The spending was necessary to prevent a depression, as all economists agree. But even then it wasn't enough spending, since the Republicans made him trim the stimulus. We wouldn't need this spending if you incompetent Republicans hadn't tanked the economy with your irresponsible tax cuts and unfunded wars.

J Eccles, excellent questions.
Obama is extremist. We don't have to worry about the opposite happening in this election because Perry or Romney aren't anywhere as near the political fringe as Obama.

Absolutely right, where can I sign the petition to impeach the socialist?

I disagree Putin that ALL economists agree with the spending to prevent the depression. I would actually go further to say that most economists that look at the long run disagreed with it, because the spending didn't even go to long-term job growth, it went to jobs that will be over in a couple of years and leave those people unemployed yet again, it went to businesses that were picked from a special list that had lobbyists all over Obama for them in Washington, and all the spending killed our credit enough that it dropped us to a AA+ for the first time in American history. With all those reasons, I'd be hard pressed to find a competent economist that says the major over spending of the current US president was anywhere near a good thing, because the credit in and of itself will be a recurring problem in the future. It's much harder to rebuild credit than maintain the credit you have, and Obama shot America in the foot with his ineffective fiscal policies.

The bailouts happened under Bush just like Obama gave Republicans "everything" they wanted in the health care bill. Bush was on his way out and was practically forced into signing it, it was either that or we wait 3 months and Obama signs it in, so he decided to just go ahead and do it. Stop watching the Obamanetwork, or otherwise known as CNN and MSNBC.

"it went to businesses that were picked from a special list that had lobbyists all over Obama for them in Washington, and all the spending killed our credit enough that it dropped us to a AA+ for the first time in American history. "

That's utter nonsense. The spending didn't "Kill" our credit. S & P is a fraud who gives good ratings to companies with toxic assets because they pay off S & P for a good rating. They're just like the Better Business Bureau. S & P at any rate said that the partisan handling of the debt ceiling had more to do with the credit lowering than anything, and they also admitted that they had bad numbers on US deficit spending, exaggerating it by trillions.

"Bush was on his way out and was practically forced into signing it"

I like the backtracking from laying the bailouts at the feet of Obama to finding excuses for why this happened under Bush. Typical Republican talking points, you people always like to conveniently forget what the economy was like when Obama took office and what happened under Bush. But as to Bush being "forced", that's more revisionist history. His own party opposed the bailout for political purposes, which is why it didn't pass the first time around. Paulson was out there every day saying we need to pass it because the markets were tanking at record levels every day.

" I would actually go further to say that most economists that look at the long run disagreed with it"

Like who? People from the Hoover Institute? They weren't saying this before the stimulus was passed. After the fact they're jumping up and down saying we needed to cut spending instead of have a stimulus, but most sane people recognized that cutting back in spending is exactly what the Republicans did in the 1930s to lead us into the Great Depression.

and so increasing our debt by trillions and basically laying our heads at the mercies of foreign nations like China is going to stop a deeper depression/recession from happening in the future? nothing Obama has done is going to fix the long run, if you think it is could you please explain how it will? the jobs he has created will not last, which you haven't denied, so he's simply put off the depression a little further and the unemployment rate has stayed where it is for the time being, but he's only setting it up so whoever takes over in office after him is more screwed than he was when he took over, so in the end we'll just be even worse off then when the stock market crashed to begin with. The fact that more and more people are losing their trust in the american stock market and are drawing their funds out and investing in gold doesn't at least trouble you that his ideas and actions with the stimulus have been ineffective and more degrading than helpful? how has this helped you out at all? his stimulus hasn't helped some people that need it the most, for example, students. The credit rating now and the financial status that the government is in is starting to make it harder for students to get loans, and that's where he is okay with cutting the government spending. why does he want to cut funding for students in the future instead of helping the people that will save his butt later on??

It's rich when Republicans claim anybody else is insensitive to the needs of students, when it's their party who has cut pell grants and student aid over and over again, not to mention cuts to education at the state level which have left districts like Detroit with classroom sizes of 70+.

