Liberal Values Defending Liberty and Enlightened Thought

Ezra Klein wrote about the problem we have been seeing for a while–Republicans can win at brinkmanship because Democrats  re more likely to want to avert crises such as the United States defaulting on its obligations.  As I’ve pointed out many times in the past, Republicans have been blaming Obama for the deficit that Republican policies created.  The previous posts linked here show a variety of graphs and tables to demonstrate this. Ezra Klein demonstrated this another way:

Besides having far less impact on the deficit compared to Bush’s spending than one would expect from all the screaming from the Tea Party types, Obama’s stimulus spending has ended. In contrast, Bush’s contribution to the deficit, including from his tax cuts and the Medicare drug benefit, continue  to have an impact. Bush even threatened to fire the chief Medicare actuary if he testified before Congress as to the true cost of his plan.

Obviously there are limitations to the use of this graph. Republicans could claim that many programs they oppose, but which are not represented here, also contribute to the deficit. It is debatable whether to blame the Iraq and Afghanistan wars entirely on Bush. On the one hand, Obama has continued spending on these wars. On the other hand, he would have never gone into Iraq but felt forced to remain there.

Despite the potential problems with this table, the key fact remains valid that Obama’s stimulus spending is hardly the real reason why the deficit is now so large.  It is also notable that Obama’s health care reform cost less than George Bush’s changes in Medicare.