The GOP and the teabaggers created a scenario where President Obama takes the blame for the credit rating downgrade (and anything else that looks bad). He has been accused of overspending, among other things.
Let's take a trip down memory lane:
2009 (MSNBC)
The $3 trillion Bush's proposes spending in 2009 would be the first time that milestone has been reached. Bush also presided over the first budget to hit $2 trillion, in 2002. It took the government nearly 200 years to reach the first $1 trillion budget, which occurred in 1987 during the Reagan administration.
2009 (LA Times)
President Bush on Monday submitted a $3.1-trillion budget for the next fiscal year that reflected his strategy for dealing with a costly war and a troubled economy: substantially boost military expenditures, rein in domestic spending -- including for Medicare -- and more than double the deficit.
The proposal calls for making permanent Bush's 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, which have been widely criticized as skewed to the rich and which would begin expiring next year. Doing so would cost Washington more than a half-trillion dollars in forgone revenue over the next five years and more than $2 trillion over the next decade, but the president has argued that they play an important role in stimulating economic growth.
This video was posted yesterday, but it should be seen again, in the context of this post:
The first 5 years
Federal spending under the Bush administration has grown five times larger than that during the second term of the Clinton administration, charges a conservative Republican activist in a new book that paints the president as a traitor to his party.
In "Conservatives Betrayed," Richard Viguerie, credited with being one of the architects of the Reagan Revolution, says George W. Bush has set the stage for the punishment of his party by voters.
Viguerie compares spending by the federal government, adjusted for inflation, during the Clinton years vs. the Bush years. In Clinton's first term, federal expenditures rose 4.7 percent. In his second term, they rose 3.7 percent. In the first term of the Bush administration, however, spending rose 19.2 percent.
"During President Bush's first five years in office, the federal government increased by $616 billion," Viguerie writes. "That's a mammoth 33 percent jump in the size of the federal government in just his first five years! To put this in perspective, this increase of $616 billion is more than the entire federal budget in Jimmy Carter's last years in office. And conservatives were complaining about Big Government back then!
President Obama signed a stimulus package of $800 billion to counter the recession he inherited, preventing further job losses and to encourage the creation of new ones.
Obama was forced to increase the budget because of Bush's war expenditure, his largesse when it came to the rich and the mess that was passed down to him.
How is any president expected to keep recession at bay without spending or to balance the books when revenue haemorrhages through tax cuts for the wealthy? If these tax cuts were so important for stimulating economic growth, how come job creation under Bush looks so appalling?
President Obama managed to create more jobs than Bush, even in a recession. He's also having to fight the obstacles the GOP places ahead of him every step of the way.
The GOP, now aided by the teabaggers, is very good at shirking responsibility and misplacing blame. Bush was bad enough, but these clowns in Congress should win a medal for their dishonesty.
A special medal should go to "It's the spending, stupid!" Sarah Palin.
Immoral Minority has an excellent post, with further comparisons and information about the economy under Bush and other administrations.