No. No doubt Murdoch is out to get you. You may want to lay low for a few days.

Oh, boy, you prudish Americans and your webfilters. The site Market Watch has a problem because it contains a word that Americans find highly offensive but over here (as discussed with ARJ a while ago) is pretty mild. And I understand you pronounce it wrong, too, with an 'o' sound.

Try this:

Obama Spending Binge Never Happened

Ultimately, the argument is that Obama has not increased spending much, it has been pretty stable since 2009.

Of course, the counter to that is that he hasn't cut spending.

Nope. Ok. I'll generate a shortlink...

http://tinyurl.com/c3h6dw3

Alternatively, RJ, you can get it to work by changing your profile - go to Preferences, reading preferences and disable word censorship.

thanks ... he's using 2009 as a baseline throughout the commentary. I'm under the impression that Obama's 1st stimulus went into the 2009 fiscal year. I wonder what it would look like if he used 2008 as a base.

RJ - Well, it's an old debate anyway (I'm pretty sure we already covered this during 2012, and the article is months old).

The point is that you use 2009 as a base as that would conventionally be the last budget put through by the outgoing President and Congress.

Using 2008 would be wrong for another key reason, which was that it's pretty clear that after the late 2008 crash became apparent and Lehman Bros collapsed, there was a lot of extra funding pushed through to fight the crisis which would clearly not have been covered by the budget for that year, passed by the Spring.

'Obama's first stimulus was in the ARRA. Most of the effect that it had on the 2009 budget was in tax cuts, which of course are not spending. Most of the spending went into the 2010 budget instead.

The 2009 budget that was signed off by Bush in 2008 has spending of over $3Tn http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Unite ... ral_budget. When you add the TARP spending tacked on in the Autumn, it comes very close to the figures in the MW link. The shortfall is likely to be close to the extra mandatory spending on things like Welfare that resulted from the recession.

Yeah, this is old news and an old conversation. Here's an analysis on how Obama's stimulus impacted the 2009 budget:

By the close of FY 2009, (October 30, 2009) $241.9 billion had been spent: $92.8 billion in tax relief, $86.5 billion in unemployment and other benefits and $62.6 billion in job creation grants.

http://useconomy.about.com/od/candidate ... imulus.htm

It disputes your view that most of the effect on the 2009 budget is via tax cuts. I also wouldn't minimize the impact of $150 billion in spending on a $3.x trillion budget. That's about 4 or 5% of the spending which certainly was worthy of mention in this commentary.

So... let's look at these figures:

$3.1 Tn Budget for 2009 passed in 2009. Actual spend was $3.5Tn.

The difference? $245Bn on TARP (part of the Bush period), leaving c. $150Bn

Of which, $63Bn is in Stimulus from Obama. The $86.5Bn is not all 'stimulus', the majority of it was on benefits that were going to have to be paid anyway, based on pre-existing rules, paid for out of previous SS payments and that had to be allowed for because of reality - Unemployment benefits, Food Stamps, Section 8 Housing. Not a result of choice (I guess the US goverment could try defaulting on welfare payments, but defaults tend to go down badly). Some benefits were increased, and there were temporary and one-off payments made, but still, you can't count it all. About $30bn tops, based on my reading of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_R ... raining.29

I'm not defending the MW article, and while I was out on tax cuts being a majority of the 2009 effect, they were a significant chunk and could well be a majority of the discretionary part of it, so I concede that as a necessary correction.

I was, however, answering your suggestion that we use the 2008 budget as a baseline rather than 2009.

The point is that before the crash, the 2009 budget was going to be for spending of about $3.1Tn. TARP added to that. ARRA added some, but less. If you exclude the ARRA effects from the 2009 budget, I would say that is not far off a fair baseline, although mandatory additional spending should also be included as well, for completeness.

But to use the 2008 budget would be incorrect, given that Obama was not President until after TARP had been signed.

Not only do recent (Clinton and Obama) Democratic presidents preside over much smaller increases in government spending than recent Republican presidents (Reagan, Bush I and II) but also have not had huge tax cuts (as Bush II and Reagan did have). So it is pretty clear who has been fiscally irresponsible here but yet we have had to listen to an incessant litany of complaints from Republicans about how Obama has handled the budget. The responsibility for our long-term budget problems is almost entirely due to Republican policies.(ed: I meant long-term problems posed by our current deficit spending not long-term problems associated with growth in entitlement spending)

that seems very overstated to me. Obama and Clinton both had their spending plans clipped by Republican congresses. Meanwhile Bush II had a Democratic congress in his last 2 years.

Our long term budget problems are primarily the result of medicare, social security, and medicaid. I don't think the Republicans are primarily to blame for that. Do you?

RJ, those are mainly future problems and do not have much bearing on the deficits of the past and the current debt or deficit. Payroll taxes have overall been a surplus over the payouts for those programmes.

So point your blame stick somewhere relevant to the current fiscal situation, huh?

I was responding to Freeman who wrote:

The responsibility for our long-term budget problems is almost entirely due to Republican policies

(he later edited it by adding the parenthetical phrase)

It would seem that the only errant blame stick here is yours!

Nothing that Obama and Clinton proposed came close to what Bush II and Reagan did as far as having huge increases in military spending and huge tax cuts.

I don't see social security as being a huge problem. A while ago there was a Republican who said if the rate at which we capped social security taxes went up to its historical rate (I think social security only takes 84% of wages versus 90% historically) then that would take care of about 1/2 of the problem) Here is a study of the modest problems associated with social security. http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/20 ... pients-get. And here: http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/20 ... he-deficit. The fixes don't look to be that onerous.


With regard to Medicare and Medicaid they do present significant long-term problems, but any solutions to those problems depend on getting health care costs under control. We'll see if ACA helps to control those costs. I don't see any reasonable Republican alternatives Here is an article on the medicare problem and potential fixes. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/21/opini ... wanted=all. Here is another one showing that the costs per beneficiary has been slowing down considerably in medicare over the past decade. http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1204899

So, I would not say Republicans are blame for long-term problems with medicare, medicaid or social security (why would they, they don't like particularly like those programs). Republicans are surely primarily to blame for the existing deficit problem, however. And I sure don't like them holding entitlement programs hostage when there are discussions on how to deal with our current deficit.

No, RJ, I had read Freeman's post. Even before his added part in parentheses, I took it to mean he was talking about the current debt and deficit. You know full well that future entitlements are not part of that problem. Which is more pressing? Well, a small set of reforms would reduce the long term future liability gap. But right now your country has - as many on both sides agree - a wide deficit and a large and growing debt. Solve those, or at the very least turn things around, and again, your future libilities become less of a headache.

Please don't tell me what I know and don't know. I don't agree with a lot of what you and Freeman have written, but I really don't feel like getting into it again. There's no need to scold me like I'm a child. I'm sure that I know as much about this as you do.