The first thing their post addresses is the (approximately) 10 trillion dollar debt figure I mentioned, and the 482 billion dollar deficit for 2009 fiscal year. They claim that the 10 trillion "is a number that accumulates after adding together all the promisies the government made whenever Democrats were in office such as Social Security during Franklin Roosevelt's presidency and Medicare during Lyndon Johnson's presidency." First of all, the debt does not turn off when Republicans are in office. Second, the share of that debt that is made up by Obama is slight compared to Bush. Third, whenever we have budget surpluses, we lower this debt. The Republicans never had a surplus in the 8 years of the Bush Presidency. You may be asking, what is the difference between the debt and the deficit? The federal deficit/surplus is the amount of money being spent by the federal government for things like Social Security and the Iraq War, subtracted from the amount being made through taxes and other means. In other words, Revenue minus Expenses. When the amount of expenses is higher than the amount of revenue, we have a deficit. When we have more revenue than expenses, it is a surplus. All of the deficits and surpluses taken together are the national debt. During the Bush Years, the Debt went from 5.7 trillion in September of 2000 (the closest I could find, use it as a benchmark). In September 2004, the debt rose above 7 trillion. In October 2005, it rose above 8 trillion. In October 2008, it rose above 10 trillion. Taking these figures, you find that during Bush's presidency, the debt increased by approximately 4 billion dollars. Obama's presidency has raised the debt about 1 trillion dollars.
They also make the point that the Iraq War was necessary. Because we all know how dangerous all those WMD's we found in Iraq were. If you still think the Iraq War was necessary, I'm not going to waste breath arguing. I leave it up to you if it was really worth it to send over 4000 young men and women to their deaths for a lie?
I had said that investors preferred things like the Dow Jones to the GDP, because the GDP is so infrequent. The Republicans say "This is wrong because those investors do use the GDP, for goodness sake it is the economic chart for this country." This is just a misunderstanding. The GDP is calculated over a year's time, so investors don't sit around for a year to see where the economy is. They use the Dow, which is a representation of the economic strength of this country.
The Leading Indicator to which I refer is this one: The Conference Board Leading Economic Index™.
"Now, that "fact" about jobs, that more are being made the lost is a complete lie". And he's right, that is a lie. Thing is, I didn't say that. I said that right now, we are losing fewer jobs each month. SOON, we might see more being made than lost.
I think my favorite part is this sentence: " From September 2008 to February 2009 unemployment has risen from 6.2% to 8.1%." I remind you that the president from September 2008 to January 20, 2009, was George Bush. Thank you Mr. Bush for giving us these fabulous numbers.
The last part of their post is their own hypothetical situation to counter mine. I say the economy will continue improving, they say it won't. The best way to test this? Wait and see.
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