Mike Luckovich for November 18, 2009

I think its our debt, how do we stop Obama from adding to it?

I know that Far Right doesn’t care, but he didn’t bow to the leaders of China.

But the real issue is that this is NO ISSUE!

The Far Right just attacks and attacks, they don’t really care they just want the rest of us to waste time responding to their attacks.

Let’s tell the Far Right to get serious and stop wasting our time. We have real problems like the economy, the wars, and health care: The next time they bring something stupid up let’s just ignore it.

Unfortunately it’s the taxpayers debt. Geo. “w” placed it on all our backs.

Scott, I do not know who feeds you your information, but without checking any source information you are vulnerable to manipulation.

The debt when Obama took office on January 21, 2009 was $10,625,053,544,309.70. TODAY, almost 10 months later, the debt is $12,039,319,107,488.80 - the increase of $1.4 trillion during this 10 months represents 12% of the total debt. And remember that about $ .7 trillion of that debt was appropriated by the Bush II administration and Congress before Obama took office. In fact his decisions to date have incurred roughly 6% of total U.S. debt.

Nothing to celebrate, but nothing like your statement either.

http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/NPGateway

In 1984 the national debt was 4 trillion. It has went up almost every year to 12 trillion this year. What happened? These years include Clinton. I thought he balanced the budget. Does that mean the debt stayed where it was at for two years straight at nearly 6 trillion?

A rough sketch would be the debt went from 1 trillion to 2 trillion under Jimmy Carter. 4 years 1.5 trillion to 3.5 trillion under Reagan. (USSR, Berlin Wall) 3.5 trillion to 4.1 trillion under Bush Sr. ( Desert Storm) 4.1 trillion to 6.5 trillion under Clinton. (The Gay nineties) 6.5 trillion to 10 trillion under Bush. (Iraq and Afghanistan) 10 trillion to 12 trillion under Obama. (Union, Acorn, Homosexual groups, Abortion Groups, Pork Barrels and two wars)

Is this an accurate picture?

GM, The banks, AIG, Chrysler and mortgage companies would be under both Bush and Obama.

There is a reason why only about 20% of Americans admit to being Republican, while over 40% claim to be conservative.

The conservatives didn’t like Bush’s deficit spending, and we dislike 0bama’s largess even more.

The biggest problem is that 0bama’s expenditures are primarily geared to redistribution of wealth, which is destruction of private capital - the very life blood of private enterprise, generating wealth producing jobs.

That is why we have and we’ll continue to have a jobless recovery.

Warrior77, No. That’s not an accurate picture. I don’t have time to do every president, but Bush II took office 1/20/01 and the debt was $5.7 trillion. On the day Obama took over it was $10.6 trillion. Add the $.7 trillion TARP commitment made by Bush, but spent mostly under Obama, and Bush II’s total incurred debt is $5.6 Trillion. So Bush II started with $5.7 and basically doubled the debt in 8 years.

It’s worth putting a little time into understanding place value. I notice you list Acorn (which over the past 5 years has received an average of $ .000002.5 trillion per year ($2.5 million). Pork barrel spending accounts for about 1% of the total government spending.

So Acorn - $ 2.5 million Iraq war - $ 3,000,000.0 million As government spending goes, Acorn gets a tiny miniscule amount. The hysteria over it’s misuse of a small portion of these funds is way over blown and used to shift your attention from the big dollar spending that really matters.

Clinton balanced the cash-based consolidated Budget. When you look at the accrual-based budget, he still overspent. When you separate out the operating budget from the trust funds, he overspent. The only way he balanced the budget was to use the excess trust fund money to cover operating fund spending.

The annual overspending (deficit) is not the same as the debt. The debt is the accumulated borrowing to cover overspending.

http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/BPDLogin?application=np

Are you saying both wars under Bush counted for 3 trillion of his debt?

Warrior77 & Churchill, No, I’m using the projected full cost of the Iraq war (which includes the immediate out of pocket spending, the replacement cost for equipment and munitions, and the lifetimes of care and support the veterans will need.)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/07/AR2008030702846.html The Iraq War Will Cost Us $3 Trillion, and Much More - WashPost

I’m drawing a comparison between all the attention some have given to the miniscule amount spent by ACORN, which even if every penny was a misdirected waste by your calculations, was undeserving of the attention and hysteria.

If alternative options to invading and then occupying Iraq had been given a shred of the attention ACORN gets, we might not be so deeply in debt.

Many thanks, fennec ; when Anna Telnæs’s work disappeared from Gocomics.com, I simply assumed she had gone into retirement or something of the sort. Now I find, thanks to you, that she’s doing animations for the Washington Post ! I love her economy of line - a great draughtsman and pungent cartoonist !…

Henri