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Quite a fiscal legacy

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By one count, the president has publicly vowed to “solve problems, not pass them on to future presidents and future generations” upwards of 400 times.

As the clock starts to run out on Bush’s presidency, we know, of course, that the opposite is true. Global warming, the war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, a weak economy … not only is Bush passing monumental problems onto his successor, he’s created new ones that didn’t exist when he got there.

This is especially true when it comes to the federal budget. Bush inherited the largest surplus ever recorded ($128 billion), but his fiscal legacy is a painful one.

The White House on Monday predicted a record deficit of $490 billion for the 2009 budget year, a senior government official told CNN.

The deficit would amount to roughly 3.5 percent of the nation’s $14 trillion economy.

The official pointed to a faltering economy and the bipartisan $170 billion stimulus package that passed earlier this year for the record deficit.

Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) said Bush “will be remembered as the most fiscally irresponsible president in our nation’s history,” adding, “If they gave out Olympic medals for fiscal irresponsibility, President Bush would take the gold, silver and bronze. With his eight years in office, he will have had the five highest deficits ever recorded. And the highest of those deficits is now projected to come in 2009, as he leaves office.”

Wait, it gets worse.

USA Today added:

Curbing the deficit will fall to Bush’s successor and the next Congress following a time when taxes were cut and major spending initiatives were undertaken, including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, transportation projects, farm subsidies, Medicare prescription drug coverage and a recently passed expansion of veterans’ education benefits.

The actual 2009 deficit could climb still higher because the new projection does not reflect full funding for the wars. In addition, a worsening economy could add to the red ink by reducing tax revenue and increasing safety-net payments, such as jobless benefits and food stamps.

To be fair, the deficit, while approaching a half-trillion dollars — that’s “trillion,” with a “t” — isn’t entirely a record-setting shortfall. In terms of deficits as a percentage of GDP, Reagan’s deficits were worse. What’s more, we’ve had worse deficits when adjusted for inflation.

But Bush’s record is nevertheless a humiliating one. The president took office supporting a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution, and assuring voters that he would keep the federal government in the black.

Instead, when all is said and done, Bush will have added $2 trillion to the national debt, and will be the first and only president to ever cut taxes during a war, effectively putting major military conflicts on the national charge card.

It’s not a legacy to be proud of.

Comments

  • kanopsis

    says:

    It’s not a legacy to be proud of.

    Yet somehow I’m sure they will find a way to try and spin it into a positive…

  • DB

    says:

    As soon as his title changes to President Obama, the republicans will be decrying his(Obama’s) enormous deficit that he has brought on the country. We may even hear this before Feb 2009. Just watch.

  • zeitgeist

    says:

    I said in an earlier thread that now is the time for Hagel to endorse Obama to slam McCain on the injured troops issue; similarly today would be a great day for Bill Clinton to kick off a national tour critiquing the Republican Economy. Many of these MSM stories today have (to my pleasant surprise) noted that Bush took office with a $128B surplus; this makes it a perfect vehicle for the Big Dog to bark a bit about (a) how he set Bush up well and Bush screwed it all up; (b) the idea that tax cuts are always a bad thing is easily disproven nonsense; (c) Democrats, not Republicans, are truly the party of fiscal responsibility and the old meme to the contrary should be retired pronto and (d) McCain would simply be more of Bush, and maybe worse, and before voting McCain folks really need to ask themselves “was I better off economically – was I paying less for necessities, was my job more secure, was my retirement fund gorwing more – on the last day of the Democratic Clinton administration or on the last day of this Republican administration?”

  • citizen_pain

    says:

    Heckuva Job, Georgie!

    Seriously though, if you look at all the accomplishments of the Bu$h presidency, it reads like a Christmas wish list from the likes of Norquist and the rest of the government haters.

    So, was Bu$h a failure, or a success?

  • FreeProton

    says:

    Mark my words, come oh I dunno, May of 2009 you’ll see a book hit the shelves entitled “My Legacy” or somesuch by Junior himself (or whatever ghostwriter he employs, probably someone who can write in complete sentences and use long words) wherein all the failures and crimes of his administration are re-spun as triumphs of “market economy”, “compassionate conservatism” and “muscular foreign policy”. In twenty more years, you will have some Republican nut on a crusade to rename anything in every state after George W. Bush (a sewage processing plant in California, perhaps?). Ten years later, you’ll have the RNC clamoring for Bush’s leering face on a ten-dollar bill.

    Hopefully by then the Republicans will be relegated to the status of a minor party, never getting their candidate into an election, and considered a bunch of damn fools by the majority of the American public. A man may dream.