The stimulus provided $40 billion in aid to colleges and universities, as well as states to shore up their education services. The stimulus also raised the maximum pell grant by $500 to over $5000. You can't blame Obama for a vindictive credit ratings agency which has no credibility and is being investigated for how it gives out credit ratings. You can't blame Obama for the Republicans refusing to raise the debt ceiling until the last possible minute, holding the economy hostage so they can force their reactionary cuts down our throat. That was your deal, not Obama's. Stop blaming Obama for shit your own party does.

http://projects.nytimes.com/44th_president/stimulus

Which of these programs would you have cut? And keep in mind, Obama wanted to provide more in stimulus, because you need a large stimulus to make a difference since capitalists are sitting on their piles of cash and not investing. Obama's stimulus was trimmed. It would have had a bigger impact if the Republicans hadn't cut it.

Please also explain why your party refuses to close loopholes that allow corporations to pay zero in taxes, and why your party insists on more tax cuts for big corporations and rich people. If you're so concerned with the debt and China why don't you complain about that?

Perry vs. Obama is a loose loose. This is a democracy? Where is the anti-war candidate who will actually get us out of these damned foolish wars? Go to hell american empire. We want our good old Founding Fathers back again.

*excuse me, I meant to say "lose - lose." not loose loose

The Founding Fathers who wanted to annex Canada and Cuba while annihilating every Indian tribe in their path westward? Oh those pacifist founding fathers!

you mean the ones that led us into a completely hopeless unnecessary war against the British Empire in 1812

I don't agree Prussian. Every American needs a job more than they need Obamacare, or Social Security, or anything.
Basic human dignity begins with employment.
The policies that Perry implements in Texas along with the legislators there promise job growth that Obama's policies have utterly failed to do.

Well, at least TC doesn't write "O'bama" like some fuckwits I know.

Alright, list of cuts I would make

Energy 6.0 billion.
Energy 3.4 billion.
Tax Cuts for Businesses GM 3.2 Billion
Science and Research 3.0 Billion
Energy, Science and Research 2.5 Billion
Energy; Tax Cuts for Individuals 2.0 Billion
Energy 2.0 Billion
Energy; Science and Research 2.0 Billion
Aid to States; Energy 1.4 Billion
Health 1.3 Billion
Aid to States 1.0 Billion
Energy; Aid to States 400 Million
Energy; Aid to Individuals 300 Million
Energy 300 Million
Aid to States 291 Million
Other 233 Million
Tax Cut for Businesses 231 Million (gives them unfair advantage over other qualified workers during time of recession)
Energy; Tax Cut for Businesses 54 Million

So overall, I cut out 29.6 Billion or so. The energy is the biggest thing because during a recession, spending on future development such as that isn't necessarily what should happen. While the research would be nice, for that much money it isn't creating enough jobs to justify it, and it won't be put into true effect for another decade or so, so in reality we need to see more jobs created that will have a longer lasting effect in a field that will last for a while.

that's just a rough list. if there were more details that just a sentence on some or only the title on some I may have cut more or kept some, but from the information I had (and the fact it's from the New York Times), that's the cuts I would make. Also, to answer your questions about why tax cuts to rich people and big business makes sense, it's because that's what runs this country and truly creates the jobs. You don't see poor people creating jobs, they're the ones being employed by the rich, who create jobs more effectively than the government does. So why take the money away and tax more heavily the people creating the most jobs in a time we need them the most?

oh, Putin, I am a republican, but you might want to find out for sure before you go around saying "your party" and all that stuff to people, because I know quite a few centrist democrats and non-left wing democrats that hate obama just as much as republicans do.

Bullshit. If lower taxes created jobs, we wouldn't be at 9.1% unemployment.

So your brilliant plan to "create jobs" (besides more tax giveaways to the billionaires) is to cut aid to states and thus force more layoffs at the state level? This is why we never listen to rightwing economists. Their economic advice has proven to fail time and time again, which is why Republican Presidents are all worse at creating jobs than Democratic ones.

I can't believe people are spouting the cut taxes for the rich dogma after did that in the 2000s and we have absolutely nothing to show for it except the worst economic crisis since the 1930s.

