The $787 billion stimulus bill was entirely an Obama administration creation. McCain might have botched it just as badly, but there's at least a chance that he would have allowed a bipartisan bill containing an even mix of tax cuts and spending, rather than the actual bill, which was almost all spending and has proven to be useless in facilitating a recovery.Ian wrote:As for #2, the stimulus was initiated by W. Bush and totally inevitable regardless of who won the White House. (Nor is it unprecedented in history, btw). If McCain was in right now, the stimulus might've looked different in detail, but not in principle.
TARP was passed under Bush, but while I think it was stupid, it was not a stimulus bill. It was not designed to add any net money to the economy, and ultimately it seems like it won't, as nearly all of it has already been repaid. It's not contributing to the huge increases in the deficit since Obama was elected.
It's to be pointed out that the majority of Republicans in Congress voted against both these bills, so the huge increase in the deficit in the last few years certainly can't be blamed on "the Republicans" in general, even if you do blame Bush.
The tech bubble bursting was just as big a deal as the housing bubble bursting - and millions of people did lose their jobs, even if you didn't happen to notice it.Btw - The "recession" that was in place when Bush took office was only one in a technical sense. The dot-com/tech bubble deflated. Unemplyment hardly moved. Inflation and interest rates hardly moved. Consumer confidence hardly moved. Most people didn't even notice it.
The difference was that the Bush administration and the Republicans in Congress responded to the tech crash with stimulus in the form of a predictable, economy friendly set of tax cuts with immediate effect, while Obama and the Democrats in Congress responded to the housing crash with a bunch of opaque, delayed pork barrel spending that had, if anything, a negative effect on the economy as a whole. It also helped that Greenspan was a much more competent chairman of the Federal Reserve than is Bernanke.
The depth and length of the current recession isn't because it's some exception to the normal business cycle - it isn't. It's because the government has exacerbated this particular recession with economically bankrupt policies.
It seems what you really want is for everyone else's taxes to be increased, not just yours.Also btw - Are you seriously implying that people will take it upon themselves to fork over more taxes, even if they think they ought to be raised. Tell me you're not serious. I'll be happy to pay more - but little ol' me ain't gonna make a dent in the budget. Obama and Congress can make the decision to increase my taxes and then I'll be more than happy to comply - that's why I voted for him.