Feb 22nd, 2009 at 9:33 am
Obama’s Budget
Clearly the big story of the day is the deliberate leakage of Obama budget plans. The highlights:
- Obama wants the 2013 deficit to be half the size of the 2009 deficit he inhereted.
- The 2010 deficit is going to be large.
- Specifically, we’ll go from $1.2 trillion in 2009 to $1.5 trillion in 2010 to $533 billion in 2013.
- Spending cuts are expected to come from the expiration of stimulus money, from a reduction in “emergency” appropriations for Iraq and Afghanistan, from reductions in Medicare Advantage giveaways to private insurance firms, and I believe from some other form of medical efficiencies.
- Revenue enhancements are projected to come from the expiration of the Bush tax cuts, from ending the hedge fund manager’s loophole, and from carbon auction permits.
- Overall, the idea is to get back down to a deficit of about 3 percent of GDP, but to have a better health care system when we do it.
I assume more and more info on this will become available in the next few days.
77 Responses to “Obama’s Budget”
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February 22nd, 2009 at 9:44 am
Given the damage they have done to the country, would it not be politic to propose a fiscal emergency surtax on financial industry compensation judged to be unwarranted and excessive? Go beyond that and make it a surtax on all excessive executive compensation. Let the Republicans try to argue to the contrary.
February 22nd, 2009 at 9:52 am
I can’t believe this will actually happen–going from a 1.5 trillon dollar annual deficit to a .5 trillion annual deficit is a fiscal drag of seven percent of GDP. There is not much chance that the economy will be robust enough to handle that.
February 22nd, 2009 at 9:53 am
Okay you trim the military spending and you increase access to health care (i.e improve efficiency) and voila you’re in some fiscal nirvana. Could anyone tell me what outrageously optimistic economic forecast Obama is using to base the predictions on? And I wonder where the new New Deal fits into this?
February 22nd, 2009 at 9:57 am
Okay you trim the military spending and you increase access to health care (i.e improve efficiency) and voila you’re in some fiscal nirvana. Could anyone tell me what outrageously optimistic economic forecast Obama is using to base the predictions on?
Because a 500 billion deficit is “fiscal nirvana”?
At least the era of Bush’s “outrageously optimistic” forecasts of all kinds is over.
February 22nd, 2009 at 9:59 am
This doesn’t require fiscal nirvana–.5 trillion is one of the largest deficits ever. All it takes is a reasonable economic recovery by 2013, not bailing things out and very modest tax changes. Probably doesn’t even require military reductions. The problem is that the economy won’t be able to that fast a reduction.
February 22nd, 2009 at 10:07 am
I really don’t get this lead of cutting the deficit. Not because its unlikely to happen, no one will remember the budget forecast anyway, but because it gives further cover for Republicans arguing that spending will increase the nasty, evil deficit and even the President agrees!
February 22nd, 2009 at 10:08 am
Why oh Why and Matt Wilbert,
It is fiscal nirvana in the sense that it is low enough to keep Obama politically untouchable. Bush ran five hundred billion dollar deficits since 2003 and if Obama achieves the same (with some rhetorical promise to cut it further by 2016) there is no way the fiscal conservatives can touch him in 2012.
February 22nd, 2009 at 10:14 am
“Ending the hedge fund manager’s loophole”? Has he told Chuck Schumer about this?
February 22nd, 2009 at 10:23 am
Why don’t we just confiscate all of Bob H’s compensation? He’s established that he has no problem with compensation confiscation, so he shouldn’t mind.
February 22nd, 2009 at 10:30 am
What Rob said. I thought the deficit didn’t matter because spending was good? Remember, there’s “the” multiplier to think of. Why would anyone here want to cut any spending on anything whatsoever? What gives? It’s oh so mysterious
February 22nd, 2009 at 10:34 am
All those screeching about tax hikes, should know that they refer to the expiration of the Bush tax cuts. This hews with Obama’s campaign promise. Given the state of the economy you cannot tell me that the Bush helped the economy. The current state of the economy proves how fallacious the Laffer curve is. The Bush tax cuts are responsible for the budget deficit.
