Watch: Obama slams Bush “waste” in new budget


by Sunny Hundal    
February 1, 2010 at 6:30 pm

US President Obama unveiled his new budget today, costed at $3.8 trillion, and sent it to Congress for approval.

In introducing the budget he made a speech to the press that slammed Republicans for a decade of waste and “profligacy” that squandered a budget surplus and turned it into a huge budget deficit and financial collapse.

Watch

He said:

The fact is, 10 years ago, we had a budget surplus of more than $200 billion, with projected surpluses stretching out toward the horizon. Yet over the course of the past 10 years, the previous administration and previous Congresses created an expensive new drug program, passed massive tax cuts for the wealthy, and funded two wars without paying for any of it -– all of which was compounded by recession and by rising health care costs. As a result, when I first walked through the door, the deficit stood at $1.3 trillion, with projected deficits of $8 trillion over the next decade.

If we had taken office during ordinary times, we would have started bringing down these deficits immediately. But one year ago, our country was in crisis: We were losing nearly 700,000 jobs each month, the economy was in a free fall, and the financial system was near collapse. Many feared another Great Depression. So we initiated a rescue, and that rescue was not without significant cost; it added to the deficit as well.

One year later, because of the steps we’ve taken, we’re in a very different place. But we can’t simply move beyond this crisis; we have to address the irresponsibility that led to it. And that includes the failure to rein in spending, as well a reliance on borrowing –- from Wall Street to Washington to Main Street –- to fuel our growth.

Full transcript here.


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Sunny Hundal is editor of LC. Also: on Twitter, at Pickled Politics and Guardian CIF.
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Reader comments


He is twisting facts like nobody I have ever seen. He is including the full authorized amount of TARP funds in that 1.3 trillion dollar deficit he “inherited,” never mind the fact it was a one-off program, with all but $90 billion of the funds already repaid. The true budget deficit was in the order of $500 billion, and he has added over a trillion dollars to it. Where is that extra trillion dollars going?
My God, the man reminds me of a communist.

Tee hee:

“The fact is, 10 years ago, we had a budget surplus of more than $200 billion, with projected surpluses stretching out toward the horizon.”

Umm, no mention of the way in which tax revenues at the time were hugely boosted by the internet bubble? You know, exactly the way that we now know that our own in 2005/7 were hugely boosted, unsustainably, by the finance and housing bubble?

The projections assumed it would all continue….and we know that what is unsustainable doesn’t continue forever….

Apart from the impression that a regular and credulous viewer of Fox News Channel has fetched up in LibCon, at times like this I would always favour a measured and analytical view.

Fortunately this is available from the HuffPo:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-kwak/budget-sense-and-nonsense_b_445197.html

and I’d suggest a read of this before anyone questions Barack Obama’s political orientation.


Reactions: Twitter, blogs
  1. Liberal Conspiracy

    Watch: Obama slams Bush "waste" in new budget http://bit.ly/a5XHoR

  2. Liberal Conspiracy

    Pres. Obama slams Republican "waste" over last decade while unveiling new budget: http://bit.ly/a5XHoR

  3. sunny hundal

    Pres. Obama slams Republican "waste" over last decade while unveiling new budget: http://bit.ly/a5XHoR

  4. David Skelton

    Liberal Conspiracy » Watch: Obama slams Bush “waste” in new budget http://bit.ly/a5XHoR

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