As the Republicans present themselves as the party of fiscal responsibility, today is the anniversary of when the Bush administration started the ball rolling for the mess we are in today.

The amazing part of it is that they want to continue us on the path that got us into trouble in the first instance.

Are the Republicans really the party of fiscal responsibility or are they offering us the same recipe that caused the mess we are in today?

Some excerpts from the article below:

A somber anniversary

When President George W. Bush took office in 2001, he was handed quite the gift. The nation had been running a budget surplus, and there was talk that the federal government could be debt free by 2009.

But that wasn’t to be. Instead of using the money to pay down the deficit, Bush pushed for tax cuts, especially for the wealthy. A decade ago this past week, the first piece of the ignominious Bush tax cuts became law.

Unfortunately, Americans are paying a heavy price for the Bush administration’s economic policies in the form of tremendous debt. While Bush cut taxes, he and Republicans in Congress supported more federal spending.

The Republicans didn’t see fit to pay for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq — which have cost more than $1 trillion — or much of anything else. There was no plan to increase taxes or find other ways to free up federal money to pay for those efforts. As a result, the surplus vanished, the government was back to borrowing and the deficit skyrocketed.

Maya MacGuineas, president of the Center for a Responsible Federal Budget, told NPR that the federal surplus was “one of those ‘you can’t count your chickens before they’ve hatched’ moments.”

“You can’t cut taxes without cutting spending,” she says. “But what did we do? We cut taxes and we increased spending. So we left ourselves in a tremendous fiscal mess.”

The nation will be in a terrible financial situation for years to come if it doesn’t do something about the deficit. The Republicans have used the situation to try to further their narrow ideology and cut Social Security, Medicare and other federal programs.

The Republican leadership in Congress has laughably tried to make itself out to be fiscally responsible with its disingenuous and dangerous plans. They have even tried to blame Democrats and President Barack Obama for the nation’s economic woes, but they should look in the mirror. The GOP’s policies pushed the country into this mess.

Republicans have largely championed trickle-down economics, a theory that argues that tax breaks for the wealthy — like the Bush cuts — stimulate more investment. That is supposed to translate into more jobs and eventually more money in the average person’s pocket.

But it doesn’t work that way. The nation faced an economic downturn during Bush’s first term and it came out of it in the so-called “jobless recovery.” And his second term was marked by the Great Recession, which saw unemployment spike.

http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2011/jun/11/somber-anniversary/

I honestly think that the GOP did not cultivate a worthy candidate for the last Presidential election because they knew the forecast for the economy, & they knew that they could attempt to level the blame on the incumbent, whomever he was. And in that way, I believe they felt they could mold the thinking of Americans to believe that Republican policies are good for middle America. They created this economic disaster, & President Obama is the patsy they set up to take the blame for their fiscal irresponsibility. It pains me that many folks can't see through the wool of political spin to see the truth as it will be recorded in the history books. The Sarah Palin Show was, & continues to be, just a diversion to capture the public's attention. It's time that the real source of our economic woes was broadcast to the public as stridently as the GOP broadcasts their messages, & as often. The GOP supports the wealthiest of the wealthy, on the backs of the middle class, & the gap between these is widening exponentially. jackie harris

Take a look at exactly how much was spent each year of W's presidency, then look at who controlled the congress and senate for each of those years....... then lets talk some more........


That being said - W was not my candidate of choice, but was better then the inventor of the internet Gore.

Yes, Sitasmom, lets talk some more:

During all the years that Bush was president, how many spending bills did he veto?

Who started the war in Iraq because of WMDs, which did not exist - a totally made up reason to go to war? We are still trying to extricate ourselves from that war.

Who proposed the prescription program for Medicare - which as usual was not funded and added to the deficit?

Some facts:

The Republican party had majority control of the House and Senate from 2000-2006, In 2006 the Democrats gained a slim majority. When the vote in the Senate was tied 50-50, the VP could break the tie and vote in favor of the Republicans.

More facts:

When Jimmy Carter left office at the end of 1980,  the national debt was $930 billion – in other words from 1776 until 1980, a period of over 200 years, the total debt accumulated by various administrations was just over $900 billion!

In 1988 when Reagan left office, the national debt was $2.7 trillion – Reagan tripled the national debt in a span of 8 years

In 1992, when George HW Bush left office,
the national debt was about $4.2 trillion – an increase of $1.5 trillion in four years

In 2000 when Bill Clinton left office, the national debt was approximately $5.7 trillion – an increase of $1.5 trillion in eight years – heoffice with an actual SURPLUS for that year, reducing the national debt by over $100 billion compared to the prior year.

In 2008 when George W Bush left office, the national debt was $10.7 trillion – an increase of $5 trillion over 8 years and to make matters worse, he left office with the country in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and a budget for his successor that was going to result in a deficit in a single year of $1.6 trillion, including the bail out of the banks.

Hmm! Let me summarize this for you, SM:

Under Republican presidents, who held office for twenty of the thirty years after the Carter the national debt increased by $10 trillion – a TEN FOLD increase – compared to what they inherited from Carter!

Yes, SM, let's talk some more - but let's talk facts not the crap you pick up from your right-wing websites.

Politics is like driving......put it in "R" to go backwards and "D" to go forwards......

Nobody told SM there'd be math...and logic.

math and logic are a good way to shut some people up