PrintMarch 31, 2011
Waiting for Obama to assume his Presidency
Facts are stubborn things. The Obama-led Democrats have held the nation's purse strings for 4 of the last 8 years. It was the Obama-led Democrats which insisted that wasteful spinach farm subsidies and wasteful corn fuel subsidies be included in Iraq war funding bills. This would only make sense if we were sending Popeye to fight the terrorists.
Indeed, Bush's final budget deficit before the Obama led-Democrats took complete control of spending in 2006 was less than 200 billion and trending downward. In 2007, with the economy still humming along, Democrats complained of the "weak economy" under Bush. And really, who can forget the massive unemployment rate of 4.6%?
In 2008, the unemployment rate jumped to a whopping 5.8%. The Obama-led Democrat controlled congress sent a "stimulus bill" to Bush that wrote a 6 hundred dollar stimulus check to taxpayers who did not pay taxes. Bush signed the bill the Obama led-Democrats sent him. The 6 hundred bucks filled our gas tanks for about a month at 4 bucks a gallon.
Bush, taking his job seriously, ended the executive moratorium on offshore drilling and broke the oil bubble. The big banks and financial warehouses that invested in "green energy" saw that the jig was up when trillions of barrels of oil were discovered sitting under the nation's feet in the Dakotas. There was even talk that the ANWR oil reserves would finally be tapped. Facing angry voters in 2008, the Obama led Democrat controlled congress allowed the congressional ban on offshore drilling to lapse as well.
Barney Frank & Chris Dodd sold the notion that bad loans were good for banks and towed the party line about "green energy" and "green jobs" of the future. The banks balked when a likely Obama victory stampeded investors in these shams to the exits.
Bush's final signature achievement was to keep the banks solvent via TARP. The banks and financial warehouses that foolishly listened to the Obama-led Congress and invested in "green energy" and loans to people who could never pay them back were made whole with loans.
The stock market crash after the Obama election was a perfect opportunity for the suddenly flush banks and financial warehouses. They took their TARP loans and bought stocks cheap. As the stock market rallied, the banks paid back their loans with their profits. Bush's deficit spending in his final year saved the banks and the taxpayer loans were repaid. The emergency deficit spending that Bush signed did not add to the nation's debt. TARP has been repaid.
So whenever Obama claims he "inherited" the massive debt the Obama led Democrat controlled Congress created, it should be noted that Obama voted for every spending bill sent to Bush after 2006 and signed every spending bill after 2008. Facts are almost as stubborn as the 4 years of Obama led policies that got us into this mess. Had enough?