  • BuzzMon

    says:

    Paraphrasing W:
    History will look back and see that tax cuts work – for money grubbing leeches like me, my family, Dick, Rupert, and all of my base, “the haves & have mores.”
    What other Americans own these debts, eh?

  • TomB

    says:

    A quick short list of Bush “successes”

    Bush reduced taxes for corporations.
    Bush reduced troublesome regulations for corporations.
    Bush is trying very hard to return the Iraqi oil fields to private oil companies.
    Bush did not let environmental concerns get in the way of corporate gain.
    Bush helped vastly wealthy capitalist vastly increase their wealth.
    Bush “fixed” the courts and justice system so that they will work with instead of against Republicand and corporate interests.
    Bush “liberated” the working and middle class from annoying government assistance and other civic programs.
    Bush “empowered” citizens struck by disasters by making FEMA impotent thus forcing the victims to fend for themselves.

  • Dennis_D

    says:

    2000 Republican Platform:

    Since 1994, with Republicans leading the House and Senate, spending has been held to an annual 3.1 percent rate of growth, and the nation’s debt will be nearly $400 billion lower by the end of this year. The federal government has operated in the black for the last two years and is now projected to run a surplus of nearly $5 trillion over ten years.

    That wasn’t magic. It took honesty and guts from a Congress that manages the nation’s purse strings. Over a five year period, as surpluses continue to grow, we will return half a trillion dollars to the taxpayers who really own it, without touching the Social Security surplus. That’s what we mean by our Lock-Box: The Social Security surplus is off-limits, off budget, and will not be touched. We will not stop there, for we are also determined to protect Medicare and to pay down the national debt. Reducing that debt is both a sound policy goal and a moral imperative. Our families and most states are required to balance their budgets; it is reasonable to assume the federal government should do the same. Therefore, we reaffirm our support for a constitutional amendment to require a balanced budget.

  • Racer X

    says:

    citizen_pain is right.

    This was probably according to plan.

    They got billions in tax breaks for a bunch of rich people who will pay them back, and the deficits they created will force reductions in benefits because there won’t be any other way to get things back in balance. Oil profits are now sky-high because of the wars they put on our kids’ credit cards.

    Mission accomplished.

  • CJ

    says:

    Bush will have added $2 trillion to the national debt,…

    Make that $4 trillion.

    The national debt was at about $5.6 trillion and rapidly shrinking when Bush took office and is now around $9.5 trillion and rapidly growing.

    The Soviet Union was the last superpower to go bankrupt. We may very well be the next. Seriously.

  • zeitgeist

    says:

    an excerpt from the speech I want to hear President Obama give within his first 100 days: [start wavy dream-sequence intro here]

    “When my predecessor took office from President Clinton, he was given a budget with a $128 billion surplus. As soon as we came into office I asked my team to determine what the Bush Administration left behind and it turns out the his final budget ran a deficit of nearly $500 billion. In eight years, the Republican administraiton not only squandered the largest surplus in history, they ran another half-trillion dollars in the red. That deficit costs millions of dollars in interest payments, it stands in the way of things this country needs to do, and it is simply irresponsible. It should be insulting to the majority of Americans who make ends meet regardless of how hard they have to struggle at it. It should be insulting to those who have suffered foreclosures and job losses during the Bush administration that the government can have a negative balance in its checkbook and get away with it. It should offend all of the parents out there when the government shrugs its shoulders and suggests that your children and grandchildren can pay off that $500 billion.

    But you know, not all Americans shared equally in the Bush economy. While the deficits grew, while the value of homes and pension funds fell, a few people did pretty well. The top 1% accumulated more of the nation’s wealth than at any time since 1929, the economic free-for-all that lead to the Great Depression. And to top it all off, they got tax break after tax break. While most Americans had to cut back on vacations and worried about their jobs, sales of yachts, for example, actually increased. Now, I didn’t buy a yacht and neither did anyone I met out campaigning. And if the millions of Americans I met on the campaign trial and their kids didn’t cause this $500 billion defecit, and didn’t benefit from this $500 billion defecit, why should they have to bear the burden of this $500 billion defecit? It seems to me the fairest thing to do is for the people who made the most profit under the Bush economy to pay the bills for the Bush economy. And so today I announce that I am rolling back all of the tax cuts of the past eight years for those individuals making over $250,000 per year, and I will restore the top tax rate to what it was under President Clinton, when our economy was much stronger and we had a budget surplus, and leave it there until we again have a budget surplus — and it will apply to the income of hedge fund managers, too, just like it applies to steelworkers, teachers, police officers, data-entry clerks, and all of the rest of us.”

