Republican Leaders Voted for Debt Drivers They Blame on Obama

[kpete]

Source: Bloomberg

Republican Leaders Voted for Debt Drivers They Blame on Obama
July 26, 2011, 1:30 AM EDT

By Lisa Lerer
July 26 (Bloomberg) -- House Speaker John Boehner often attacks the spendthrift ways of Washington.

“In Washington, more spending and more debt is business as usual,” the Republican leader from Ohio said in a televised address yesterday amid debate over the U.S. debt. “I’ve got news for Washington - those days are over.”

Yet the speaker, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell all voted for major drivers of the nation’s debt during the past decade: Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts and Medicare prescription drug benefits. They also voted for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, that rescued financial institutions and the auto industry.

Together, a Bloomberg News analysis shows, these initiatives added $3.4 trillion to the nation’s accumulated debt and to its current annual budget deficit of $1.5 trillion.


Read more: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-07-26/republican-leaders-voted-for-debt-drivers-they-blame-on-obama.html

[Solly Mack]

1. K&R

[Davis_X_Machina]

2. There are few areas...

...of human life where the dictum "He who smelled it, dealt it" fails to apply.

[lyonn]

3. Wow, didn't realise these stats

This should be on cable news at some point, right??

[Iliyah]

4. Corporate media

will just ignore it as usual.

[lyonn]

5. Maybe a scroll on the bottom of screen?

Ya, one must remember who owns the media and it isn't an "un-interested" indicy (we need a thesaurus on this site too). Media that is totally owned by non corporate/political entities....

[dmosh42]

6. Why didn't Obama come out with this fact in his speech??

I've been waiting for him to mention this fact for a while, but I guess he doesn't want to hurt their feelings! I guess after it's all done, they're all "corporation buddies" anyhow.

[Roland99]

8. he did, actually.

not in such detail but did blame the wars, the bush tax cuts, and the stimulus that were all passed before he came into office for their part in the deficit.

[russspeakeasy]

14. He thinks they can still be friends.

[Control-Z]

18. He hasn't given specific

numbers, or even pointed out the imbalance, but he has talked about the wars, the medicare prescription plan and the Bush tax cuts.


Maybe he's trying not to come off sounding like a whiny, blaming republican. They accuse him of it every time he even mentions the problems that were there when he took office.

[SoapBox]

7. Not a surprise...The Party of No, Lies, and Hypocrisy never disappoints.

...weird how they have some kind of Death Wish for America.

[buckrogers1965]

17. More of a...

Mutual suicide pact.

[florida08]

9. Yes pot

you didn't seem so upset about it till kettle got in office. That makes you a cracked pot.

[Kingofalldems]

10. Kick and Rec one time for the teabaggers

[truthisfreedom]

11. It's time for the administration to leak the dirt they have on pukes to the press.

No more pussyfooting.

[No Elephants]

12. Good for Business and Bloomberg for shining light on this.

[russspeakeasy]

13. So ? They just say "no we didn't". Case closed.

[myrna minx]

15. K&R n/t

[bluedeminredstate]

16. That dickhead Boehner

talked about the "blank check" that the President wants, but it is evident that he and his flying monkeys were writing tons of blank checks all through the Chimp administration. Boehner lied about the so-called check Obama is asking for when it's a fact that the debt ceiling must be raised to pay for all the spending that the GOP congress did before Obama was president: huge tax cuts, 2 wars and a huge ENTITLEMENT program that was charged on the national credit card. Obama is just asking them to pay the tab now that it's due.

In fact, IIRC, the gentleman who testified before congress about the Medicare drug program outright LIED about the numbers in order to get the votes. And the Iraq war was supposed to be paid for with Iraqi oil revenues...

:banghead: