They are laughable fantasies that never come true snowflake. But you cling to them if it gives you that warm fuzzy feeling mkay?
I am not shoving anything onto anyone; the ARA was a Democratic/Obama legislation and had NOTHING to do with Bush snowflake. Flail away snowflake.
The $1.2 trillion deficit for FY 2009 was the deficit as of early January 2009, before Obama took office. The deficit wound up being $1.4 trillion by year end, after accounting for the added spending from ARRA. I'm counting the $1.2 trillion deficit, pre-Obama, as Obama's baseline. You appear to prefer we use FY 2008 as the baseline, even though Obama didn't take office until well into FY 2009, by which time much of the spending was already locked in.
Here, let me help you see the error of your method. Imagine if Trump had gotten his way by threatening a shutdown, the Democrats had caved, and Congress had passed a bill for $20 billion in spending on the wall in this fiscal year. Then imagine a patriot assassinated Trump in January and Pence became President. What would be the right baseline for measuring Pence's impact on the deficit? If we used FY 2018 (last fiscal year), then the deficit spending in October, November, December, and part of January would count against Pence, even thought he wasn't president at the time. And the deficit spending already mandated by law, as part of the wall deal, would also count against him, even though he had nothing to do with it. Instead, the correct baseline to use would be the FY 2019 deficit as of the time he was sworn in. If he added to that in FY 2019, through supplemental appropriations (or retroactive tax cuts), that would count against him. But we wouldn't be throwing Trump spending into his column.
