Did Obama's Budget Proposals Hide His True Economic Plan?

[daveb]

Are we forgetting the sizeable Democrat presence in Congress after 2006?

To be fair, they (the Dems) didn't have a filibuster proof majority in the Senate, unless every Dem and independent voted to break the filibuster. Even 1 going against means they couldn't break the filibuster.

 

[daveb]

You really need to quit blaming Obama for a Republican driven economy.

I don't blame Republicans or Democrats for the economy - I blame all of the politicians who frquently act more beholden to their corporate funding than to the average American.

 

[mheslep]

To be fair, they (the Dems) didn't have a filibuster proof majority in the Senate, unless every Dem and independent voted to break the filibuster. Even 1 going against means they couldn't break the filibuster.

And most of the time 'every' was all when a cloture vote was needed. Yes of course the Democrats had a filibuster proof majority, being 60, in the Senate until the election of Senator Brown.

 

[mege]

Far more likely that it decreased unemployment and prevented a depression. He couldn't do anything about the FACT that the Republicans drove the economy over a cliff and it was worse than anyone realized at the time - including and especially Paulson.

25% unemployment was a real possibility.

You really need to quit blaming Obama for a Republican driven economy. In spite of the propaganda, he really isn't God. There are limits to what is possible given the mess he was handed.

How is this problem 'republican driven'? This is something that I haven't seen you explain. You blame the current tea party for their 'hinderance' of the debt ceiling debate, but what does that have to do with unemployement 3 years ago and it's impact now?

Finally, what does that have to do with President Obama not presenting a specific resolution for this? One thing that I got out of the debt ceiling debate is that the Democrats were too chicken-crap to present their own plans for critique. They knew damn well that their idealogically-driven plans to tax the hell out of the rich wasn't really going to go over well in the CBO. So, the public was left to scrutenize the only plan on the table - those presented by the republicans and the tea party.

 

[Lapidus]

How is this problem 'republican driven'? This is something that I haven't seen you explain. You blame the current tea party for their 'hinderance' of the debt ceiling debate, but what does that have to do with unemployement 3 years ago and it's impact now?

Finally, what does that have to do with President Obama not presenting a specific resolution for this? One thing that I got out of the debt ceiling debate is that the Democrats were too chicken-crap to present their own plans for critique. They knew damn well that their idealogically-driven plans to tax the hell out of the rich wasn't really going to go over well in the CBO. So, the public was left to scrutenize the only plan on the table - those presented by the republicans and the tea party.

From the Economist http://www.economist.com/blogs/lexin...debt-ceiling-1

The "something" the Republican House has come up with is a non-solution (since the Senate cannot buy it) to a problem entirely of the Republicans' own making. The reason for this crisis is that instead of just raising the debt ceiling in the customary way so that the government can pay the bills Congress has already run up, the Republicans decided to point a pistol at the American economy and threaten to pull the trigger if they did not get the spending cuts they wanted.

Sure, America needs to tackle its burgeoning entitlement programmes. But not now, when cutting spending will make an insipid recovery worse, and more especially not like this, hijacking a routine procedure and using it to bring the country to the edge of downgrading or default. At least the Republicans have done something? Gimme a break.


Defict problem has three components, stock of debt, GDP growth and interest rates. The proposed non-solutions by the Republicans hurt the latter two and thus eventually all three components, and make the deficit situation much worse. Obama made very concrete proposals for the legislation, which is the Senate and the Congress, to find a sensible and pragmatic compromise and let it become law.

 

[Lapidus]

According to Obama himself, his policies when he got elected were intended to limit unemployment to 8% rather than his predicted 9%.

So there are two possibilities based on this graph and what we now know happened:

1. He badly underestimated how bad the economy was when he got into office.
2. His policies increased, instead of decreased, unemployment.

Which do you think is more likely?

And while we're at it - please provide a reference for your claim that the economy was predicted to be headed for a full-blown depression. You said at least three times in that post that there is plenty of money out there to be invested, a fact which I agree with - companies have been hoarding money. No doubt, you believe this is a serious problem, otherwise you wouldn't have said it several times. So doesn't it make sense to implement policies that would promote investment by private companies, with money that they have sitting in the bank, rather than investment by the government, with borrowed money? Further, is it possible that a high debt and uncertain prospects for correcting the problem have played a part in companies' reluctance to invest?

You constantly demand for every simple and well-known facts reference and present us a chart from innocentbystander?? Which claims to know how the unemployment would have developed if the government would have taken no action??

