RCP: Obama's Hard Choices for Other People

[DixieFlatline]

Two thoughts in answer in this.

2) Might I point out that after every single Republican Administration we've had over the last 30 years we've landed in a recession and in economic distress?

It's not just Republican administrations. Add Carter and Clinton to that list.

[Madison Redskin]

Yes, he intentionally sent the economy down the toilet. :doh:

[zoony]

I was giving this article a chance, until this paragraph

Obama could have shelved his expensive healthcare reform in these tough economic times, focused on real job creation, and tried again in a second term, on the back of a recovery. Instead, he used a variety of accounting tricks to make his healthcare reform look affordable and used the brute power of the presidency to push it through. He's currently scolding private insurance companies for hiking their premiums to account for greater risk – risk caused by his reforms.

what a craptastic piece of writing.

[Madison Redskin]

Does anyone else find it disturbing that many people appear to get their "news" from op-ed pieces posted on the net?

[Ax]

And as an example of how partisanship will attempt to punish politicians for doing What Needs To Be Done, I present the above example of the application of spin to "Obama attempts to slow the growth of Medicare/Medicaid".

Thanks?

BTW, the ONLY way to slow the growth of Medicare/Medicaid, is to start killing people before they qualify for it

Is that what you're saying this President is doing?

[zoony]

Does anyone else find it disturbing that many people appear to get their "news" from op-ed pieces posted on the net?

absolutely. We all should be concerned, really.

The dumb are getting dumber.

[Madison Redskin]

absolutely. We all should be concerned, really.

The dumb are getting dumber.

I wonder when fast food restaurants are going to start selling pre-digested food. Digesting food, like thinking, is hard.

[Burgold]

It's not just Republican administrations. Add Carter and Clinton to that list.

Sure, if you want to be all fair about it, but when responding to a one-sided post etiquette demands that you respond using only one sided arguments. Don't want to gang up on the guy your debating with after all.

Actually, I don't think the economy was in a recession or entering one following Clinton. The tech bubble burst which sucked, but I thought the overall economy was still doing well. It may have been slowing a bit... I can't really remember to be honest.

[DixieFlatline]

Sure, if you want to be all fair about it, but when responding to a one-sided post etiquette demands that you respond using only one sided arguments. Don't want to gang up on the guy your debating with after all.

Actually, I don't think the economy was in a recession or entering one following Clinton. The tech bubble burst which sucked, but I thought the overall economy was still doing well. It may have been slowing a bit... I can't really remember to be honest.

I wasn't too sure either, so I checked. The first 3 quarters of 2001 were negative GDP growth.

[Baculus]

Click Link for rest of Article.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/07/07/obamas_hard_choices_for_other_people_106220.html

While it may seem like Obama is trying to have it both ways, I am not sure if I agree with the some of the article's content. Take, for example, the section where the author said, "Democrats structured the stimulus bill to help prop up public employee unions and Obama continues to plead for more stimulus." This may be true in RCP land, but not in reality. As an example of this fact, more than a hundred Republican lawmakers who voted against the stimulus have taken credit for programs funded by it.

http://thinkprogress.org/touting-recovery-opposed/

Regarding Democratic efforts to stop the economic bleeding, the following graph demonstrates that it took less time to recover from the period of job losses, which started in 2007, then it took to reach rock bottom.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e1/Recovery_job_losses_Jan_2010.png

To act like the spending stimulus is a "flop" and hasn't created "a single job," as the Republicans keep saying, is being disingenuous. Especially, when you consider the seven trillion in added debt by the Bush administration and the trillion dollars spent on the War on Terror, a $980 billion dollar stimulus, with the goal of spending it here on our country on its workers and businesses, appears to be a bit more reasonable.

Obama could have shelved the health care reform -- maybe it would have been more prudent -- but he probably felt it was the time to act, when he had some momentum. As it is, Congress spent more time debating this bill then the time spent on authorizing President Bush to use force in Iraq. Maybe a "conservative" approach would have been useful then as well, right?

Most of the health care spending doesn't kick in immediately, so I am not sure where the President and Congress made matters "immeasurably worse." He doesn't even have anything to back up this sentiment, other than a few opinionated quotes, such as this one: "The president, in other words, wants Republican to take the hit for the Democrats' catastrophic mismanagement of the already mismanaged economy."

Oh, really? The Democrats' mismanagement? How so?

Does he even realize that the Bush tax cuts have contributed TRILLIONS to the national debt, with no evidence that it stimulated the economy? And that is exactly what the Bush tax cuts were -- a trickle-down stimulus for the upper-class. And not only that, but the Bush tax cuts have cost MORE than either last year's spending stimulus or the total projected cost of health care reform over ten years.

So far, the Bush tax cuts have cost around two trillion dollars. (Include the War on terror, and you have three trillion of Bush's debt right there.) From in estimation in 2008, it's estimated that extending the Bush tax cuts to 2018 would cost $4.4 trillion dollars.

http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=1018

Another view on this subject:

And so, that is the ultimate irony -- while right-wingers and Republicans bemoan health care reform or the spending stimulus, they support a tax cut whose costs run into the trillions.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/08/dems-health-plan-half-as_n_280079.html