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| Note: The Colored Bars are the plots of the expanded US Debt by president - using the numbers provided by The Grio.com article. Since Obama is the sitting president the data for the 2009 & 2010 debt limit increases and the proposed (presently under debate) numbers came from press reports. The projections for future debt comes from Congressional Budget Office federal deficit projections. (I will afix the actual numbers for the CBO projections through 2016 - and remove this part of the note) |
On Wednesday of this week I sat in on a presentation review meeting with my boss's boss. I was brought to the point of cursing in my mind as he took the data that I had collected on behalf of an important client and then trashed them. He demanded quantitative information and not "platitudes" for the consulting recommendations to be presented to the customer. At the end of the meeting I got past my frustration at having invested the time compiling information that I had collected and then edited from a team of other people ultimately having to toss a large portion of it.
A few day's later we had the actual customer meeting and it turned out that my up-line who pissed me off was correct in what the customer was going to do. They challenged us to prove our findings using empirical data and not just pronouncements.
Years of this type of "abuse" - first by those inside of my company who don't want to be embarrassed by data - and then later by customers who are taking our recommendations and then needing to convince their own management that the strategy is sound.
In summary - scrutiny and then defense of your "numbers" is a good thing. It forces those who generate opinion and analysis to operate within certain boundaries.
What Was The Grio-Root's Agenda In Their Obama Bad Credit Article?
When you see an operative projecting "Obama the 'Black President' " into a policy debate that has nothing to do with his race - you should understand that you are dealing with a scoundrel who is seeking to compel YOU into a racially defensive posture so that they can ultimately advance their own agenda.
The analysis of The Grio's Robert Henderson Jr should be filed along with the recent open letter from radio mogul Tom Joyner who suggested that Blacks should reelect Commander In Chief Obama for the purposes "Black racial pride".
As you come across people like this you are advised to hide your wallet.
The chart above attempts to unravel the application of factual data to make a dishonest point. This is what Mr Henderson is guilty of doing.
Shame On You Mr Henderson & The Root.Com
Let me start out with my conclusion:
WHEN (not if) Commander In Chief Barack Obama, having been successfully elected to a second term in office is also tagged as having grown a debt in 8 years that is larger than George W Bush's ($6.1T) debt - do not expect the "Obama Fist Bump Black Press" to report this news as an INDICTMENT.
These are strange days that we are living in.
If you have ever took time to sit back and analyze the key principles of Hard-Left/Progressive-Fundamentalist economic policy analysis, you'd know that "Ronald Reagan" is at the heart of their discussions which ask "What happened to the economic engine of the United States that it is now derailed?"
"Reagan inflated the national debt!!! Clinton left office with a surplus"are their key talking points. (In addition to them targeting Reagan for "union busting" w/ the PATCO strike and his visit to Philadelphia MS to send a message to Black people).
It is quite odd, then, to hear progressives of today point to Reagan's debt spending - not in the pretext of spitting upon him but instead to gain cover on behalf of Commander In Chief Obama so that he too can put through blog buster debt spending.
Seriously people - how do you do these things? How do you logically promote something that you had previously denounced YET receive comfort that it is your ADVERSARY who is the hypocrite because he now opposed what he once supported? In the consciousness of 'Keep Your Enemy On Trial" - you are not prone to see your own shift in viewpoint as well. Are ye not less of a hypocrite?
The bottom line of the graph below is that Mr Henderson of The Grio-Root is using a slight of hand in which he has no respect for TIME (terms in office).
We have presidents that have served two terms (8 years) upon which their debt is attached to and we have few that have a few that only served one term in office. Commander In Chief Obama has only been in office since January 2009 - this is about 2.5 years out of his 4 years of a presidential term.
Mr Henderson main agenda is to ask "Where is the outrage" over these others. He uses the virtual qualifiers of "!" and then "Even" to give away his hand. (Side note: There are still some propagandists who are going around saying that Clinton cleared the US debt, with some of these people claiming that he had a $5.4T SURPLUS that Bush squandered. Some people do not understand the difference between a debt and a deficit)
The fact is, Mr Henderson - there were two Debt Ceiling Increases under Obama already -
- $290B in late 2009
- $1,900B in 2010
Henderson appears content to enumerate the tale of the tape with these other presidents, hitting Bush II in particular. He appears loathed to talk about Commander In Chief Obama's TRAJECTORY which has him on pace to exceed Bush's deficit spending.
Fear not though people. If the Obama Fist Bump Black Press is allowed to edit the messages - we will be told that Obama spent the money because he had to first clean up after Bush II and then he had a Republican House that did everything possible to wreck the Black President's credit report. (Oh - excuse me. They are already reporting that message)
5 comments:
CF,
I'm not sure what your chart is depicting. Is this incremental additions to the debt for each administration? It appears that this is what's being depicted.
In your analysis here, I believe a few major issues are missing as regards the growth in the national debt under Obama:
1) Due to the depression, tax receipts are down significantly against a spending base that was already in place from prior administrations.
2) You would need to isolate the cost of the Bush wars from the totals under Obama. If you want to hold him accountable for Libya fine, but Iraq and Afghanistan were wholly Bush initiatives hence these costs are continuing from the Bush administration.
3) The cumulative debt incurred up to Bush impacts the Obama budgets by the way of debt service costs which will be ratcheting up once a risk premium is assessed on treasuries. The circus over the debt ceiling will ensure that whether or not accompanied by a ratings downgrade.
