The country is on the brink of bankruptcy, Fox host Bill O’Reilly warned last night—all because Barack Obama is spending too much money. Drastic cuts are required, but “the far-left loons want to spend more.”
And he’s got the number to prove it:
In 2007, during the Bush administration, federal deficit spending was $161 billion, despite the Iraq and Afghan wars. Four years later under President Obama, the deficit spending is $1.3 trillion, eight times as much.
To be fair, the economy collapsed on Bush’s watch, and both Republicans and Democrats committed almost a trillion dollars to prop up the economy. As we all know, the stimulus spending did not work very well.
But the Obama administration has not cut back. Today the feds are spending $9.8 billion every day. That breaks down to $410 million per hour. Tax revenue has actually gone up. It’s 21 percent higher this year than last, but there’s no way Americans can bring down the federal debt with their tax dollars. The spending is just too massive.
It would be surprising to find out that government tax receipts increased 21 percent. They didn’t. O’Reilly is misreading the Wall Street Journal editorial where he got these number, which says that “federal receipts grew by 6.5 percent in fiscal 2011, including a 21.6 percent gain in individual income tax revenues.”
Actually, the whole piece is unhelpful to his argument, since it argues that the rise in spending has actually been pretty modest over Obama’s term; it actually fell slightly from fiscal year 2009 to 2010. And the current deficit as a share of GDP—which is a better way to measure the deficit anyway—has dropped over the past two years.
And it’s not clear why O’Reilly would choose the 2007 fiscal year to compare Bush’s record to Obama’s—unless the point is to make Obama look worse. The 2008 deficit was $459 billion.
O’Reilly says that he “is playing Paul Revere” here. More like Chicken Little.
“The 2008 deficit was $459 billion”
And, that did not include any of the war spending which was off-budget in the Bush years.
or bush’s last budget, fy2009, where the deficit before election day 2008 was already projected to be over $1.1 trillion
But he’s very rich, Robert, and that makes him a genius. Check out the picture of Fox’ two great geniuses together on another thread here. Face to face, Beck and O’Reilly–reportedly, so much stupidity filled the air in the studio (like white-hot poison gas) that several cameramen and lighting techs had to go on permanent disability, hobbled by the great nihilistic stupid-stink that fills the air everytime these two very well-paid numbskulls open their mouths. It’s a little libertarian epi-dystopia on display, a glimpse into the horror that is our future–a tenth-rate dead super-power presided over and commented upon by the frightfully ignorant.
It is unclear to me whether this sentence was intended to be sarcastic or not: “And it’s not clear why O’Reilly would choose the 2007 fiscal year to compare Bush’s record to Obama’s–unless the point is to make Obama look worse.” On the one hand, FAIR is FAIR. Sarcasm (aka irony) would be counter to their mission. After all the point of the piece is criticism of Opinion-as-News. OTOH, I make mistakes all the time, and would not condemn anyone for making an honest one. Though in this case it would be 2: creating the sentence void of logic, and passing it by on proofing the copy.
We can argue all day semantics – and it does not change a thing.Bush spent too much ,and Obama spends too much.And no tax raise of any level(even 100%)will effect this.Bill Clinton said exactly that a month ago.
Obama, like Bush before him, spends too much money on the criminals instead of those of us who were hurt by this. If it is too big to fail then break it up. He didn’t and the Congress didn’t so the wrong things continue. At least in the 1930’s-1940’s they managed to fix it. But not now. Obama isn’t even pushing it. He sat on the idea of jobs for 4 years until reelection comes up. He isn’t our friend. More of a follower of Herbert Hoover than Robert Reich.