Originally Posted By: BarrettM
Originally Posted By: Faithful1
Originally Posted By: Alfa Romeo
Originally Posted By: Faithful1
Actually the worst president in U.S. history is James Buchanan, the Democrat who preceded Abraham Lincoln. However, according to a Quinnipiac University survey, Barack Obama is the worst president since World War II.

Some civil libertarians used to rank George W. Bush as the one of the worst in that area, but by now most agree that Obama is far worse than Bush ever was. His use of drone strikes, using the IRS for political purposes, the many Justice Department abuses, using the NSA the monitor everything everyone does, unconstitutional executive orders and memos to override Congress, appeasing Iran while alienating Israel, supporting the overthrowing of Qaddafi in Libya that led to anarchy and ISIS taking it over (at least parts of it), the refusal to mention Islam or Muslims when talking about Islamic terrorism but instead an eagerness to bash Christians, bad decisions in Syria and Iraq that led to ISIS gaining control over much territory in both of those countries, failure to keep his promise to call the Armenian genocide a genocide instead of a massacre or atrocity, the taxpayer bailout of General Motors, sending weapons to the Mexican drug cartels, etc. Not to mention that under Obama the national debt has increased more that ALL PREVIOUS PRESIDENTS COMBINED -- and he hasn't even finished his second term!


Wow. I need to chime in to correct a detail in that post. Everything there is opinion and a person has a right to it. That is subjective stuff that we don't have all the facts on. The one thing there that is not a subjective opinion concerns the US debt.

The growth in the national debt since 2008 is largely because of Bush Jr, as per the Congressional Budget Office. The reason why is very simple.

Bush promulgated laws that perpetuated after he left office. Those laws had financial ramifications.

One was Medicare Part D. That is a blank cheque given from the federal government to pharmaceutical companies to write in whatever exobitant number they can think of for the federal government to pay for patient medications. That costed the taxpayer and the Treasury Trillions. It has not been repealed.

Another was the Trillion dollar tax cut for the rich. That took Trillions out of the tax revenue inflow, and blew a big hole in the annual budget. Big shortfalls. It has not been repealed.

And lastly, the two wars costing Trillions of dollars each to finance. Barack Obama and the Democrats were able to wind one down. But both still cost a lot. One could argue that the unnecessary cost was Iraq, not Afghanistan. That stuff adds up. It costs Trillions, and no, you can't stop a war by just inaugurating a new President. It doesn't work that way. So to say in CAPS, that "Owe-bama is the most financially irresponsible spendaholic from the beginning of time"....is not right and not fair. If we give any shit whatsoever about our country, we should at least take the outright lies off the table and have an honest discussion.


Interesting that you don't include a single Obama created expense. Nothing about the Affordable Care Act, nothing about his foreign interventions, nothing about anything. So evidently you believe that Obama has not added a cent to increase the national debt. Is that part of an honest discussion?


That's a strawman...he didn't say Obama hasn't added to the debt of course he has. I believe his argument is the continuation of Medicare Plan D is what's costing the country so much money. As for intervention, common sense dictates that two ground wars are more costly than a drone/airstrike program and overall he's cut the defense budget (which is a separate issue). Truthfully the trend shows government spending rising slightly since 2000, it's the nature of government to spend more and more. The question is what do you want our government to spend it on?


It's not a strawman since he wrote that Bush is largely responsible for growth of the national debt since he left office. Obama could have eliminated Medicare Part D and rolled it into the ACA during his first two years in office when the Democrats controlled the Senate, the House and the Presidency. When Medicare Part D was voted on in 2003 as part of the Medicare Modernization Act most Dems voted against it. Yet when they had the power to get rid of it they chose not to. Even when the GOP under Bush was trying to pass it, the more conservative Republicans and libertarians were against it as setting up another entitlement. If the Dems had tried to get rid of it during the 2009-2011 time period they would have had their support, but they chose not to. So when the majority of Dems voted against it in 2003, were they really voting against the act or against Bush? The fact that they didn't when they had the opportunity is telling. It's also telling that when they had a monopoly and could have passed a bill to bring down the national debt by removing a new entitlement they chose not to. That makes them not guiltless in being responsible for this part of the debt as some claim.