Thanks to the visual imagery of Josh Dyess at WallStats.com I am happy to help educate the masses. Josh has a creative eye and can help you get a better understanding of complex (and not so complex) stuff via pictures. Check out his site when you have a moment. [update: Josh tells me he didn't create these images, he got it from a friend, who got it from a friend, etc. So, I don't know who actually created them. But still visit Josh's site, its pretty cool.]
So, how big is a trillion?
God bless Twitter for helping me find this graphic by Cory Doctorow at BoingBoing. As he says, when you start talking about our budget in trillions, people fail to comprehend the sizes we are talking about. Pictures help people like me put the current administration’s drunken spending into a proper frame of reference. At this point I don’t give a crap how much Bush spent… Obama has taken spending to an entirely new level, one that we as a country CANNOT sustain. If Barack-O inherited a single crap sandwich from Bush (a common lefty claim), Barack is currently preparing a fecal cruise ship buffet for the Republican president that WILL be elected in 2012. (more credit due here and here.)
President Obama, cut the crap with the inheritance comments. You won the election, as you are fond of telling your opponents. Stop lying to America and deal with reality please. Did Bush spend like a football pro at a topless bar? Yes he did. But Barack-O is making Bush look frugal by comparison. Some perspective:
The Federal Budget
Notice anything? For starters, President Bush decreased the budget every year starting in 2004,with the exception of 2008. Why the exception? A $300B tax credit has a way of skewing your averages. The budget in 2008 was $450B, not the $1.3T that Obama keeps referring to. The 2009 budget is the same as the 2008 budget because Bush never signed the budget as Wicked Witch Pelosi wasn’t worth the signature. Bush was pushing to have the budget balanced by 2010. And, given the trend starting in 2004 you can see that we were heading in that direction.
Enter Barack-O.
The majority of the 2009 budget shown above is the $700B TARP crap signed by President Obama, not President Bush. But wait, there’s more. The president does not allocate funds to the federal government (thanks Ed); Congress does. And who controlled Congress in 2007-2008? Last year Democrats pushed resolutions through that ended up in the omnibus spending bill that Barack-O signed earlier this month.
As to the positive sounding claim from the president and vice president of “cutting the budget in half in five years.” maybe they can. But look at the pretty picture above. When you cut the $1.85T you start with in2009 your goal is $900B by 2013. That’s twice the amount of the last Bush budget. It’s easy to cut something when you start by quadrupling it first and then claim savings later on.
I don’t remember any president in my adult life that has whined and complained so often about the problems of his predecessor. Obama is so focused on campaigning for higher office that he apparently doesn’t realize that he’s reached the pinnacle of higher offices in America. Barack-O, please stop campaigning. Try appointing some people to your damned Treasury Department (you’ve filled one of the 18 seats…)
The press is silent, as usual, worshipping at the altar of Barack-O. The lemmings will continue to believe that he inhereted everything bad in the world from the evil Bush Monster. And unless conservatives do something about this we will all be screwed again in four years. Spread the truth. Get loud.
