In their own words [1:21]
From 2003 to 2007, Congress and President Bush overspent the nation’s budget so much that they increased the national debt by 33%. In order to make this legal, they voted three times to increase the statutory debt limit from $7,384 billion in 2003 to $9,815 billion in 2007.
To understand this in personal terms, think of taxpayers (present and future) as joints owners of a credit card company and Congress and President Bush as the card holder. The rest of us shlubs can only get an increase on our credit card debt limits when the card company decides we can be trusted to pay it back, right?
Well, what Congress and President Bush did was give themselves a credit limit increase … to the tune of 2½ Trillion dollars! And We, The People … all the taxpayers (present and future) who will ultimately eat the debt these turkeys ran up had nothing to say in the matter.
And, as if that wasn’t bad enough, some of the money they borrowed to finance their spending came from Social Security. That’s right. They raided our joint retirement savings, money we set aside for our futures, to finance their present over-spending. Pretty slimey, right?
Think back to 2006 and 2008. Remember the Democrats’ political rhetoric about this? Remember how people like Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama railed against the irresponsibility and injustice of it all? Remember how that’s one of the reasons we voted them into office?
Don’t you feel enormously betrayed that, the minute they got into power, they INCREASED spending and INCREASED the deficit so fast and by so much that they made George W. Bush look like Ebenezer Scrooge by comparison?!
Democrats took majority control of Congress in January 2007, but spending is (usually) off-set a year, because each year, Congress is supposed to plan spending for the following year.
Usually … in 2009, the Pelosi-Reid-Obama Democrat Hat Trick government added the $800 Billion Stimulus spending bill to the 2009 budget that was passed in 2008. Politically, it makes no difference, because the 2008 Congress was controlled by Democrats anyway. But they like to claim all that 2009 spending somehow belongs to Bush, who was RETIRED in TEXAS when the Stimulus spending was tacked on, and the eeevil Republicans, who were in the minority in Congress!
Keep in mind that Congress writes and passes federal spending plans. The President makes recommendations, but when it comes to actual budget legislation, his only power lies in signing or vetoing.
In 2008, Canadidate Obama made a well-advertised promise to “go through the budget line by line” but the fact is, the President of the United States does not have line item veto. It’s all or nothing.
You can blame the Republican majority Congresses under Bush for that 33% increase to $9,815 billion in 2007. But the Pelosi-Reid 2007-2008 Congress (with Obama in the Senate) increased spending so much that they DOUBLED the Republican deficit IN THEIR FIRST YEAR.
(The national DEBT is the total amount we owe. Each year, the government takes in some amount and spends some amount. If the income is higher, the budget SURPLUS reduces the DEBT. If the spending is higher, the budget DEFICIT increases the DEBT.)
The second budget they passed (in 2008 for 2009) was higher still and, shortly after they got their Hat Trick with Obama in the White House and Democrat majorities in both the House and the Senate, they passed the 2009 stimulus spending bill and added ANOTHER $800 Billion to the already bloated 2009 deficit!
They haven’t even bothered to pass any budgets since then. They just keep spending. And when they hit the debt ceiling, they did what they had shrieked was totally unacceptable when Bush Republicans did it. I.e., they increased the statutory debt limit so they could keep right on spending and debting and stealing from our retirements and our childrens’ futures.
So please … when you hear Democrats like Barack Obama bleat about the evil Republican Romney-Ryan spending plan, take it with $16 Trillion dollars worth of salt. Because that’s what the national debt has hit, thanks to six years of leadership by the exact same people who bellowed back in 2007 that Bush’s $9.8 Trillion debt was irresponsible and unpatriotic.
Chrissy’s Site Bites @ http://news.webshots.com/photo/2364566090056011884shsqur
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Sources for debt information:
Treasury Department’s November 2007 report on Public Debt for Fiscal Years 2007 and 2006 Summary:
http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/feddebt/feddebt_ann2007.pdf
US Budget Deficit: 2008 Doubles 2007
http://uspolitics.about.com/b/2008/09/10/us-budget-deficit-2008-double-2007.htm
Gross Federal Debt chart – 1940-2007
