If you think the TARP, Iraq and Afghanistan wars and Recovery Act funds spent to stop the economic collapse at the end of the Bus admin are GOP debt, then the GOP has r
un up over 75% of our debt. If you think they should go on Obama's plate with his slice of the pie, then the GOP "only" run up about 62% of the debt. Maybe dems are "Tax and Spend..." but the GOP seems to be into "spend what you don't got AND cut taxes to make sure you'll have even less when the bills come due."
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_debt_by_U.S._presidential_terms
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_debt_by_U.S._presidential_terms
Congress is responsible for passing budgets. To be accurate and fair, you need to look at the party make-up of Congress and not the President.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comments. Yes, you're right, Congress passes the budget bill, but the President has to sign it. And, by tradition, the President produces the initial budget proposal, and turns it loose for modification.
ReplyDeleteIt has always seemed to me that one cannot completely or definitively attribute the budget to either Congress or the President, but the President has the final over-riding "vote."
As the President first proposes and has the last clear chance to sign or veto, with plenty of input in between, I believe the President gets the lion's share of the responsibility.
BTW, if you go o the source I used, you can see how Congress was controlled over this same time period.
As a small example of relative power, look at Reagan's first term - there was a dem controlled House and repub Senate. And yet he was able to get his budget, and especially his radical tax cuts, passed.
Or, another example. In the first 2 years of his admin, Congress was numerically controlled by the dems, but between Senate filibusters and abuse of the process where one senator could delay legislation without any effective counter-leadership by Obama, no one can say the dems controlled the legislative process.
Don't believe today's Obama defenders who try to tell you there isn't much a president can do without numerical control of Congress.
There hasn't been much Obama could do, apparently, but he has not proved to be an effective leader of President.