To properly evaluate Obama's stewardship over the nation's finances, one would have to remove the impact of the results on the prior administrations' on current spending or accept that the trajectory of federal spending was laid in prior administrations, namely Bush II in the case of Obama.
I've no problem holding Obama accountable, but to do that it needs to be clear what exactly he's accountable for.
Greg L:
I disagree with your call for "War Isolation".
Why didn't you ask that other presidents be "isolated" from their predecessors?
Why pretend that other presidents did not have to yield to an adversary congress? (ie: Reagan had to battle with a Democratic congress who did not do the cuts that he wanted)
WHY WARS but not, for example the costs of Carter's jobs programs that Reagan continued for a while and then cancelled?
With your response you risk the notion that
1) Some spending is "evil" while others are "good"
2) Obama has not CHOSEN to continue certain "Bush Spending".
Brother Greg L - if there is a standard practice where a president had to deal with the nation as he has received it - the same state which bolstered his ELECTION- then any errors in culpability work themselves out because it is STANDARDIZED.
I can't agree with your exceptions.
[quote]3) The cumulative debt incurred up to Bush impacts the Obama budgets by the way of debt service costs which will be ratcheting up once a risk premium is assessed on treasuries.[/quote]
Come on Greg L - you are better than this.
The "debt service" costs must be typed into the big "The Sims" game that we are playing.
These interest payments must serve as the "opportunity costs" for all of these decisions.
If I argued "Obama should not be held accountable for the maintenance costs of the Eisenhower Interstate System because Ike made this call" - would you buy it as an argument?
How is it any different than the one you are making?
>>>if there is a standard practice where a president had to deal with the nation as he has received it - the same state which bolstered his ELECTION- then any errors in culpability work themselves out because it is STANDARDIZED.<<<
What exactly was the state of the nation as Obama received it? Here's a chart comparing the fiscal impact of policy initiatives under the two presidents:
http://theafricanamericanclarioncall.com/?p=3362
Now the stimulus can be said to be wholly an initiative of Obama and one can legitimately claim that its effectiveness was muted (mainly due to tax cuts as opposed to direct infrastructure spending IMO, but that's another debate) and raise the question as to what we actually got for the $ 1.0 trillion. It's a fair question that focuses on an Obama policy initiative. Even if one wants to hang Obama on the expansion of the Afghan war, I'd have to agree, but the fact of the matter is that these Bush policy initiatives could have only been curtailed by a complete and immediate drawn down of forces which was politically untenable and the fact remains that the spending trajectory on these items was largely set by the prior administration. Please note that the chart I'm linking isolates policy the cost of policy initiatives comparing Obama and Bush. It's not a matter of making value judgements on these initiatives (of course they should be made, but that's not my purpose at this point), so much as to establish a reasonable framework to evaluate their budgetary impact and contribution to the national debt.
>>>If I argued "Obama should not be held accountable for the maintenance costs of the Eisenhower Interstate System because Ike made this call" - would you buy it as an argument?<<<
This is not the equivalent as maintenance costs here are somewhat controllable with contracts and budgets. If O went out and did something crazy and ran costs up, he certainly should be held accountable. The national debt is far different in the sense that the rate of interest is determined market forces such as risk, duration and etc. Moreover, these rates are at record lows,so if interest costs spike, as they likely soon will, holding Obama accountable will mean that:
1) He created all of the $ 14 trillion debt.
2) He controlled the markets forces that determined interest rates.
The problems we have here are the cumulative impact of a number of administrations engaged in foreign adventurism, war, economic cronyism and deregulation. Both parties have overseen parts of each of those, but it's clear that the course of the national debt was laid way before Obama got into office.
[quote]Here's a chart comparing the fiscal impact of policy initiatives under the two presidents[/quote]
Greg L:
I have previously discounted the argument in the article when blogger "BET Uncut" posted it. Obama has been president for 2.5 years. I ASSURE YOU that after 8 years and if the length of the bar charts has Obama with a longer deficit - this will be retired as an argument used by BET Uncut, Progressives and the New York Times because of its damning impact to its protectorate.
"The Cost Of Policy Changes" is merely an end around to achieve what the author had originally intended - shift the argument de jure away from Obama back to Bush. Just like the Grio-Root article has in spirit.
Let's cut to the chase Greg L. Do you notice that few people who you are more inclined to agree with would show "Newark 1950" and then "Newark 2011" and make the case that all of the decrease is charged to the machine that controlled the place for the duration? As we consider the destroyed potential for the Black community - who were seen INVESTING in the machine - why is this not a greater indictment?
(I am not trying to change the subject. I am trying to illustrate that "indictments of the past" are quite selective.)
[quote]did something crazy and ran costs up[/quote]
This will only ever be a SUBJECTIVE appraisal. What is crazy in my eyes might be called
"the pursuit of Social Justice" in the eyes of our friend Black Diaspora. [ :-) ]
The $1 Trillion spent in an Oil War in Iraq and Afghanistan - done under the pretenses of "Democracy" and enforcing the will of the United Nations - is something that continues today.
It is also true that the invoices submitted by various American defense contractors had the same "stimulative effect" as any other government spending sans the direct link to benefit to the American homeland. (ie: building a water treatment plant in Iraq using debt money instead of doing the same in Camden.)
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