Presidential election, 2016

[David Horn]

(11-27-2016, 12:05 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: The stimulus spending that Obama actually did was as wasteful and counterproductive as anything Trump might be proposing.  Obama managed to delay the recovery by his entire two terms, keeping our growth rate well below trend.

But whatever you think of Obama's spending, it clearly took us beyond the Bush deficit, and clearly was not Trump's doing.  For Bob's statement to be correct, you'd have to believe that Trump could magically roll back all of Obama's deficit spending, returning the deficit to where it was at the end of the Bush administration, when it stood at half it's current level.  That's clearly ridiculous.

First, Obama never really got a stimulus going.  Most of the money was drained away for tax cuts or bailouts, the latter for entities nearly killed in the crash.  That the auto companies repaid theirs is inconsequential, since the repayment never made it into other stimulus spending.  Using the accounting from Business Insider, certainly not a Democrat-friendly entity, all the spending was offset by cuts at the state and local level or handed out as tax cuts except a grand total of $150 Billion spent on transportation projects.  Not much stimulus there, considering the size of the collapse.

Second, the fault for the still enduring economic mess we're in lies 100% at the feet of the House of Representatives, where all spending must originate and obfuscation has been the rule for 6 years.  You can be happy that the obfuscation occurred, but own the results.