I thought this was an interesting graph, since many people, including myself, have made the assumption that the explosion of our deficit has been as much Obama's fault as his predecessor.



I'm not 100% sure of it's accuracy(although I've never known the NY Times to blatantly lie), but if this is graph is true, than Obama isn't doing as bad as we thought spending wise. It's just taking longer than we'd like to reduce our spending habits.

Deficit and spending are ENTIRELY two different things. Bush spent a ton of money, but also keep in mind he was able to pull in a lot more revenue (this isn't exactly 100% correct, but I'm tired right now and I don't have the energy to really go over a full correct paragraph or two, so meh). He successfully stimulated the country enough to be able to spend more money. I can't copy the graph over (I can't get the source URL of a picture on my iPad :/) but here's a nice chart describing this:

http://blog.heritage.org/2009/03/24/bush-deficit-vs-obama-deficit-in-pictures/

Some of these facts come from the Washington Post, a newspaper I have long since stopped reading due to it's high liberal viewpoint. And they're the ones helping contribute to smashing Obama.

Of course, obama isn't all to blame for this mess, bush had a decent amount of input on it; however, I find it funny how Obama for the longest time was essentially saying "nuh-uh its all bush" in his speeches that drove the market down in effect the next day he still might be claiming that for all I know, I haven't listened to him open his trap for many month now as I have grown sick of his lies, sugarcoating, and trickery.

TL;DR: Spending doesnt have direct impact on deficit.

Again, this is another liberally-viewed republican-smashing thread, but I'd be glad to change my opinion as long as a serious discussion can go on with a lack of any Klingon face palms (or any, for that matter) Anyways, this is my view, I could be entirely wrong; if so, I'd love to hear an opposite view.

Link the source

assuming you mean the picture, here it is (I'm on comp now):



EDIT: though I suggest you read the article too for full effect.

Using Heritage as a source is questionable. They can be pretty bad about picking and choosing sources and their near complete lack of neutrality is almost indisputable. I also wouldn't consider the NY times as a particularly good source because of their bias, although they tend to be mostly correct in their information.

So does the Washington Post, from which most of the information the source I gave derived their information from

Edit: and they would have been called out for putting up a non-disputable graph up if it held bias in it; it holds just as much bias as Dshiznit's did: zilch. Data is data, and is always held far away from bias. When the two mix, you get "guesses" -- of which neither of the two graphs are. I trust them both, considering you can easily run them past multiple data checks and they'll turn out a-oh-kay. If you couldn't, someone else would've told the flaws on a major news site already, and these charts would have already been taken down ages ago.

The only place where bias comes in is when you consider What they show, as in which data they want to show (conservative sites won't show anything against bush, liberal sites the same but with Obama). They can't change facts with bias.

There are almost always assumptions in collecting data and those assumptions can bias the data if not properly checked. I'm not saying that's the case here, but it's still worthy of consideration with an organization as biased as the Heritage Foundation.

Or the NYtimes, which I don't trust for their highly liberal views. Seems as if both sides are going to have bias here, and there's no point in saying NYtimes is any less biased, because they aren't. Plus, feel free to run that graph through a data check, to do so all you have to do is find the "white house projected deficit for '08" and you're golden.

Actually I was referring to DShiznit.

@DShiznit: Link the source

The New York Times has a "highly liberal bias"? I'm sure they have some "liberal" bias, being a New York newspaper and all, but "highly" is a charged word. And I sure trust the NYTimes a lot more to not manipulate figures and sources to some imagined "agenda" than some random website.

I couldn't agree more, although I can't deny those "projections" could be manipulated if they wanted to.

Here's the article I got this from:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/opinion/sunday/24sun4.html?_r=1&scp=5&sq=obama%20vs.%20bush%20spending&st=cse

I'm glad we're being relatively civil here. All too often I see something like this break down into "You're a nazi; no u" spouting.

I trust the data from the NYtimes, but all they show is irrelevant spending here to say "yo bush is the bad guy, look at his spendingz!" instead of showing the actual debt,which actually matters. They are "highly" liberal because I have yet to see an article from them giving any conservative ideas a fair shot. This is coming from a moderately-conservative guy who gave all sides and sources a fair shot.

I would dispute pretty much all of that. Spending is the cause of debt, by adding additional programs, and by cutting revenue-generating programs(like taxes). The argument is that Obama is on-track to spend far less than his predecessor, so we might at least be heading in the right direction in terms of breaking our habit. Once we get spending under control, it becomes that much easier to reduce the debt over time.

Keep in mind that chart shows 2002-2009 spending for Bush, and Projected spending for Obama. The sad thing is, the pretty much project that Obama will never ever ever spend anything ever again after ~2010 to arrive at those low numbers. I thought it had shown what Obama had spent so far, not some silly bias-based projection. So that chart is 100% flawed. The one I posted is not flawed, because it is pure data that the white house and the CBO admit for debt numbers, and multiple sites show (hmm, where is the NYtimes giving a truthful perspective, again?...)

Anyways, Bush spent more than he had, but not by too much, assuming everything spent while in debt would stimulate the economy enough to get it back in some time. Then, the economy failed for other reasons. And then, the horror in office came in. While he has spent "less" (its easier to spend less money when you've been in the office ~5 years less than the person you're being compared to has) he spent what he didn't need to: his stimulus bill was simply made to pay off his buddies and make unnessicary economy-fixes that did pretty much nothing (heel-o looks like we're headed towards double dip recession anyways), the healthcare bill is falling apart as we speak right now (how many companies demanded a waiver from it on threat of firing thousands of employees due to the bill's horrendous design?), and everything else is a pile of wasted money. And, he spent it when he didn't have the money -- a good president wouldn't have spent on such stupid, unnessicary things and just started by doing something Obama cringes at hearing, "cutting money out of the freakin' budget".

And now he's going to be at his worst because the man doesn't care about this country, just if he'll get re-elected so he can have his white house parties with thousand-dollar steaks again. This is obvious considering he only wanted to sign a debt ceiling agreement that would keep things undisturbed until past 2012.

Ok yeah... Locking topic because this has degenerated from posting speculative and biased charts to making sweeping and clearly exaggerated, uninformed, and just plain retarded statements.

Also @Ashbad, don't claim to be moderate and then spew paragraphs of conservative propaganda bulls*.