February 22nd, 2009 at 10:35 am
Um…
All those screeching about tax hikes, should know that they refer to the expiration of the Bush tax cuts. This hews with Obama’s campaign promise. Given the state of the economy you cannot tell me that the Bush tax cuts helped the economy. The current state of the economy proves how fallacious the Laffer curve is. The Bush tax cuts are responsible for the budget deficit.
February 22nd, 2009 at 10:38 am
Increased spending without tax increases will indeed increase the deficit, and in the long run those debts will be a drag on the economy. Just because the Republicans are saying it doesn’t mean it isn’t true.
Well, DTM, Austrians and Keynesians agree on that much.
Points to Sonic Charmer, by the way, for post 11. If only his positions on foreign policy were as sensible as his positions on the budget.
February 22nd, 2009 at 10:57 am
Rubinomics wins the day in White House inner circles, at least for now.
February 22nd, 2009 at 10:57 am
I think the point of the announcement is simply to show that the White House understands both halves of the Keynesian equation.
You may need to run deficits in bad times. But as good times return, you have to pull back to avoid generating unmanageable debt.
2013 may be an ambitious goal, if this recession turns into a lingering U- or L-shaped affair. But I’m glad to have the goal on the table. And I’m *very* glad that all the stories are stressing the end of Bush’s accounting gimmicks.
It seems to me that Obama is leaving Republicans without a constructive oppositional role. They failed to walk the walk of fiscal responsibility, so their only competitive advantage lay in being the ones who were *talking* about it. If Obama talks about it too — and lays out a concrete deficit-reduction plan — Republican legislators are going to look like emptily-posturing obstacles.
February 22nd, 2009 at 11:10 am
The best thing about the budget is that it is honest. It goes out 10 years instead of the lying Bush government’s 5, it does not include the always gone AMT revenue that the lying Bush budgets included and does include the cost of fighting overseas which the lying Bush budgets excluded. . Raise some money by taxing those who don’t need the money, cut some spending from the budgets of those who can’t present auditable books, get a little fiscal discipline, voila. Balance a few years down the road. All in all a good start
February 22nd, 2009 at 11:15 am
Where does it come from. I’d say $800 billion worth of not extra stimulus is the bulk of it.
February 22nd, 2009 at 11:28 am
Rubinomics wins the day in White House inner circles, at least for now.
Whoa whoa whoa there, pardner. He’s talking about running a half-trillion dollar deficit. That’s not exactly Bob Rubin’s wet dream.
Okay you trim the military spending Trim? Ending expenditures on the Iraq War is “trimming?” Whatever.
And I wonder where the new New Deal fits into this? Did you miss this part?
Spending cuts are expected to come from the expiration of stimulus money,
February 22nd, 2009 at 11:29 am
Well, well, well.
The “wealthy” in California will get large tax hikes from the state and from the nation.
And all those “wealthy” Californians who ridiculed some vague beneath-me type of Americans as Appalachians are now going to pay the piper.
Given that California was the mother-lode of the subprime rip-off due to lax state regulation of mortgage brokers selling those rip-offs, I’d say they got their just reward.
Notice, that the governors of both Florida and California (the 2 states at the center of the subprime crap) are eagerly running to the federal tit to rescue them from their own poor governing.
Friend of mine—a lifetime liberal Democrat—-calls this stimulus bill the “bail out California and Florida” bill.
Does this mean Steven Spielberg will be moving to Arizona, like all the other Californians?
Oh wait: Schwarzenegger gave the big-time Hollywood producers big tax breaks, while raising gas taxes and income taxes on the “regular” people.
Will Schwarzenegger be tightening the regs on who gets mortgage broker licenses so it doesn’t happen all over again? Will Crist do the same in Florida?
