Politics
Out of context: Reply #8782
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- ukit0
Just a point about that graph on the last page.
For all the hatred that Carter gets, at least he left the office with nearly the same deficit as when he came in, a comparatively measley 40 billion. It was Reagan who really cracked open the piggybank in the 1980s by cutting taxes and raising spending at the same time.
Now you are right that the numbers don't lie (although in the case of projections they could obviously be wrong - better or worse), but think for a sec what Obama personally could have done in the six months he's been President to really snowball the national debt on his own? He hasn't had time to pass more than a couple programs.
A big part of that deficit is just the result of sharply lowered revenues due to a mild recession at the beginning of the decade, and a horrific one at the end, combined with a huge amount of tax cuts and spending by Bush. Obama's proposals if I remember right count towards less than 10% of this year's deficit. That's not to say I don't blame him, actually I think the Democrats are stupid for not trying harder to at least act like they care about spending. But if you think the answer is to turn around and elect a Republican, no matter what they say about cutting spending, the track record speaks for itself. About 75% of the entire debt (not yearly deficit) held by the U.S. was accumulated under Presidents named Reagans and Bush.