If there so much money floating around, so much private wealth, but all this money does not know where to go to invest, and at the same time low and middle-income people have increasingly less money available, which means there is very little money for consumption, but the US economy relies so much on consumption, what is the conclusion?

Of course: tax the high-income people a bit more, do not increase the burden on low and middle income people too drastic.

If consumer confidence is back, investment will pick up again.

 

[russ_watters]

You constantly demand for every simple and well-known facts reference and present us a chart from innocentbystander?? Which claims to know how the unemployment would have developed if the government would have taken no action??

You misread the chart. As it says: Everything on the chart excpt for the maroon dots was created by the Obama admin. Those are Obama's predictions, with the reality of what actually happened plotted over top of them.

If consumer confidence is back, investment will pick up again.

On that, at least, we agree.

 

[WhoWee]

Now that the US credit rating has been downgraded - President Obama needs a new plan (other than to blame Republicans and make campaign speeches) - doesn't he? Unfortunately, he really doesn't have any executive experience prior to being elected and relies on people like Geithner to guide him. I consider this a problem as Geithner just 3 months ago said there was no chance of a credit downgrade - how naive of him?

 

[russ_watters]

Now that the US credit rating has been downgraded - President Obama needs a new plan (other than to blame Republicans and make campaign speeches) - doesn't he?

Ask and ye shall receive:

President Barack Obama will unveil a new job growth package in a speech to be delivered in early September, a senior administration official told CNN Wednesday...

The administration has not finalized that package, but it's likely to include tax cuts, spending on infrastructure and measures designed both to assist the long-term unemployed and bolster certain struggling sectors of the economy, the official said.

The White House noted that the plan remains a work in progress. Obama intends to continue refining it during his upcoming vacation in Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, a senior official told CNN...

Obama also plans to revisit the issue of deficit reduction this fall. The president, according to a senior administration official, will present a proposal for more than $1.5 trillion in savings to the 12-member congressional "super committee" established as part of the recent deal to raise the nation's debt ceiling...

It remains unclear whether Obama will address his debt reduction proposal during the September jobs speech, an administration official said.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/POLITICS/08/17/obama.jobs.speech/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

So Obama's working on deficit plan and a jobs plan while on vacation. The jobs plan is to come out just after Labor Day (3 weeks from now), but it is unclear when the deficit plan will be coming out. I have so many rebuttals for this that it's making my head spin, so why don't you take the first crack at it WhoWee. Don't ever say I'm not a giving person.

 

[mheslep]

Ask and ye shall receive: http://www.cnn.com/2011/POLITICS/08/17/obama.jobs.speech/index.html?hpt=hp_t2
...

...spending on infrastructure and measures designed both to assist the long-term unemployed and bolster certain struggling sectors of the economy, the official said.

Really, more spending? He might as well just phone it in.

 

[Proton Soup]

Really, more spending? He might as well just phone it in.

not that i have much faith in washington, but honest-to-god infrastructure like rebuilding bridges, or even something as lofty as high speed rail, would make 1000% more sense than p***ing it away through the banking system. actually getting some value in durable goods would be a much-welcome change.

 

[Newai]

Russ, did you find Doctor Pion's version of this graph?

The other big news was the release of the June unemployment data, which allows us to add the first NEW data point to an infamous graph showing projected quarterly average unemployment rates. Below is an update of the graph I showed last month to correct some major misconceptions about what the economy was doing - and was going to keep doing - before Obama took office.

http://doctorpion.blogspot.com/2009/07/green-shoots.html

He had edited in a correction to that graph in the link above.

 

[SixNein]

Then his plan was a total failure - wasn't it?

Obviously, his plan did fail. But I think an interesting question is why did it fail?

There was a combination of disasters, and oil prices spiked. I'm kinda entertaining the idea that oil prices may be putting brakes on growth.

 

[mheslep]

The parlor game of the week is predicting the content of the much hyped Obama plan to be released post Martha's Vineyard. I'll wager large sums that it will call for
1) more stimulus aka 'investment', perhaps even in the form of short term tax cuts
2) non-scoreable spending cuts to come later, ie never while he holds office.
3) at least one reference to himself for every five sentences (rate was 1/6 in the last no-plan plan speech)

 

[WhoWee]

Obviously, his plan did fail. But I think an interesting question is why did it fail?

There was a combination of disasters, and oil prices spiked. I'm kinda entertaining the idea that oil prices may be putting brakes on growth.

There's nothing new about high gas prices or increasing energy costs - here's what President Obama had to say in 2008 on the topic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5M1WlV7vafk&feature=related