Dave Zweifel: Put blame for deficit where it belongs -- on Bush

Dave Zweifel  —  7/10/2009 12:22 pm

Republicans in Congress think they've got the issue to bring down President Obama: the federal deficit.

If the deficit does indeed negatively impact Obama and the Democrats, it will be testimony to why the rest of the world perceives that we Americans have very short memories.

While it's true that the stimulus packages and the bank and automobile bailouts are adding to the national debt that our grandkids and their kids will have to pay someday, let's not forget how we got into this mess.

Truth be told, all of Obama's spending so far hasn't added as much to the national debt as did George W. Bush's $1.3 trillion tax cut for our country's wealthiest people -- and that's not counting the contrived war that he started.

When Bush left office he left the country with a $10.6 trillion national debt and an economy that was falling off the cliff. In fact, he began the bank bailouts several weeks before the end of his term and demanded no oversight of what they were getting.

That $10.6 trillion was more than two and a half times the debt that Bill Clinton had left him in 1993. The $4 trillion debt at the time was being whittled down by a federal budget that was actually in the black. Then along came Bush, who like Ronald Reagan before him thought he could fix the economy by spending tons on the military and cutting taxes at the same time.

Funny, but the Mitch McConnells and John Boehners of the Republican hierarchy in Congress weren't complaining a bit about all that red ink back then.

The national debt stands at about $11.4 trillion today and unless the economy turns around quickly, which is highly doubtful, it will grown substantially larger in the coming years. Obama thinks the deficit will start coming down in a couple of years; others fear it will take much longer.

Such a huge national debt is not good, but it wasn't good at $10.6 trillion either, especially when it was brought about by foolish tax cuts and spending close to a trillion dollars on a war in Iraq.

Today's deficits are necessary to save the economy from plummeting even further and hurting millions more people than the millions who have already been hurt.

Perhaps the GOP thinks it can blame Obama, but the American people hopefully have longer memories.

Dave Zweifel is editor emeritus of The Capital Times.

Dave Zweifel  —  7/10/2009 12:22 pm