Nevermind that taxes on the rich are at an all time low and yet what do they do with the cash that is supposed to "create jobs"? Absolutely nothing. All they're doing is sitting on their piles of cash and we're supposed to sit back and wait until they're damn well ready to invest. Governments have bent over backwards to do everything they can to coddle the rich, lower their taxes, give them big tax breaks, and this trickle down theory has been a miserable failure.

And do you dittoheads have any clue what our energy spending even does? Or is this some mantra you found from going to Tea Party rallies? Republicans want to make sure we'll always be dependent on fossil fuels, that's why they want to cut the department of energy because heaven forbid we actually wake up to the fact that the rest of the world is going full speed ahead investing in renewable energies while we're stuck in the dark ages. And never mind nuclear safety, we can cut spending for nuclear safety at a time when natural disasters put many of our outdated nuclear plants in harms way.

Have to agree with Putin here. We were told the Bush tax cuts needed to stay in place to help create jobs, and how many were created in August.....thats right, ZERO! But then again, we were also told that if we, the taxpayers, didn't fork over 700 BILLION to the banks that there would be Martial Law in the streets.

I just want to know when the revolution starts?

Redzelda, I'd like to know that as well. I may not be able to argue the best with everyone, but really all I want to see is a revolution from how the government is being run. If all of us who are responsible have to run on a budget and get in trouble when we go over the budget, then why shouldn't the government have to be on one? The states have to balance (technically, although Obama's home state of Illinois shows where he got his economic policies from...), so the nation should have to work on a balanced budget as well.

Did somone say revolution? Count me in.

Obama is actually rather centrist, USA in general is extremist. What you call "liberal" or left-wing are centrist. What you call centrist are right-wing. What you call right-wing or "conservative" are lunatic extremists who want the big businesses to become the government.

Redzelda, how can you be so ignorant of economic history? Go read the documented history of the effects of tax cuts during the Harding administration, the Kennedy administration, and the Reagan administration. How can people live in such ignorance of reality.

I muted Putin's months ago but I see from RedZ's post that Putin is still posting totally indefensible bullshit that he pulls right out of his ass.

Here is a link to an excellent article by a PhD economic historian on the Bush Tax Cuts.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/briandomitrovic/2011/08/30/the-fingerprints-of-2000-01-are-all-over-the-crisis/

For all of you ignorant fools like Putin who still think that a Marxist state like Joseph Stalin's that starved millions is the height of human existence read on and get an education on reality.

"Bush hesitated on his signature campaign pledge. He timidly asked Congress, closely divided between the parties, for a tax cut, and made sure that it favored lower-income earners. The marginal rate of the income tax went down all of 0.5%, from 39.6% to 39.1%. Also, the president indicated that his “compassionate conservatism” would lead to higher spending."

That's right you blathering idiots, The Bush tax cuts decreased the top rate by half a percent.

We needed to slash the top rate below 30% like Reagan did. Look at the recovery we had under Reagan's leadership from a recession that was much worse than this one with higher unemployment, double-digit inflation, and astronomical interest rates.

Those are the irrefutable, documented facts you helpless fools.

You're a buffoon. The top tax rate declined by half a percent from 2000 to 2001, then another half a percent in 2002, then declined all the way to 35% in 2003 and stayed that way for the remainder of the decade.

You can look this up yourselves.

http://www.moneychimp.com/features/tax_brackets.htm

OH NO I CITED A SOURCE

Meanwhile in terms of revenue every single Bush economist said the tax cuts led to decreased revenues.

Revenue was at 20.6% of GDP in 2000 and went as low as 16.1% in 2004 and by 2008 it was 17.5%. Revenue per capita went from 8,180 to 7,508.

http://capitalgainsandgames.com/blog/bruce-bartlett/1864/republican-tax-nonsense

This is Bruce Bartlett, a *Reagan* economist's post on the matter.

The tax cuts skyrocketed our debt but meanwhile TC wants to ignore that while pretending to be a deficit hawk. You're a fraud, TC.

Oh and the top rate was only under 30% in Reagan's last year, for most of his term it was 50%, and the income that got you into the top bracket was much lower. The recovery from the self-induced recession happened before that. Thanks for playing.