The money facts above are about right (thanks tabonsell), except for failing to mention the Trillion$ given to non-US banks to save the world by raining dollars and destroying the value of the currency. If not allowed a veto, I am certain the Fed informed the President then in power of the “loans” and “gifts” the taxpayers gave the world banking cartels.

Clinton also has to take credit for NAFTA, but CAFTA and GATT really sealed the deal and the resulting destruction of manufacturing jobs.

The role played by Democrats, in addition to cleaning up what they can when following the spending sprees that are Republican administrations, indicates that neither party can be trusted to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution or the economy.

We need a legitimate third party, fraud free election counting, and a return to real government, preferably of the pre-Wilson style, with women still having the vote.

To a sane mind that is responsible management.

I remember 2008…

Get ready…

Government spending vs private sector capital investment?

Restore sanity?

Fiscal sanity is defined as quadrupling government spending?

You have got to be kidding.

Let’s look at the records of the past five presidents and decide where the out-of-control has been.

Starting with Ronald Reagan, spending by government began to expand to today’s deficit-and-debt “problem”.

Reagan inherited a spending budget from Jimmy Carter of $678.241 billion. He steadily increased the budget until he left office spending $1.143 trillion. That is a 68.8% increase in spending in eight years, or about 8.6% annual increase. At the end of Reagan’s presidency his tax collections amounted to $991.105 billion, up from the $617.766 in Carter’s last year. That is a 60% growth in tax receipts; the difference between growth in spending and growth in tax receipts being the beginning of the nation’s spiral into massive debt.

George H. W. Bush took Reagan’s spending up from $1.143 trillion to $1.461 trillion, a 27.8% increase in four years; or about a 7% annual increase. His tax collections rose from the $991.105 billion in Reagan’s last year to $1.154 trillion in Bush’s last year, a 16.5% increase that’s well below the increase in spending.

Bill Clinton, on the other hand, had just the reverse of the Republican record. His spending rose to $1.863 trillion (27.5% over eight years, or 3.4% yearly) while tax receipts grew from Bush’s $1.154 trillion to $1.991 trillion, a whopping 72.5% increase. But Clinton was constantly harangued by the GOP for his “out-of-control spending” as every Republican in Congress voted against the budgets that produced positive results.

Of the four presidents who preceded Obama, George W. Bush had the most-miserable record. He almost doubled Clinton’s spending, going from the $1.863 trillion he inherited to $3.518 trillion in his last budget (for the 2009 fiscal year that started October 1, 2008, not calendar year), an increase of 88.8%; or 11.1% per year over his eight years in office. But the tax receipts of $1.991 trillion of Clinton’s last year came to only $2.105 in Bush’s last year, a mere 5.7% better than what he inherited. There was one year in Bush’s midterm that tax receipts were slightly higher, but only with a 22% increase; still not enough to justify his reckless-and-irresponsible economic stewardship.

Then came Obama and GOP charges that his economic performance has put the nation in peril. The facts show that in Obama’s first budget that was entirely his own, spending actually was reduced from Bush’s $3.518 trillion to $3.456 trillion. Over the first two years, spending rose slightly because of Obama’s second budget. But the spending total of $3.603 trillion was only a 2.5% increase over Bush’s last budget. That 1.25% increase per annum is no problem when compared to Bush’s 11.1% yearly increase. With the second budget, Obama’s spending was about $85 billion above Bush’ s spending while tax collection increased about $200 billion. It’s clear that Obama has restored fiscal sanity to government; for that he is maligned and ridiculed.

These figures–that show the debt right wingers rail against to be an entirely Republican creation–are not mysterious; they are easy to find for anyone willing to look and can be found at the Office of Management and Budget. Why they remain unknown to the news media and a wanna-be president (who promises to resurrect the policies of Reagan and both Bushes) is the real mystery.

As anyone can see; the GOP is bad for the economy and business, always has been, always will be. Democrats ought to emphasize to the American public that every Republican administration since World War One has trashed the economy -–some several times–or made a GOP recession worse (Gerald Ford) and Democrats ought not be afraid to say so. And every tax cut for the American aristocracy by the GOP has preceded a recession or depression. In fact every American—especially those in control and most assuredly those in Congress—ought to get and digest the book “Saving America: Using Democratic Capitalism to Rescue the Nation from Economic Folly” (written by a former Denver Post editor for Algora Publishing of New York City) that shows the legacy of the Republican Party as opposed to the Democratic Party. A hint: Republicans come in second in every economic category worth researching (Chapter 11). It also proposes a plan to save the nation with real reform rather than nibbling around the edges of a corrupt system.

It is evident that the records of “failure” belong only to Republicans and the Obama agenda has been to restore sanity to government budgets.

We also live in a capitalist society, and in capitalism spending is the lifeblood of the system. It needs to be enhanced, not reduced.

You can’t win over night or over the course of a year, you keep going and growing.
Even you can’t deny going from 3% last election to 20% in four years is huge growth.

I get that our nominee will need to be a little more flexible, but Paul did the job of getting constitutional arguments back into the republican party.

Don’t know how you feel about that, I think it’s a great thing.

Everyone needs to focus on your state and local elections, that’s how we win grassroots style it’s not overnight change that will happen, the beast must be cut into small pieces to fight it.

Good luck romneys people they were mostly pleasant in Seattle, but screw Rick sanitorium and his religious nutbaggery. Those are our true enemy, Romney was a compromise for most republicans.