  • SadOldVet

    says:

    Thanks CJ…

    As mentally blunted as we have become, due to the continuous stream of lies from the Bush Criminal Enterprise, the Bush admins numbers have never added up. The corporate media proclaim the Bushite numbers, but the truth is in the math.

    Working Americans continue to pay much more INTO Social Security THAN IS PAID OUT. There have been valid reasons to do so. Under Bush, the fed government returned to spending that overpayment. The increase in federal debt under bush has exceeded $4 Trillion and does NOT include the ongoing spending of Social Security OVERPAYMENTS for which the government writes IOUs that republicans promise to NOT honor.

    The ‘true’ deficit spending under Bush has probably been closer to $6 Trillion…

  • gg

    says:

    “It’s not a legacy to be proud of.”

    Not a problem! Bush’s sociopathic tendencies ensure he won’t lose a night’s sleep over it.

  • jackaroe

    says:

    Let us not forget that the President submits the budgets to Congress, but Congress must pass them. GWB does not have sole responsibility for the deficits and the debt, members of Congress the past eight years need to be blamed as well. Do not let them off for their contributions to our fiscal mess.

  • William

    says:

    That’s what you get when “Jesus” is in the oval office! Thank god the republicans saved us from gay marriage though, huh?!! Whew! Did I forget to say 9/11?

  • howard

    says:

    i don’t have the time to look up the precise amount, but please note that this is the unified budget deficit, not the general fund deficit, which is masked by the social security trust fund surplus (it’s around $200B iirc).

    when you strip it down to the general fund deficit, in comparison to gdp size, you get pretty close to reagan levels.

  • howard

    says:

    i see that sadoldvet and i are on the same track here, me from 1 year’s perspective and him from the bush years in general….

  • neilt

    says:

    A couple of things popped into my head when I read about this:

    1) This can’t be good news for ol’ Johnny Boy, he better start ramping up the “Obama is a secret muslim terrorist who wants to eat your puppies” rhetoric.

    (well either that or Affirmative Action) 😉

    2) Just to put it a bit of perspective – The national DEBT of Canada is $409 billion (which is decreasing as we generally run surplus budgets since 1995 or so). I know, I know, it’s not a fair comparison, but still…that’s a pretty big disparity amongst neighbours no?

    3) Why is it that rightwing douchebag governments get elected on “running a tight ship” and yet ALWAYS leave the ship in FAR WORSE condition than when they found it?

    Dirty Liars, all of them.

  • Mark D

    says:

    The Soviet Union was the last superpower to go bankrupt. We may very well be the next. Seriously.

    I don’t think that will happen. I’ve been saying for a while now that what will bring our country to its end isn’t bankruptcy ala the Soviet Union, nor some sort of invasion.

    China and/or India will simply buy us into irrelevance.

    Once China’s middle class reaches the billion person mark, and India’s hits half a billion, we’re toast. There will be no reason to cater to America’s buying and production power because it won’t have any. We’ll be reduced to an afterthought.

    Think about it: Pretty much all we’ll have left is our military, and even that won’t be enough.

    Just brightens up a person’s day …

  • abby0802

    says:

    Bush’s administration is the worst we have ever had.

    lies, distortion, corruption, illegal hiring in the justice department, torture, secret prisons, a war for oil for Bush and Cheney’s oil buddies and Bush’s own ego, Cheney holding secret energy meetings with his oil buddies, foreclosures, job losses, rising prices for everything
    with tax cuts for the rich and powerful and corporations

    I’d list more, but I’d have carpal tunnel syndrome

    McCain would just be more of the same —-

    GOP = greed, oil, prevarication

    Anyone who votes for McCain is like a chicken voting for the coyote to keep it safe…………

  • citizen_pain

    says:

    Jackaroe @18: Let’s not foget Republicans had the majority in Congress from ’94 through ’06. The rubber stamp congress? Remember that one?

  • libra

    says:

    Mark D, @23,

    Sometimes, I too, imagine us going out with a splutter instead of a bang…

    I can just see us, down the road a bit, not only unable to borrow any more money from China but unable to even service the existing debts. At which point, a delegation of Chinese leaders will show up, like a bunch of bailiffs before a foreclosure and just say: we’ll take this (the Great Lakes) and this (a couple of mountain ranges) and that (some good agricultural land) for your overdue interest payments. And we’ll take the rest for the debt itself. And you have until the next month to move out, because we’re tired of having to squeeze where we are and being allowed only one fuck per marriage; we need more room to be fruitful and multiply.

