Are Tea Party Activists Just Republican Party Dupes?

"... and you must blame Obama for his spend-a-thon that has put Bush to shame."

That's only if you compare Bush's deficits to Obama's deficits alone, without taking into consideration the fact that Bush did his best to prevent all his spending from showing up in the deficit. The Iraq War, for example, was not included in Bush's deficits, which means $800 billion in spending not being included in the comparison to Obama's deficits.

But the largest indicator of what the Bush Presidency cost us was the losses Americans suffered during his last two years in office. In order to pay for programs like the Iraq War, the Tax Cuts and Medicare Part D, Bush needed to increase government revenues without raising taxes. He did this by deregulating the financial industry (providing no oversight) and pumping trillions of dollars into the U.S. economy. With more money and fewer barriers, money exchanged hands even faster and each time money exchanged hands government got its cut, which successfully increased government revenues. Of course with more money than they knew what to do with, banks begin to loan to absolutely anyone, resulting in mortgages that would inevitably default. Then you have the schemes of companies that created high-risk assets, sold them to others as low-risk assets and then used credit-default swaps to bet that the assets would fail. The sad thing is that, even with these artificial increases in government revenue, Bush STILL ran a deficit, he couldn't even run a surplus with an overheated economy! His spending was that bad.

During those last two years of Bush's presidency, Americans lost over $14 TRILLION in assets; in just two years! That's $7 TRILLION a year, losses that were the direct result of Bush's financial policy and the failure of Republican politicians in office from 2000 - 2006 to reform the financial system. Add that to the costs of the Iraq War, the cost of Medicare Part D, the cost of the Bush tax cuts, and Obama is no where near Bush in spending. In fact, Obama's spending is an attempt to fill the crater that Bush left, at least until consumers and businesses stop panicking and start filling it themselves.

Bush was a horrible president. As much as anti-Obamaites crow about our current president, he is no where near the catastrophe Bush was. I don't expect that group of people to ever relent as such though. Considering that while the rest of America gave Bush low poll numbers (90% of Democrats disapproved of Bush, 65% of independent disapproved of Bush) in 2007 and 2008, over 60% of Republicans approved of the job the guy was doing. Democrats weren't simply being partisan, they also gave the Democratic Congress low poll numbers, mainly because they weren't ending the Iraq War.

In 2005 Bush wanted to privatize social security, investing social security dollars in the very stock market that would inevitably crash in 2008. It's scary to think that his presidency could have been any worse than it was.

Paul of CA 2:53PM April 22, 2010