Stimulus Deficit Spending

For eight years I was bludgeoned by my Democrat friends about President George W. Bush’s deficit spending. It was a tough pill for a fiscal conservative. Even though it was projected we’d have a balanced budget in 2010, it was a decade that made it hard to claim the mantle of fiscal responsibility; that is until the “stimulus” bill and Tarp II. The Congressional Budget Office, so often referenced when it delivered bad news for the Bush administration, says the stimulus will make the economy worse long term. With it’s projection of a $1.2 trillion dollar deficit, with Tarp II, and with the stimulus, figuring in interest of course, it looks like the Obama Administration is set to deficit spend in two years, what the Bush Administration deficit spent its entire eight years in office.

Lack of spending didn’t cause this crisis. It’s hard to make that claim considering I’ve been told by Liberals for eight years how profligate a spender Bush was. Just three years ago, Congress passed a $300 billion transportation bill, money that’s still being spent. This is also not proof that supply side economics, credited with 60 years of unprecedented growth, has failed.
Debt is what has caused this current crisis and has severely limited our options in how we can deal with it. It’s weighing on government, but also on families. The difference is families are expected to pay their debt, while the democrats who wrote the stimulus are content to kick that can down the road.