Don’t hold your breath.
February 22nd, 2009 at 11:35 am
Is this the same Mary who incessantly whined about the usurper Obama robbing the election from the flawless Hillary?
February 22nd, 2009 at 11:38 am
Is this the same Mary who incessantly whined about the usurper Obama robbing the election from the flawless Hillary?
El Cid,
I was thinking the same thing.
February 22nd, 2009 at 11:42 am
Never said any such a thing, Cid.
You knew that when you typed your shallow driveby.
February 22nd, 2009 at 11:50 am
Oh, poor Mary.
That might have been a plausible argument, if the Bush administration hadn’t gone to court and successfully prevented states from implementing their own mortgage regulations.
February 22nd, 2009 at 11:51 am
Someone really, really, resents California and Florida.
Look, I understand. I live in the midwest. But maybe give it a couple of months and wait for winter to be over before you frame a whole political philosophy around this . . .
February 22nd, 2009 at 11:52 am
Is it even fair to call this a Republican claim anymore. Mankiw started contradicting himself on this when he was one of Bush’s econ guys (thus going against his own textbook), but that’s because he sold his integrity for a shot at some type of power. Liberals (plus cosmopolitan multicultural academics like Tyler Cowen and Drezner), sadly, have had to play the role of both the reasonable right and the reasonable left on economic matters for years now.
February 22nd, 2009 at 11:53 am
Mary, your clue has arrived.
February 22nd, 2009 at 12:15 pm
Carbon auction, not glue.
February 22nd, 2009 at 12:20 pm
For the record, and I don’t know quite enough to know f it is Keynesian or Post-K or whatever, but there is some dispute about this.
Gov’t Spending creates taxable income. Taxes support the currency. In a fiat currency system, taxes are not connected to spending. How much the gov’t can print or borrow I guess would need to be determined empirically in contingent circumstances. If the spending were efficient or increased productivity, and if people were willing to buy treasuries I think the deficits could be very very large, like 5-10T annually.
Think about WWII.
The US could use those treasuries in currency swaps to build overseas demand.
February 22nd, 2009 at 12:31 pm
Bush ran five hundred billion dollar deficits since 2003 and if Obama achieves the same (with some rhetorical promise to cut it further by 2016) there is no way the fiscal conservatives can touch him in 2012.
There’s no way fiscal conservatives can touch him no matter what. A vanishingly tiny percentage of Americans voters possess a reasonable grasp of economics, and an understanding of the US government’s fiscal big picture. I’m not aware of a single national election that has been decided one way or another by fiscal policy debates. To the extent that elections are influenced by economics (and they most certainly are), the key factor is living standards (inflation, real wages, unemployment, etc.). The real danger to Obama from deficit spending is the possibility of a backup in interest rates. I reckon he’s prudent do put out some concrete plans on how he plans to reduce government borrowing, although there is ample danger here, too, as posters above have pointed out (ie., the economic drag from an overly rapid decline in the deficit). Not an easy time to be president, for sure.
February 22nd, 2009 at 12:33 pm
My little 11 year old wrapped it all up in her thoughts about raising “the rich” peoples taxes. She simply said “If you make people that own apartments or own companies pay more taxes, they will raise their prices and then the poor people will pay more.” It does trickle down!
February 22nd, 2009 at 12:39 pm
The thought that the government will cut spending when some short term program expires is laughable. The government has almost no history of managed to make such a program happen. Do you really think that the Democrats want to be accused of harming some poor person in a couple of years by cutting their benefits? The only way to solve the deficit is to tax at a higher level and make people feel 100% of the pain of government spending. Given that the interested paid on government debt in 2013 will be much higher than today, any future spendign cuts will be offset with additional debt service and the already know expansion of the current entitlements.
Also, anyone who believes that the government can expand entitlements and lower spending is a fool. The government has zero history of success is doing such things.
