Originally Posted By: Alfa Romeo
Quote:
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?


Faith, I purposely left Obama out because I didn't want my reply to take on the flavor of "my president has a bigger dick than your president". But I'll address each point you mentioned as best I can...

The Affordable Care Act was originally forecasted to lower deficits for the foreseeable future. Now the Congressional Budget Office is saying that there have been so many delays in implementing it, and that the law has become so complex, that it's not possible at this time to say whether it will have a net positive or net negative effect on the annual budget.

Wars. The Obama administration, as well as the majority of the left and middle in politics, approves of American intervention in Afghanistan against terroristic elements. Therefore the costs of waging war in Afghanistan was and is considered to be a necessity.

TARP? The worldwide depression that was taking shape at the beginning of Obama's term in office needed drastic intervention. Right away the Obama administration bailed out the banks and automakers. The economy was in free fall when Obama took the reigns. I remember reading about thousands of layoffs per month. It is said that in late 2008, hundreds of thousands of people were being laid off....per month. If we listen to the rabid punditry, the lay offs stopped on their own and the Obama administration had nothing to do with it.

Why were the automakers bailed out? Because the big three automakers were said to represent about 3 million jobs. I remember it being said very precisely that if all three folded, 3 million jobs would be gone. Those probably represented auto industry jobs, as well as all of the jobs in the local economies where the automakers were headquartered and entrenched.

The bailouts costed money. Did the bailouts add to the deficit and debt, yeah probably. Were they necessary? Everyone involved in the decision making process across two presidential administrations seems to think so.


Alfa, I don't defend Bush as a president when he did the wrong thing. I agree with you that he shouldn't have created Medicare Part D and also agree that we shouldn't have gone into Iraq. (That doesn't mean that we shouldn't have intervened in Iraq, but we could have intervened in other ways.)

Oldschool3 already addressed the ACA. I'll just add that Obama and other Democrats flat out lied to the American people to help pass it, especially with that "You can keep your doctor" line. It also has increased costs for those who have to purchase their own insurance, waiting times have increased, more doctors are quitting, etc. California's version of Obamacare is on it's way to becoming a total failure. Worst of all, it's unconstitutional despite Justice Roberts calling it a tax. It forces people to purchase something or pay a huge fine. Everyone ought to read Judge Roger Vinson's 2011 ruling that unfortunately Justice Roberts ignored.

Agree with you on intervening in Afghanistan, but think it could have been fought better under the president and that our military is often hamstrung by politics which ends up with more American (and allied Afghan) deaths.

The bailout of AIG was probably necessary, but should have had more controls. However, laws in place prevented additional controls and AIG gave out huge bonuses that should never have happened.

The TARP bank bailout is debatable and I'm not sure what the best solution was here.

The bailout of the Detroit auto makers is another story. It mostly went to GM and, as Oldschool3 wrote, Ford stayed out of it. He's right that it bailed out the unions. Without the bailout GM would have had to go to bankruptcy court and the unions would have been forced to take cuts, and another auto maker would have bought them out. Hmm... Fiat comes to mind (Fiat bough Chrysler in 2009 after it went BK -- despite accepting bailout money). That was totally unnecessary and taxpayers are on the hook for $9.26 billion to over $11 billion, depending on the source. Another source says it actually comes to over $16 billion.