(03-30-2012 10:15 AM)Max Power Wrote: Bush was handed a booming economy and balanced budget from Clinton, and increased the deficit with unpaid for tax cuts and unnecessary wars.
Not exactly.
The economy was pretty flat when Shrub took over, and the downturn came after 9/11. Looking back, the 9/11 downturn was much less severe than what most contemporary observers had forecast.
The budget was nominally balanced, but that was Clinton plus congressional republicans who did that. And it did not remain balanced.
Let's look at to what extent the "unpaid for tax cuts and unnecessary wars" caused the subsequent deficit and debt. The wars cost about $100 billion a year, or about $1 trillion over the Shrub presidency. The tax cuts for the "rich" (the only ones that anyone seems to oppose) cost about $70 billion a year, or about $600 billion in round numbers during the Shrub presidency (of course, this ignores the impact on tax revenues of any positive effects on the economy, which Shrub supporters argue were significant and detractors argue were not). So, without getting into the specifics of whether the adjectives you used are justified, and focusing on the nouns, we have $1.6 trillion of debt added by the tax cuts and the wars.
But the debt increased roughly $5 trillion under Shrub. So the debt and wars amount to roughly 1/3 of the total increase. If you're going to use the wording "increased the deficit with" in conjuction with something, wouldn't it be twice as appropriate to use it in conjunction with what cased the other 2/3 rather than what caused the 1/3?
"Bush inherited a booming economy and a budget surplus, and turned it all around for the worse with tax cuts and wars," makes a great sound byte. As I have said before, I would not have done the "Bush tax cuts" because 1) they were not paid for, and 2) they were not targeted on things that would spur growth. And I would never have gone to Iraq before business was concluded in Afghanistan. So I'm not defending either one, but blaming the deficits and debt on them, without acknowledging the other causes, is dishonest and disingenuous.