The most likely scenerio in 2012/2013 is that the national budget mess will resemble the current budget mess in California with Democrats spending like crazy and blaming Republicans for not raising taxes enough to offset the increased long term entitlements.
February 22nd, 2009 at 12:45 pm
Anybody remember Billmon? He posts at DKos sometimes now. This, from yesterday, is very good on debt & deficits.
He does this in a chart, which I can’t paste:
Debt to GDP ratios:
Financial:638%
Private:156%
Gov’t:38%
Now we are in a Fisher debt deflation, and that financial debt is being unwound. The gov’t will not need to replace it all, but will probably need to replace part, unless Obama insanely manages to bubble Wall Street up again.
Obama’s budget just forecasts a repeat of FDR’s 1937 blunder in plain view.
Federal taxes are at 18% of GDP, state & local at 16 and dropping fast, so probably at 12 now = total 30% of GDP. Federal spending is now at 26% of GDP, again State & municipal dropping fast. That is an 8% gap, creating the deficit.
I think we need to take federal taxes up to where the total revenues are around 45% of GDP, and the print/borrow/spending needs to be around 55% of GDP for at least a decade. There just is not, nor will there be for a long time, any healthy private or local economies.
Taxes finance borrowing.
February 22nd, 2009 at 12:57 pm
Deficit spending pushes the payments to the taxpayers of the future, and also creates a form of implied taxation through currency devaluation (aka, higher inflation).
Well, we have had 25+ years experience with this, and unless you’re a crazed Austrian goldbug, you gotta wonder when the bill, in taxes or inflation, will come due.
There is also the post-war history, here and abroad. The huge war debt did not require any immediate huge hike in taxes in 1946, I think we managed pretty well.
I am not saying you are wrong, I jyst think we need to think about this more carefully. The bastard Keynesian green eyeshade deficit-hawk economics, embodied now in people like Christy Romer, does not have me completely convinced.
I’ve said enough. Read the Billmon.
February 22nd, 2009 at 1:01 pm
DTM,
When gasoline prices went to $4 a gallon, businesses raised their prices. They had to instead of losing money on every transaction. Also, business require a certain rate of return to justify staying in business. If the government raises taxes, many marginal businesses will close and the remainders will raise prices.
To argue that increased costs to a business are never felt by the consumer is foolish.
February 22nd, 2009 at 1:14 pm
Sure, superdestroyer, but to argue that they are passed on to consumers at anything close to a 1:1 ration is equally foolish.
February 22nd, 2009 at 1:16 pm
For fucks sake, you pay taxes on *profit*, it’s not a fucking input cost. You don’t know what the hell you are talking about, and it’s irritating.
February 22nd, 2009 at 1:20 pm
Debt to GDP ratios:
Financial:638%
Private:156%
Gov’t:38%
Bob: Billmon’s chart tracks the increase in these debt ratios since the Ford administration — not the actual current percentages. The US government’s public debt equals something like 60% of GDP.
February 22nd, 2009 at 1:23 pm
Given that California was the mother-lode of the subprime rip-off due to lax state regulation of mortgage brokers selling those rip-offs, I’d say they got their just reward.
I’m sure that there is another reason why (majority non-white) California was the mother-lode other than just lax regulation.
February 22nd, 2009 at 1:23 pm
If Obama and his people have confidence in this then that means we do not have an economic crisis now and they know we don’t or think they know it. The projections made by taking past history and plugging it into the future after this little rough patch.
I hope they are right. Well except for the part where things are going back to just about where they were.
As it stands it looks like the budget projections from an alternate universe. In and of itself it’s a testament how far down the rabbit hole the White House has gone in a very short time. Let me suggest that this projection is actually worse than Bush’s early ones which projected balance, at worst, as far as the eye could see.
February 22nd, 2009 at 1:23 pm
Isn’t that what Republicans do — give tax breaks to rich businesses and increase the burden on the middle class and poor?
