BOOKMARK THIS: Bush Deficit vs. Obama Deficit in Pictures
All information in this post via the Heritage Foundation
President Barack Obama has repeatedly claimed that his budget would cut the deficit by half by the end of his term. But as Heritage analyst Brian Riedl has pointed out, given that Obama has already helped quadruple the deficit with his stimulus package, pledging to halve it by 2013 is hardly ambitious. The Washington Post has a great graphic which helps put President Obama’s budget deficits in context of President Bush’s.
What’s driving Obama’s unprecedented massive deficits? Spending. Riedl details:
- President Bush expanded the federal budget by a historic $700 billion through 2008. President Obama would add another $1 trillion.
- President Bush began a string of expensive financial bailouts. President Obama is accelerating that course.
- President Bush created a Medicare drug entitlement that will cost an estimated $800 billion in its first decade. President Obama has proposed a $634 billion down payment on a new government health care fund.
- President Bush increased federal education spending 58 percent faster than inflation. President Obama would double it.
- President Bush became the first President to spend 3 percent of GDP on federal antipoverty programs. President Obama has already increased this spending by 20 percent.
- President Bush tilted the income tax burden more toward upper-income taxpayers. President Obama would continue that trend.
- President Bush presided over a $2.5 trillion increase in the public debt through 2008. Setting aside 2009 (for which Presidents Bush and Obama share responsibility for an additional $2.6 trillion in public debt), President Obama’s budget would add $4.9 trillion in public debt from the beginning of 2010 through 2016.
March 25, 2009 - 04:30 PM on March 25th, 2009
Gosh, where in the graph is the $1.3T annual deficit theMessiah inherited from Bush? The one he mentioned last night? Oh, that’s right, it was nonsense! It was made-up BS because it sounded good!
Or maybe the Messiah was reading what he thought was true but the TOTUS was misinformed…
You know, this is a new, historic situation. If , I mean when, Obama misspeaks, he can blame it on the TOTUS.