  • mishanti

    says:

    Didn’t Bush 1 leave Clinton with a mess when he left office? It seems these guys only know how to screw things up and it will ALL be BLAMED on the Dems and Obama.

  • Chris S

    says:

    Bush has certainly sunk the GOP. Unfortunately I doubt that the Democrats will take this opportunity to act responsibly and earn some respect for the party. Democrats are just as beholden to special interest groups as the Republicans.

    With farm prices at record levels, this is the perfect time to pull the plug on massive US crop subsidies. The $307 billion pork-laden 2008 Farm Bill is a good example of where the Democrats COULD have shown some leadership. Only two Democratic senators voted against it. Instead they fell over themselves to pass a that is packed with pork and special interests spending.

    I’m happy to see the end of the Bush-regime but am not optimistic that the Democrats will do any better.

  • J

    says:

    Clinton didn’t exactly leave a surplus, and he saved a lot of money weakening our military, most notably our fine Navy.

    CNN will never report this… and I don’t expect you liberals to ever understand or appreciate it.

  • J

    says:

    “Bush’s administration is the worst we have ever had.

    lies, distortion, corruption, illegal hiring in the justice department, torture, secret prisons, a war for oil for Bush and Cheney’s oil buddies and Bush’s own ego, Cheney holding secret energy meetings with his oil buddies, foreclosures, job losses, rising prices for everything
    with tax cuts for the rich and powerful and corporations”

    Sounds like someone’s been watching too much Comedy Central.

    Get a clue, lady.

  • J

    says:

    “Working Americans continue to pay much more INTO Social Security THAN IS PAID OUT. There have been valid reasons to do so.”

    Social Security should not even exist… and is, to date, the biggest scam in American history.

  • zeitgeist

    says:

    if by “scam” you mean “successful at cutting what had been a more than 50% poverty rate among senior citizens to a rate consistent with the general population” or perhaps “a beneficial and necessary protection against employers making pension promises they later fail to keep,” then absolutely it is the biggest scam ever.

  • Dubya

    says:

    You people are easily fooled. Keep waving your flags with patriotic spirit while Dick and I continue to pillage everything we can get our hands on. You degenerates won’t figure out how much we’ve fleeced you until we’ve left office and find our new homes in balmy Dubai. You see, we’ve worked things out with that government to make sure we can never be extradited. The first clue of such an arrangement was provided when we moved the corporate headquarters of Halliburton there. Sure, I’m a bit disappointed that I’ll have to visit my library “virtually” for fear of being arrested for treason, but that’s a small price to pay for the accomplishments we’ve enjoyed.

    As dumb as you think I am, it’s telling that you sheep can’t see just how much the global aristocracy plays the general public through me and my fellow “world leaders.” Here’s a hint: This war we wage on you commoners isn’t about money. It’s about power. We have all the money we want. We use the tools of credit and firearms simply to widen the gap between you and us, while destroying the middle class and small business owners in the process. You never really deserved the lifestyle you were leading and we’re here to right the wrongs brought about by the industrial revolution. Whoever actually is fooled by the idea of upward social mobility is clearly not well versed in the ways of social order. Democracy is a fallacy that we continue to lead you to believe in.

    The best part is that since society brushes off such conspiracy theories through our subtle ways of suggestion, you will chose to believe that this was created by some random poster, rather than your chosen leader.

    Thank you for not listening…you may now go back to the mindless fodder as seen on your new flat-panel TV where we subtlety tell you what to think (shouts to Rupert)

    Insincerely,

    George W Bush

  • 2Manchu

    says:

    “…and he saved a lot of money weakening our military, most notably our fine Navy.”

    Uh, no, the person who established the precedence for a reduction in defense spending and the number of personnel was the Secretary of Defense for President George H.W. Bush.

    You might have heard of him: Dick Cheney.
    http://www.defenselink.mil/specials/secdef_histories/bios/cheney.htm

    And yes, this included the US Navy. A navy that was geared towards going toe-to-toe with the Soviet Navy, a threat which was greatly reduced after 1991.

    And just out of curiosity, how has the United States Navy faired over the past seven years? Are they a better force now than in 2001?

    Or how about the US military on a whole for that matter?

  • waker of sleepers

    says:

    Complain. Do nothing. Repeat. This is the mantra of someone trapped in the matrix of control & illusion. Writing on weblogs is NOT the same as doing something. Complain. Do nothing and Repeat.