February 22nd, 2009 at 1:24 pm
That’s going to be very difficult unless he gets a combination of economic growth plus restrained federal spending after 2010. Since presumably he’s considering this seriously, I’m assuming that he’s hoping to get his major expenditures in health care and the economy done before 2011.
It depends on how economic growth is in 2010, but that’s probably a good assumption, particularly if you have to pay for a costly re-organization of the health care system.
I’m assuming that’s Orzag’s predictions. We’ll have to wait and see.
Were there any specific number values placed for each of these? I can’t imagine Afghanistan getting any cheaper over the next 2-3 years if Obama is serious about stepping up the war, and the Medicare Advantage giveaway is relatively small potatoes. The report about taxing hedge funds at the normal tax rate instead of the capital gains’ rate is helpful.
We’ll just have to wait and see (particularly since getting a full-on carbon trading scheme is a tall order, which is why I’m more supportive of a carbon tax).
Obama is going to have to be careful with this one. If some part of private sector health care switches over the government role,it’s going to show up on government balance sheets – and the Republicans will try to attack him for it.
Personally, I’d merge SCHIP, Medicare, Medicaid, and other supplements into one unified federal-state public health insurance system, and eliminate some of the bureaucracy.
February 22nd, 2009 at 1:24 pm
Why not just send all the illegal immigrants home and that will do more for cutting the deficit than any other one item.
February 22nd, 2009 at 1:25 pm
CRA loans can’t be sold, or the lender loses credit for the loan.
There is no plausible way CRA loans could be responsible for a problem caused by loans sold and packaged as MBSs.
Scapegoat FAIL!
February 22nd, 2009 at 1:34 pm
Jesus Christ, Sherri, if you’re taking policy cues from an eleven-year-old, maybe it’s a clue that you’re not thinking hard enough.
Memo to the brainless: prices are set by the marketplace, not by the tax structure. Conservatives should be able to understand this. When taxes go up on “rich people,” they don’t just respond by hiking up prices, because they can’t.
There’s an economic concept called tax incidence, which basically just indicates the percentage of tax increases on producers that get passed down to consumers. Tax incidence varies by market type. Tell your eleven-year-old that it doesn’t “just trickle down,” and then read a freaking newspaper sometime.
February 22nd, 2009 at 1:37 pm
Joe,
You’re wrong. CRA loans are bought and sold all the time. A lender may need to buy CRA loans because they haven’t originated enough.
February 22nd, 2009 at 1:42 pm
CRA loans can’t be sold, or the lender loses credit for the loan.
There is no plausible way CRA loans could be responsible for a problem caused by loans sold and packaged as MBSs.
Scapegoat FAIL!
Considering that we were told a few months ago that the CRA has been in effect since the mid-1970s so it could not possibly have anything to do with the mortgage crisis that started in the 2000s, and that Steve Sailer has shown than there was a CRA explosion in the 2000s that blows that theory to shreds, you’ll pardon me if I have a hard time taking your denials completely at face value.
February 22nd, 2009 at 1:45 pm
Jimbo,
If the market price doesn’t cover the increased tax structure, what option does a business have but to increase prices? I guess they could also go out of business. To argue that the tax structure has no effect on price is ridculous.
February 22nd, 2009 at 1:46 pm
It is false to say that he inherited a $1.2 trillion deficit. In the first place, at least 1/3 of that deficit results from spending that Obama and this Congress passed in the stimulus bill. And in the second place, there is no 2009 budget yet. The Democrats in Congress refused to pass one in the last Congress, and they are working on it now. So the numbers outside of the portion of the deficit that resulted from the stimulus bill are complete fictions – they are based on appropriations laws that don’t exist.
February 22nd, 2009 at 1:47 pm
,
You’re wrong. CRA loans are bought and sold all the time. A lender may need to buy CRA loans because they haven’t originated enough.
Which basically means, that government intervention in the market exists.
February 22nd, 2009 at 1:54 pm
I am not wrong, Jedd. Read my comment again: “CRA loans cannot be sold, OR THE LENDER LOSES CREDIT FOR THE LOAN.”
