Is this true??

[kentuck]

Ed Gillespie, former head of the RNC, said this morning on Face the Nation that Barack Obama had run up more debt in two years than George W Bush did in eight years?? Is that true? Or is he a bald-faced liar? By the way, Schiefer did not call him on it?

[bbinacan]

1. I've heard more debt since

George Washington.

[zeemike]

2. They play the numbers game with us.

They will talk about 10 year projections as if the money were already spent.

[monmouth]

3. Saving banks, paying for two wars, bailing out corps. like GE to

save jobs and the economy in general...it's costly.

[Stargazer99]

4. I suppose two wars, no oversite of corp America (BP is only one)

and Obama is left with this mess and you wonder if Obama has spent more? Where in the hell is your intellegence, think! man! Who do you think started this mess?

[Lost-in-FL]

5. I can see that...

Of course, Bush came in with a "surplus" so yes, Bush expenses were paid with real money available before the wars went sour. However, Obama never had the luxury of having trillions of dollarsreadily available to throw down the drain like Bush did.

[zeemike]

6. If you would like real numbers here they are.

Total receipts
Estimated receipts for fiscal year 2010 are $2.381 trillion, an estimated decrease of 11% from 2009.

$1.061 trillion – Individual income taxes
$940 billion – Social Security and other payroll tax
$222 billion – Corporation income taxes
$77 billion – Excise taxes
$23 billion – Customs duties
$20 billion – Estate and gift taxes
$22 billion – Deposits of earnings
$16 billion – Other
Total spending

A pie chart representing spending by category for the US budget for 2010Further information: Government spending
The President's budget for 2010 totals $3.55 trillion. Percentages in parentheses indicate percentage change compared to 2009. This budget request is broken down by the following expenditures:

Mandatory spending: $2.184 trillion (+15.6%)
$677.95 billion (+4.9%) – Social Security
$571 billion (−15.2%) – Other mandatory programs
$453 billion (+6.6%) – Medicare
$290 billion (+12.0%) – Medicaid
$164 billion (+18.0%) – Interest on National Debt
$11 billion (+275%) – Potential disaster costs
$0 billion (−100%) – Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP)
$0 billion (−100%) – Financial stabilization efforts

US receipt and expenditure estimates for fiscal year 2010.Discretionary spending: $1.368 trillion (+13.1%)
$663.7 billion (+12.7%) – Department of Defense (including Overseas Contingency Operations)
$78.7 billion (−1.7%) – Department of Health and Human Services
$72.5 billion (+2.8%) – Department of Transportation
$52.5 billion (+10.3%) – Department of Veterans Affairs
$51.7 billion (+40.9%) – Department of State and Other International Programs
$47.5 billion (+18.5%) – Department of Housing and Urban Development
$46.7 billion (+12.8%) – Department of Education
$42.7 billion (+1.2%) – Department of Homeland Security
$26.3 billion (−0.4%) – Department of Energy
$26.0 billion (+8.8%) – Department of Agriculture
$23.9 billion (−6.3%) – Department of Justice
$18.7 billion (+5.1%) – National Aeronautics and Space Administration
$13.8 billion (+48.4%) – Department of Commerce
$13.3 billion (+4.7%) – Department of Labor
$13.3 billion (+4.7%) – Department of the Treasury
$12.0 billion (+6.2%) – Department of the Interior
$10.5 billion (+34.6%) – Environmental Protection Agency
$9.7 billion (+10.2%) – Social Security Administration
$7.0 billion (+1.4%) – National Science Foundation
$5.1 billion (−3.8%) – Corps of Engineers
$5.0 billion (+100%) – National Infrastructure Bank
$1.1 billion (+22.2%) – Corporation for National and Community Service
$0.7 billion (0.0%) – Small Business Administration
$0.6 billion (−14.3%) – General Services Administration
$19.8 billion (+3.7%) – Other Agencies
$105 billion – Other

[gateley]

7. DIdn't Bush NOT include the cost of the wars in his debt, but Obama

included it? If so, that could be what they're pouncing on. They came in UNDER budget for TARP, didn't they?

Regardless, my rule of thumb is I always assume they're lying and/or playing with the numbers.

[RaleighNCDUer]

11. I think they're counting the TARP money as spent, but not counting

the TARP money that's repaid. That can make a huge difference.

[Sirveri]

8. It may be close to true, but it's a loaded statement.

Thanks to Bush Obama inherited a huge budget deficit. This primarily occurred during the final year of his administration (it took a while to undo everything Clinton managed to give him after all). So while Bush slowly raised the budget deficit, Obama started with a huge one that was piled onto the national debt. Then thanks to the horrendous economy revenue fell, so that added to the debt load. So Bush came in with a small surplus for the budget, and left with a 1 Trillion dollar shortfall. Almost like he planned to say that the Dems added a bunch of money to the overall federal debt!

[Stargazer99]

9. Before the last election I asked a retail clerk how she

was going to vote. Her reply was "I don't know, Obama will probably raise taxes". I'm sure she was not in the income level to experience increased taxes if even an amount were raised on low income workers. I asked her if she thought this uncalled for war in Iraq was cheap? It wasn't Obama who declared this blood sucking killer of our sons and wealth. Considering the major oil companies have benefitted from the Iraq war, it smacks of Corporate America running the common man into the ground.

[liberal N proud]

10. Were Ed Gillespie's lips moving?

If they were, he was lying.

[David Zephyr]

12. Since Bush's two wars are outside of appropriations, any such talk is lying.

I can't watch the Sunday talk shows anymore because the anchors do let the lying go on unchallenged.

If, however, Howard Dean is on one of their "shows", then if he said the earth was not flat, they'd jump all over him and never let him finish a sentence.

Why? Because they know their corporate bosses will be pleased with them. And they don't want to be yanked from anchoring their shows.

[Warpy]

13. It's total bullshit

Obama's only big ticket item was the too-small stimulus package.

What the liars are including is Stupid's last budget, something the stimulus package increased by a whopping four percent. What they're also forgetting is that Stupid hid the cost of his wars outside the regular budget and fudged numbers all the way through them.

There is no way Obama could have done the damage in one year of his own budget that Stupid did in eight whole years of spending like a tweaker with a stolen credit card.

[HughMoran]

14. Has anybody been paying attention?

The debt was skyrocketing when Obama was handed a failing economy. What did we do to counteract the failing economy? Deficit spend - doh. I'm seriously wondering how or why you don't know this?

[bemildred]

15. Presidents don't run up debt, Congress does.

But even so, it's bullshit, Democrats leave surpluses, Republicans leave debt.