Economics 101 - Evidence Based Decision Making

You can add Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton to the list:

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TAX CUTS: Governor's plan for Minnesota budget surplus

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ST. PAUL, Minn. (KMSP) -

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Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton is proposing $616 million in tax cuts for married couples and working families in light of the state's projected $1.2 billion budget surplus.

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The governor's supplemental budget and tax cut plan come on the same day the Minnesota House voted to pass a $503-million tax cut plan of its own -- many aspects of which mirror Dayton's proposals.

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Dayton wants to keep $455 million for budget reserves, warning "this cannot be a free for all" in spending the surplus however the Legislature would like.

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By comparison all republican governors from Wisconsin's Scott Walker to Kansas's Sam Brownback to Virginia's Terry McAuliffe to N. Carolina's Pat McCrory are all dealing with budget deficits that republican policies made happen.Thus we can see that the same type of policies (tax cuts for the rich, benefit cuts for the poor) result in the same economic problems on a state level that happened on a national level under Schrubbia.We can also see that Minnesota under Dayton had inherited deficits from previous republican governor that did not get turned around the first year, due to the carryover of previous budgets, but that the policies that Obama would like to see applied nationally did in fact work at the state level, policies that have been blocked by the republicans -- including minimum wage and increasing tax rates on the upper brackets.If you want to see a balanced US federal budget you need to get rid of the republicans.Enjoy.

Oh No, The New Awesome Primary Thread, Message 160Answering here as a more appropriate thread for this issue: Ah, so your numbers only apply to the reported "taxable" income and not to real income. The amounts left after loop holes and offshore accounts have sequestered the majority of the real income. And the Bush tax cuts ... As others have already pointed out debt is different from deficit. There are several factors that make the numbers you see, not least of which is that Schrubbia never reported the debt from his wars but pretended that stealing money from the Social Security fund covered it (money that still has to be repaid).Of course the cost of Scrubbia's wars carries over into Obama's administration -- the war didn't end when Schrubbia left office. The cost of operating Gitmo for instance is all over Scrubbia's lap like a leaky diaper. Seeing as I was talking about deficit rather than debt all we need is a quick google to find:

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What is the Deficit?

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Deficit: The amount by which the government’s total budget outlays exceeds its total receipts for a fiscal year. US Senate Budget Committee

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This year, FY 2015, the federal government in its latest budget has estimated that the deficit will be $564 billion.
Recent US Federal Deficit Numbers:

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Obama Deficits	Bush Deficits
FY 2016*: $474 bln	FY 2009: $1,413 bln
FY 2015*: $583 bln	FY 2008: $458 bln
FY 2014: $483 bln	FY 2007: $161 bln
FY 2013: $680 bln	FY 2013: $680 bln
FY 2012: $1,087 bln	FY 2005: $318 bln
FY 2011: $1,300 bln	for more years click here.
FY 2010: $1,294 bln

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Although the federal deficit is the amount each year by which federal outlays in the federal budget exceed federal receipts, the gross federal debt increases each year by substantially more than the amount of the deficit each year. That is because a substantial amount of federal borrowing is not counted in the budget. See here.

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Note:

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* Federal Deficit is budgeted.
Some people have emailed to insist that the FY 2009 deficit should be assigned to Obama. But conventional wisdom maintains that the deficit in the first year of a president’s first term belongs to his predecessor.

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Now you will likely look at those numbers and complain about 2009 being assigned to Bush and that it should be more like 2008. The problem is that the major difference between 2008 and 2009 is that 2009 honestly reports the cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars when 2008 (or previous years) does not.Then there is the financial crisis and the TARP bailout. Let's go a little further down the page on the link above:

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US Federal Deficits in the 20th Century

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The two major peaks of the federal deficit in the 20th century occurred during World War I and World War II.

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Deficits increased steadily from the 1960s through the early 1990s, and then declined rapidly for the remainder of the 1990s. Federal deficits increased in the early 2000s, and went over 10 percent of GDP in the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008.

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In the recovery from the Crash of 2008 deficits have slowly reduced to 3 percent of GDP.

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I suppose you blame Obama for the financial crisis eh?Please note the dip at 2000 when Clinton left a surplus to Bush and Bush began to squander it, jumping to the peak value that he left to Obama to fix. The highest peak other than WWI and WWII ... that is one of the Schrubbia "legacies" ...Obama has dropped the deficit spending of Bush every year since ... in spite of obstruction from republicans.If you don't think that the Bush tax cuts to the richest people doesn't have long lasting effects on the deficit then you don't understand how to balance a budget.The fantasy of "trickle-down" economics has done more damage to this country than any policy of the Obama administration by orders of magnitude.If you want to balance the budget then we will have to get rid of spendthrift republicans who think "fiscal responsibility" means getting someone else to pay for your mistakes.Stop drinking the Faux Noise Koolaid and look at the real numbers, and the causes of the real numbers.Enjoy

Let's look at the cost of the Iraq war: ALL costs of this war are on Schrubbiea's costs because he put us there with no exit strategy, and no strategy to "win the peace" ... and he sent us there on a pack of lies and no honest plan to pay for it.

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Counting the costs of the Iraq war

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The monetary cost would have been worth it if the result of the Iraq war would have been a better life for the Iraqi people. While they were freed from the tyrant Saddam Hussein, it was at the cost of more than a hundred thousand deaths, more than a million (mainly Christian) refugees, the destruction of the nation’s physical infrastructure, the unleashing of sectarian conflict. If such had been the result of Soviet intervention into a country, we Americans would rightly condemn it.

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Responses to Counting the costs of the Iraq war

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zahidhkhalid Says:
March 21, 2013 at 9:45 am | Reply

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Dear Mr. Phil Ebersole,

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This is what Obama said in October 2002 when he was a Senator:

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I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences.

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I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaeda.

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Famous Quotes From "Slaughterhouse-Five" by Kurt Vonnegut

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This is what the spokesman of Bush said:

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The invasion of Iraq was going to be a cakewalk, and the cost would be paid out of Iraq oil revenues.

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So Obama was right, before the war, Schrubbia was dismally wrong, and Obama is now saddled with the ongoing explosion of costs from the ill-conceived and poorly executed invasion of Iraq. He did not ask for this cost, but he does have to budget for it, and it certainly is part of the deficit spending, and will be until the costs are paid for, be it 10 years or 20 years down the line ... and it is Bushes deficit spending because he failed to budget for it and instead put it on credit for future presidents to pay ... with interest ...Spendthrift careless give-away spending typical of modern GOP.I'm curious how you explain this in your view of things.Enjoy