Wishful thinking, I'd say.
How much has Obamacare saved the American people?
- Thread starter Oneuli
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Wishful thinking, I'd say.
I doubt it. I suspect you like to make claims with no supporting evidence, and resent being held to a higher standard.
PostmodernProphet
fully immersed in faith..
about half what it was when he left office......
PostmodernProphet
fully immersed in faith..
no.......in fact, the provisions for employed people didn't kick in until 2015.....remember all the extensions that Obama kept handing out to unions?.....
That's easy enough to test, isn't it? If the Republican control of Congress were the determining factor, then we'd expect the deficit decline to have started in FY 1996 (they won in calendar year 1994, took their seats at the start of calendar year 1995, and the first budget they worked on was for FY 1996, which starts in October 1995. And, if the Republicans were the key factor, we'd expect that good fiscal run to have been enhanced starting in 2001, when there was still Republican control of the Congress, and they also had an ally in the White House.
If, on the other hand, Bill Clinton were the key factor, we'd expect the deficit decreases to have started in FY 1993 and ended around FY 2000, like his presidency.
So, which is the case? Well, it turns out, the deficit started falling in 1993, and we headed back in the other direction starting in 2001 (with renewed deficits in FY 2002). So, what does that say about your hypothesis?
There's always an excuse, of course. If Clinton had served between 2001 and 2008, and the huge boom had been then, you'd be citing the rise of smart phones as the reason his economic performance doesn't count. If his great run had been in the 1980s, you'd be citing the rise of the business computer and the fall of interest rates as the reason his economic performance doesn't count. The point is that no matter what, wingnuts will always have some talking point about why the inevitable success of Democratic leadership doesn't count.
That's the key choice people have on election day. If you want results, vote Democrat. If you want professionally tuned excuses for why the results don't count, vote Republican.
You lost track of the thread. Try rereading.
What part of what I wrote did you misread as me pretending he didn't lie? Be specific, please, twinkletoes.
Is there any other period in modern economic history when spending rose as little over an eight-year period as during the Obama years?
Look, I get it: one of your idiotic blogs handed you a talking point about spending rising unusually quickly under Obama, and you felt compelled to repeat it as fact, and now that you know you were wildly wrong, you're feeling stupid. But resist the urge to change the subject. That humiliation you're feeling serves a purpose. If you learn from it, you can work to improve, and in the future you won't be such a reliable laughing stock here. Good luck.
I should be taken seriously because my points are well argued and backed up with facts. As you'll remember, I never claimed spending didn't increase. I said it increased at an unusually slow rate. And now you know, contrary to your hilariously bone-headed assertions, that's correct. Learn from your error and improve.
PostmodernProphet
fully immersed in faith..
really?.......my kids were in that category.......they each had an individual policy that cost $100 a month.......I was paying for it.......I called the company and they said sure, they could put them on my insurance......for $100 a month each........
He was? What makes you think that? Certainly I never claimed anything of the sort, so I must conclude that you're offering this up as your own opinion, so I'd like to know what the basis for it is.
So according to your moronic nonsense; BillyBob engineered the dot.com boom and got out just in time to blame the bust on Bush. STFU you partisan hack moron.
Who is Billy Bob?
I agree that we should continue to judge presidents the farther we get from their time, as we gain more perspective. I think Clinton's time looks better and better from that perspective. As of 2000, one might have wrongly concluded that the great run we'd enjoyed on his watch was the "new normal" -- that whatever caused the long dark age of high violent crime, low income growth, rising poverty, and permanent deficits, from the early 1970s through the early 1990s, had worked its way out of the system and it would be smooth sailing now, for reasons unrelated to Clinton's leadership.
And I think a lot of people believed that. Look how Bush ran in 2000 -- like we could keep the great surpluses going even as we reversed the Clinton tax hikes that made them possible. Like we could keep enjoying the Great Prosperity, but with the improvement of having an amiable dunce as the figurehead, rather than a philandering technocrat. I think it's only with the benefit of decades of history since then that it's become clear just how wrong that was. We haven't seen another surplus since Clinton left, and we're heading fast in the wrong direction. We got essentially a lost decade, after Clinton, when pretty much every measure of social and economic performance got worse. At best, we now seem to be able to choose between fiscally sound economic doldrums, or debt-finance economic orgies that will give us a deadly hangover. The farther we get from the Clinton years, the clearer it becomes just what an unusually good time they were for America.
As for your assertion that the dotcom bubble bursting in March 2000 caused the recession that started a full year later, that's a hypothesis, not a fact. And it's not at all clear we should believe it. We've had other stock bubbles of roughly the same size deflate without causing a recession. So, why was that one unavoidable? Keep in mind, as of inauguration day, stocks were only down around 13% compared to their high point in late March 2000. A 13% decline isn't exactly earth shattering. By comparison, the stock market is down 13% just since late September. Does that mean we're doomed to imminent recession?
Or, to take an historic example, between 4/29/2011 and 10/3/2011, the S&P 500 dropped from 1363.61 to 1099.23. Did that mean we were bound to go into recession in early 2012? That's a 19.4% drop.... much larger than the market drop over the same time period after March 2000. Yet, as you know, we didn't go into recession in 2012, or 2013, or any time since. So, why treat a smaller stock decline as if it made recession inevitable?
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No, you don't suspect that. You've seen enough of my posting to have seen me, when challenged, again and again produce links supporting what I said. So, you're well aware that my claims are grounded in verifiable facts. But this isn't about you wanting to see the links because you're genuinely curious about the facts and wish to learn. It's about you disliking the existence of those facts, and so you'd like to make it as inconvenient as possible to present them.
In all honesty, did my linking to all those facts make the slightest difference in your opinions? Did seeing that, in fact, Clinton left record high GDP, near-record-low poverty, the lowest murder rates since the mid-1960s, very high approval ratings for the US around the world, etc., change your view about anything? I'm guessing no. Either you already knew those things, and only asked for links to inconvenience me, or you didn't know them, but view such facts as irrelevant, and only asked for links to inconvenience me. Either way, surely you can see why I'm not particularly eager to track them down. They don't matter to you, so why should I put in the effort for you?
The deficit fell by about half on Obama's watch.
Yes. This is not a question of opinion. It's right there, in the Congressional record. Now, that doesn't mean it was 100% phased in the moment it became law. Few laws work that way. But it became law as soon as Obama affixed his signature to it. Some of the provisions kicked in immediately, some a few weeks or months later, and some a few years later. But it was law from day one.
Is that a fact?
It did?
If your kids already had insurance at a group rate (e.g., through an employer), then you wouldn't have seen a big savings. If, on the other hand, they had been buying on the individual market, the cost of going on your insurance would have been much lower for any given level of coverage.
I believe it is, judging by your behavior.
So, it's not a fact, is it? It's an opinion, fueled by animus.
Yes. It depends on how you calculate, since fiscal years and presidential terms don't line up perfectly. But, as of the days before Obama took office, the FY 2009 deficit was projected to be $1.186 trillion:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...trillion-in-fiscal-2009-idUSN0643708720090107
As of the last days of Obama's presidency, the FY 2017 deficit was projected to be $559 billion and falling:
https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/115th-congress-2017-2018/reports/52370-outlook_1.pdf
That's a decline of about 53%. So, just over half. Now, of course, we're heading the opposite way, with Trump's upper-class tax cuts having set off soaring deficits, as during the Bush years. But now the president has an "R" beside his name, so the phony deficit hawks don't pretend to care.