Therefore, nobody originating a loan which is eventually sold could possibly be motivated to make that loan by the CRA, as it gains them nothing from the CRA.
A lender may make a loan in a CRA-covered neighborhood, but if they are doing so in order to sell them, then the CRA has nothing to do with that loan being made.
A lot of non-CRA-covered companies – like Countrtwide – made loans in CRA-covered areas, in order to sell them, but since they are not covered by the CRA, then the CRA had nothing to do with the decision to originate the loan.
You know, funny thing about lenders like Countrywide: the loans they made in low-mod neighborhoods ended up having much higher default rates, and much higher percentages of loans defined as unaffordable, than the loans made by CRA-covered institutions in those same neighborhoods. This is because non-CRA-covered companies were making these loans to sell, while the CRA encourages (indeed, requires) deposit institutions to hold those loans, or lose their credits. So, the CRA-covered banks ended up with much, much more responsible lending practices than those non-banks that weren’t covered by the CRA.
The CRA, in other words, reduced the loan-default/irresponsible lending problem. People who would have otherwise taken some stupid loan from Countrywide were instead able to get a responsible loan from a boring old bank. Sadly, the CRA only applies to federally-insured deposit institutions, so its ability to foster more responsible lending and borrowing practices was limited.
And regardless of all of that, lending in low-mod neighborhoods is such a puny segment of the mortgage market (both in terms of dollar values, and in terms of number of loans) that it’s laughable to look at anything going on there as having an noticeable effect on the overall financial sector.
Now, cash-out refinances, on the other hand, had almost nothing to do with low-mod neighborhoods, and were almost exclusively a middle-class and above, suburban problem. They also constituted over half of Freddie and Fannie’s holdings, and over half of all subprime loans. But, hey, there’s no angle for blaming poor people and minorities for that problem.
February 22nd, 2009 at 1:58 pm
Which basically means, that government intervention in the market exists.
…and since, as we all know, “government intervention in TEH MARKET” is an undifferentiated commodity, that can only be measured by the cubic foot, metric ton, or acre, we don’t really have to understand anything about how that intervention actually effected the market in question, and can pretty much just assert whatever cause and effect we like between any given government intervention and any outcome we wish to attribute to it.
I’d call this shockingly shoddy reasoning, but really, the shock has worn off from seeing it so much.
Glaivester,
You can remain as deliberately ignorant as you want; it doesn’t really matter to me.
February 22nd, 2009 at 2:00 pm
“Memo to the brainless: prices are set by the marketplace, not by the tax structure”
Government is part of that marketplace. When income taxes are raised then government becomes more attuned to supporting products and services delivered by its major tax payers. Government does operate like a business partner, though slowly and barely noticeable from quarter to quarter.
February 22nd, 2009 at 2:07 pm
I used to buy and trade CRA loans in the secondary market. Yes the lender loses the credit for the loan but the buyer gets the credit.
I didn’t blame the whole crisis on CRA, I just stated that CRA loans are bought and sold all the time.
Regarding govt. intervention, again, no cause and effect stated by me. Just the fact that their are CRA requirements of banks is an example of govt. intervention. Which goes against the argument of the no regulation, free wheelin’ markets of the the last 10 or so years.
February 22nd, 2009 at 2:19 pm
No, you didn’t, Judd. You used to buy and trade loans that were not made under the CRA, on the secondary market, because only businesses not covered by the CRA sell their loans.
What you were buying and selling were non-CRA loans (in the sense that they were not made by companies regulated by the CRA) that were made in low-mod neighborhoods. CRA loans are jealously held by lenders, in order to boost their CRA ratings.
If I read more into your statement than you intended, I beg your pardon.
