Obama's Deficit: The Devil Made Me Do It

Ever since his inauguration, President Obama has said that he "inherited" the federal budget deficit from his predecessor. But immediately upon taking office, Obama signed two new bills, the $787B stimulus and the $410B omnibus, that together about equal the $1.2T deficit he "inherited."Now that the fiscal year has ended, we see that the feds ran a $1.58T deficit for FY 2009, the all-time record and the first deficit over a trillion bucks. This deficit is 3.4 times the $459B deficit of 2008, and 10 times the $160B deficit of 2007, which began when Republicans were still in control of Congress.In his speech to the Joint Session of Congress on September 9, Obama said:Now, part of the reason I faced a trillion-dollar deficit when I walked in the door of the White House is because too many initiatives over the last decade were not paid for -- from the Iraq war to tax breaks for the wealthy.  (Applause.)The fact that things "were not paid for" would seem...(Read Full Article)

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