(02-08-2019 08:07 AM)swagsurfer11 Wrote: The huge early Obama deficits were from reduced revenue.
Not exactly. Revenues decreased $400 billion from 2008 to 2009, but expenditures increased $600 billion, increasing the deficit from $400 billion in 2008 to $1.4 trillion in 2009. Revenues increased $50 billion in 2010, and expenditures decreased $50 billion, so the deficit was reduced to $1.3 trillion in 2010. Then both revenues and expenditures increased by $150 billion in 2011, so deficit remained about $1.3 trillion. So it was a good bit of both.
Quote:Obama was blamed for 2009, even though the budget was from the previous year.
Actually, no. The 2009 budget was signed by Obama and included significant jumps from the budget proposed by Bush. So yes Obama should get the blame. And as I've noted before, the attempt to blame the increase on the recession is somewhat contradicted by the fact that the deficits remained even after the recession was supposedly over.
Quote:Trump isn’t to blame for 2017 either. Now Republicans in the Congress are definitely to blame for the recent increased deficits.
Except that CBO forecasted most of the recent increases, and further increases in the future, based on Obama's policies, before Trump took office. Trump can be blamed for maybe 20% of the deficit, but the rest is on Obama, because he baked it into the cake before Trump got there.
Actually, I will give credit to Obama and his team for political savvy. They managed to time everything so that the deficit hit its valley just as Obama was going out, giving him the opportunity to claim to have reduced the deficit, while creating the impression that his successor grew the deficit immediately. But Obama and his team were always masters of illusion.