Finally, the point of my “undifferentiated commodity” comment is that the existence of government intervention to do X, Y, and Z in no way undermines the argument that deregulation played a major role in this problem. The fact that there are CRA regulations, wetland regulations, and air quality regulations tells us absolutely nothing about issues like unimpeded leveraging, verification procedures for loans, or the use of side-bets on the performance of other derivatives to meet capitalization requirements. There were most certainly no regulation, free wheelin’ markets over the last 10 years.
February 22nd, 2009 at 2:35 pm
Judd,
I apologize, I don’t know your business. For all I know, there were some loans in low-mod neighborhoods made by FDIC-insured banks that came across your desk.
What I’m saying is, given the incentives involved, I strongly doubt that they made up a substantial part of the volume.
February 22nd, 2009 at 2:44 pm
don’t know anything bout all this. all i know is my husband had a stroke.i am very ill, with no health insurance,isn’t it a shame,my hisband worked for years, in the nasty coalmines,eating all that dust and noe when we need help, theres none for people like us.when are we going to taken care of.i guess we are considered to be middle class, everything and evertime we go our to ask for something,our income is to high,doesn’t matter that we have 2 kids in college ,a mortsge,and a mountian of medical bills.help people like us,PLEASE
February 22nd, 2009 at 6:47 pm
Joe,
Their certainly weren’t many FDIC banks selling CRA, but we would run into circumstances where some banks needed to buy some CRA loans to meet their requirement. It was not a huge amount, for sure. I only stating that CRA loans are bought and sold, maybe it was just CRA elgible loans, I could be mistaken.
February 22nd, 2009 at 7:54 pm
Judd,
I’m not saying it never happened, just that loans made and sold because of the CRA cannot possibly explain to any discernible degree, the proliferation of crappy lending practices.
February 22nd, 2009 at 9:22 pm
Dee, learn how to spell then I might give you a rats ass. Until then let Darwin work his magic.
February 23rd, 2009 at 12:44 am
Countrywide… is often cited as the ultimate refutation… Countrywide, the poster child of the Bubble, wasn’t covered under the CRA because it wasn’t a bank. It merely originated, securitized, and serviced mortgages.
But why wasn’t Countrywide ever brought under a law that was frequently amended?
Because, as Gramm suggests, Mozilo constantly pledged his devotion to massive minority lending. (And, don’t forget, he handed out below-market mortgages to power players like Sen. Chris Dodd). Gramm complains:
Phil Gramm And The Respectable Right Flinch From Minority Mortgage Meltdown, Steve Sailer
March 1st, 2009 at 11:38 am
All of this assumes that his plan for the country will work. I don’t believe it will, just as FDR’s New Deal did not work. In 1939, 7 years after the New Deal began, unemployment was still running 20%. And, when it doesn’t work it will mean the hole he is digging for us now will become ever larger, not smaller, as he promises.
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The American people trust that Barack Obama will conscientiously address budget issues.
LONG LIVE PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA!
Speaking of Barack Obama:
Barack Obama is a racial-minority individual and does not like racism:
(I) I do solemnly swear by Almighty God that George W. Bush committed hate crimes of epic proportions and with the stench of terrorism which I am not at liberty to mention. Many people know what Bush did. And many people will know what Bush did—even until the end of the world. Bush was absolute evil. Bush is now like a fugitive from justice. Bush is a psychological prisoner. Bush often worries. In any case, Bush will go down in history in infamy.
(II) It is opined that Bill Clinton committed terrifying, racist, hate crimes during his presidency, and I am not free to say anything further about it.
(III) What if basically all racial-minority people would subscribe to the interpretations that George Herbert Walker Bush committed monstrous, racist, hate crimes while he was the President of the United States? It will eventually come out: it is only a matter of time.
(IV) I know it may be hard to believe. However, it is absolutely true that Ronald Wilson Reagan committed horrible, racist, hate crimes during his presidency. Numbers 32:23: “Be sure your sins will find you out.”
Respectfully Submitted by Andrew Yu-Jen Wang, J.D. Candidate
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Messiah College, Grantham, PA
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