    According to the rules of propaganda & control, writing on weblogs is a “simulation of participation” designed to dissipate (and, nullify) the disturbing sense of cognitive dissonance created by a system of control, e.g., Dem./Rep. duality and replace it with a sense of internal justification which does not deviate from the guidelines – i.e., the propagandee “feels” that writing on weblogs is “helping out” because the propagandee is prohibited from “acting out” in any way which contradicts the prevailing orthodoxy. The propagandee thus never approaches the decision to act or not act, for actualization is never his responsibility.

  • howard

    says:

    the fabulous J is wrong in every regard: clinton did leave a surplus; he didn’t “weaken” our military; social security is an excellent program that works exactly as intended.

    i worry less about our schools than i do about the fact that we are producing so many little propaganda robots like J….

  • dwight meredith

    says:

    “Instead, when all is said and done, Bush will have added $2 trillion to the national debt…”

    That is incorrect. On January 20, 2001, the national debt was $5.7 trillion. Today it is $9.54 trillion. The difference is $3.8 trillion.

    When the last Clinton Budget expired, September 30, 2001, the national debt was $5.8 trillion. When Bush leaves office, it will exceed $10 trillion. Bush’s stewardship will have resulted in the accumulation of more than $4 trillion in debt, an average of over half a trillion dolars per year.

  • Samson

    says:

    The shock and awe factor of Bush’s fiscal policy is defeated when we understand the foundations of his ideology. Bush is like the last and most pampered child of a very a specific elite which has ruled this country since WWII. I’m not trying to allude to conspiracy theories but the simple truth, one spoken about by Mills in his book The Power Elite. Bush uses liberal rhetoric (free market, freedom, democracy etc.) but he fails to adhere to the actions of any ideology. He simply decides, and because there is no guiding philosophy to his words, he frequently contradicts himself. Bush’s discourse is disconnected with reality in a time when reality is forcing itself down everyone else’s throats. He is conservative so he cuts taxes, but he’s an evangelical patriot so he declares war in the middle east. To the majority these things are harmful, but for the power elite they are beneficial. To us it seems incoherent and illogical, but to the corporate rich both actions have the same consequence, to make them richer. To Bush and his peers he has done a fantastic job.
    To call Bush a failure is to completely ignore what he would consider success. In the end his legacy will be exalted because the corporate rich, the military, and the conservative politician, who might loose their power to a regulatory “for the people” president (if Obama turns out to be that), will use their massive power in the media and influence in politics to exalt Bush’s actions, as was done with Regan, as was done with all our presidents.

  • Bill

    says:

    The amazing thing about all of this is the fact that George W. Bush did not change. What in the world were people thinking when they re-elected this guy?
    If people would simply think instead of allowing themselves to be so “dedicated”?? to a party, we wouldn’t be in this mess. George W. Bush is without a doubt the worst president this country ever had, but he was not the total problem. It was those who voted to elect & re-elect him,the ones who were so apathetic and didn’t vote and let’s not forget his placement in office by the Supreme Court. How can anyone think that you can cut income (taxes) and spend as he did over the past 8 years without going into the hole? Now along comes McCain who has told everyone that he is not going to change a thing and here we go again falling in line behind someone with “experience”, and who is going to keep us safe. I agree with one of the others who stated that if a democrat is elected, everything will be placed squarely on his shoulders. (Heck, when Bush came into office, he advised that we were in a recession). Gosh, I so long for the bad old days under Clinton when we were in a recession and the lies he told that were serious enough for impeachment proceedings. I don’t think I can stand anymore of the good old days we had under Bush or will have under his experienced candidate for his replacement if “placed” in office or elected. Isn’t it just great???

  • Glen

    says:

    We’re damn close to DOUBLING our national debt in eight short years:

    09/30/2007 9,007,653,372,262.48
    09/30/2006 8,506,973,899,215.23
    09/30/2005 7,932,709,661,723.50
    09/30/2004 7,379,052,696,330.32
    09/30/2003 6,783,231,062,743.62
    09/30/2002 6,228,235,965,597.16
    09/30/2001 5,807,463,412,200.06
    09/30/2000 5,674,178,209,886.86

    Those of you voting Republican that are not mega rich (no, not you with the reams of debt and nothing to show for it) – well, the Repubs have a name for you:

    SUCKERS

  • Dale

    says:

    waker of sleepers said:

    Complain. Do nothing. Repeat.

    Wake up waker, you;re writing this on a blog. Waker is a wanker.

  • Dale

    says:

    zeitgeist said:

    An excerpt from the speech I want to hear President Obama give within his first 100 days: [start wavy dream-sequence intro here]

    Nice speech. I’ll play too. The first 9 words I’d like to hear from President Obama would be “George Bush and Dick Cheney you are under arrest.”