubble in March, 2000.
No economist would argue with that, if anyone would bother to ask them.
In late 2002, I bothered to ask progressive [socialist] economist Dean Baker, CEPR, what the major cause of the quick change of fortunes was; the Bush tax cuts, or the fallout from the bubble collapse. Baker was quick to respond that :
this was the "far bigger cause of the return of deficits than the Bush tax cuts."
Do the math folks. The shift in fortunes- the shift from projected surpluses to realized deficits - from 2001 through 2003 was $1.3 Trillion. The static cost of the Bush tax cuts were a mere fraction of that, the Iraq war costs were $54 billion, and it would have been hardly different if Al Gore would have been elected president - perhaps much worse.
It was an "inheritance," as Obama is prone to say.
(;~/ gary
kaine
Submitted by grammajane on Thu, 06/14/2012 - 2:22am.
was no show governor in va. to busy campaigning for obama. big spender did zero for the folks. why isn't he the dnc chairman anymore? obviously can't even hold that job and got replaced by wasserman schultz.wow, bad to worse
November 7, 2012
Submitted by gopcongress on Thu, 06/14/2012 - 2:39am.
November 7, 2012, is going to be the biggest day of reckoning in mainstream media and cable news history. Other than Fox News, the incredible disbelief that will be experienced by hundreds of disillusioned, self-loathing news personnel as they view a GOP-controlled Senate, a conservative GOP-controlled House, and a GOP president, along with more statehouses controlled by conservatives will be incredibly delicious to see.
"The news and truth are not the same thing." -Walter Lippmann (1889-1974) FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER
George Allen??!!
Submitted by Norto on Thu, 06/14/2012 - 8:36am.
What a nice surprise to see his name back in the running. Let's make sure the msm does not sully him again. He was poised to go 2 full terms. I am still not sure why his support collapsed so easliy.
Interesting there was virtually no coverage of his reentry.
Norto
Submitted by Tugboat Phil on Thu, 06/14/2012 - 8:47am.
We have two states here in Virginia. There's the northern Virginia suburbs of D.C. which is the fastest growing part of the state. The largest percentage of those folks are either liberal staffers that have moved here from other states, or "beltway bandits" dependent on the gubmint teat.
Allen uttered the word "macaca" to a Jim Webb campaign "follower" that had trailed him out to far southwest Virginia. Within a couple of days a Wikipedia entry was made to define the word. It was later uncovered that the authors of the definition were paid Democrat bloggers from the Richmond area.
Washington Post, the daily rag for northern Virginia, ran stories for just about every day that tied the word to Allen and all but accused him of being a Klansman. Webb ran the most awful campaign ever, but with the backing of WaPo and the later piling on of the national leftist media, Allen was sunk.
Despite all that, the race was a statistical dead heat and Webb won by less than 10k votes.
We are definitely two States
Submitted by misterbee241 on Thu, 06/14/2012 - 10:27am.
We are definitely two States Tugboat. The People's Republic of Northern Virginia and the rest of us.
I heard Kain's comment
Submitted by HelenS on Thu, 06/14/2012 - 8:55am.
I heard Kain's comment played on one of the morning news shows I was half watching earlier this week.
I almost choked on my coffee!
And the same thing happened, or rather DIDN'T happen: no one called him out on it. Just acted as if it was the way it was and not worthy of comment or correction.
I'm almost used to the nausea but this was way over the top.
Me - "The libs/dems of today are the Quislings of former years - the cowards who would vote a fraud into office in exchange for handouts from the devil."
George Allen
Submitted by misterbee241 on Thu, 06/14/2012 - 10:24am.
Will be running against Kaine for the Virginia Senate seat. It will be fun to watch the WaPo trot out the old macaca tapes to try to defeat Allen again.