one of those days

Okay, it’s one of those days when I’m trying to figure out what it is that I want to post. Taylor Swift and Beyoncé took home a bunch of Grammys but I really don’t feel like talking about that. I did not have an opportunity to see the Pro Bowl. I went to the usual blogs to find inspiration — the Daily Kos, Think Progress, Buzzflash, the Huffington Post. Nothing. I did find a funny article on dreams but I surely don’t want to talk about that. I clicked on the link that led me to a New York Times article on the deficit.

I like the topic of the deficits since everybody seems to be in agreement but nothing seems to get done. Okay that statement was sort of right. Both Democrats and Republicans have stated over the years that we need to bring down the deficit. Democrats did what they said they were going to do. Republicans, not so much. Yet, when George Bush was in the White House and the Republicans controlled both houses of Congress, there was no attempt to control the exploding deficit. As a matter fact, to justify tax cuts for the wealthy that were never going to pay for themselves, Bush told us that there was more than enough money for his tax cuts. Neither the war in Iraq nor the war in Afghanistan were paid for. The Bush administration borrowed money for both wars through the supplemental process instead of through the budgetary process in order to avoid more attention.

Now the deficit guys (cleverly described as “deficit peacocks,” since they’re really not hawks) are out in force. They have America worried about how to pay for all of this red ink. Remember when President Clinton handed over the keys to the White House to President Bush? He handed Bush a budget surplus that was projected to be approximately $800 billion per year from 2009 to 2012. Instead, it looks as if we’re spending $1.2 trillion more than we’re taking in during this same time frame. What happened? About 33% of this $2 trillion deficit (the difference between $800 billion in the black and $1.2 trillion in the red) comes from George Bush’s tax cuts and his Medicare prescription benefit. About 20% of the deficit comes from Obama’s extension of Bush policies like the war in Iraq and tax cuts for households making less than $250,000. Only 7% comes from the stimulus bill passed in February 2009. The downturn in the business cycle accounts for approximately 37%.

So the next time a deficit peacock begins to tell you that Obama is ruining the country by driving up higher and higher deficits, you should remind him how we got these deficits. While you’re browbeating this deficit peacock with knowledge, remind him that it appears that Democrats figured out a way to balance the budget while Republicans (Reagan, Bush, Bush) figured out a way to increase the deficit. Republicans do not equal fiscal responsibility.