It’s patriotic to want more ‘bang for the buck’
You know, stories like this leave me angry and frustrated:
“Development costs for the Pentagon’s major weapons systems soared last year, helping drive overruns that are “staggering,” the Government Accountability Office said in a report released yesterday.
The costs to research and develop fighter jets and other programs have been rising steadily. Last year, they were 42 percent over initial estimates. That compares with 27 percent in 2000, when the cost of the portfolio of programs was half of what it is today…
The figures reflect a weapons development and procurement system that is woefully broken, analysts say, and one that President Obama has vowed to begin to correct.
(GAO analyst Michael J. Sullivan said that) because most major weapons systems involve costly advanced technologies and investments in factories and workers, and have no commercial market, contractors typically demand that the government cover their risk by reimbursing them for unanticipated costs in “cost-plus” contracts….
The report said that the cost estimates for 10 of the Pentagon’s 96 largest weapons programs have grown by 32 percent, rising to $177 billion. That was a primary factor behind decisions by the military to reduce weapons purchases last year by almost a third, the GAO said.”
The Pentagon is, by almost any measure, the least efficient and probably most corrupt purchasing agent in the federal government. We tolerate mistakes, incompetence and conflicts of interest in the Defense Department that would get people put in jail in other agencies. And why?
Because in part, those who point out the Pentagon’s obvious problems are often dismissed as anti-defense, anti-military and unpatriotic. Well, baloney, or words to that effect. Twenty billion dollars wasted on an overpriced system that doesn’t work is $20 billion that we can’t spend on a system that could save actually American lives. It makes us weaker, economically as well as militarily.
For example, the F-22 fighter being built up the street in Marietta is an exquisitely beautiful piece of military overengineering, and it is sucking up billions that could otherwise produce “more bang for the buck.” It’s not unpatriotic to point that out — Defense Secretary Robert Gates may do so himself in the next few weeks, as part of a larger effort to remake military contracting. What’s unpatriotic is defending a wasteful defense program solely because it means jobs for the local economy.
By the way, according to the GAO, the cost of the F-22 has jumped 62.7 percent over its initial 2003 budget and is running 33 months behind its promised timeline.
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169 comments Add your comment
Corporal
March 31st, 2009
6:56 pm
Frederick Douglas:
I could go on all night but here’s the short version:
Redistribution of wealth doesn’t work (it makes people dependent and lazy).
Accumulation of wealth works for all (the more rich people spend the more jobs are created).
Just “one” example. I wealty CEO gets a $1M bonus. He uses some of that to pay cash for his spoiled brat daughter new BMW convertible. She buys gas, needs it serviced and washed a lot, buys expensive extra junk to put in it, evenually needs new tires, wrecks it now and then and need repairs …….. get the picture?
Taxpayer
March 31st, 2009
6:58 pm
Corporal,
I’m not sure what you are getting at. Aren’t the techniques in the Field Manual allowed per the Geneva Convention and isn’t the current issue regarding ‘torture’ related to techniques that are alleged to go beyond that which is prescribed in the Field Manual? Hence, the use of the word ‘torture’.
Corporal
March 31st, 2009
6:58 pm
I Report/ You Whine:
“Air raid Pearl Harbor. This is no drill.”
Taxpayer
March 31st, 2009
7:02 pm
I’m still trying to figure out how Osama managed to set that trap for Bush to fall into in Iraq. That is one more clever terrorist.
Corporal
March 31st, 2009
7:04 pm
Taxpayer:
The point is how to you define “torture”? There is still some pretty nasty stuff allowed in that Army Field Manual on Interrogation that many liberals would be appalled at.
What do you think about some of those things? Do we want our captured troops exposed to the same?
What if Ted Kennedy calls them torture? Does that make it torture?
Jay made the General a “saint” yesterday (don’t get me wrong, I have no problem with any of these methods) for not believing in “waterboarding” yet the General supports some pretty harsh/torturous techniques still in the manual ……….. that would be “fairgame” for our American POW’s.
Just a little hypocrisy here ………..
Corporal
March 31st, 2009
7:05 pm
Time for some C-rats. Be back later ……….
@@
March 31st, 2009
7:06 pm
Paul:
Nasty question? You bet it is — one they have difficulty answering.
I can’t recall one leftist on this site or Wooten’s who wasn’t calling for a confrontation in Afghanistan during the campaign. Mrs. G….Bosch….Taxpayer. All of them, at the time, supported a war in Afghanistan. Now, all of a sudden when reality hits, they’re opposed?
At the very least, they’re opportunists, not unlike the Wall Street gang they detest so much.
I wouldn’t trust this country’s national security to them in the best of circumstances.
G
March 31st, 2009
7:07 pm
Music to my ears: no more blank checks for crooked defense contractors.
http://washingtonindependent.com/32399/if-youre-a-defense-lobbyist-it-might-be-time-to-panic
Taxpayer
March 31st, 2009
7:13 pm
@@,
I think I have always supported going after the terrorists and that is why I have always favored going into Afghanistan to get the terrorists that we knew were there. Further, I never once faulted Bush for that effort. So, what are you talking about.
G
March 31st, 2009
7:15 pm
Way to go, President Obama!
http://abcnews.go.com/pollingunit
NRB
March 31st, 2009
7:19 pm
And yet, Obama INCREASED defense spending in his new budget plan for FY2010.
Jay make sure to tell your editors to quickly run a front page editorial on Obama’s favorite rap groups while he sends 20,000 poor people to die for oil in a white man’s war in Afghanistan and uses 9/11 as an excuse to attack the innocent country.
G
March 31st, 2009
7:20 pm
Taxpayer,
Definitely George Hoover Bush should have concentrated on Afghanistan. He sent all those Americans to their deaths in Iraq because Saddam had wanted to kill Poppy Bush.
G
March 31st, 2009
7:26 pm
This bears repeating.
Rep. Michele Bachmann (Rushpublicant-Minnesota) Blasts President Obama’s “Economic Marxism,” Calls For “Orderly Revolution” To Save Freedom
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/03/bachmann-blasts-obamas-economic-marxism-calls-for-revolution-to-save-freedom.php
Call her offices – there are 3 numbers on her website – and register your complaint. Be polite.
Recently I called and asked if she was advocating an overthrow of the democratically elected government.
Then I explained what sedition is. And pledged to do everything I could to make sure this woman’s political career is short.
Also, call your representative and ask them to come out against her comments.
RW-(the original)
March 31st, 2009
7:28 pm
For all the supposedly vaunted screening the PresBO team does, how does this keep happening over and over and over and over and…..
Sebelius admits errors, pays $7,000 in back taxes
Maybe they already know that no Democrat ever pays their “fair share”
And once again my hat is off to the new tax collector in chief. I just wish he didn’t put them in charge of huge swaths of government just for finally paying their taxes.
G
March 31st, 2009
7:30 pm
Crazy Rep. Michele Bachmann (Rushpublicant-MN) wants people armed and dangerous.
Secret Service, you need to arrest this lunatic.
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/03/bachmann-i-want-people-armed-and-dangerous-against-energy-tax.php?ref=n
Taxpayer
March 31st, 2009
7:30 pm
G,
The more I learned about the history behind Iraq and Saddam and even Osama, the less I cared for the what we were doing. I mean, we backed Saddam and aided him in all his dirty dealings. We made him what he was. We were as guilty as he was for his use of weapons of mass destruction that we supplied him with. Then, we act as though we never had a hand in it. The same with Osama. We used him as a means to an end and look what it got us. We are our own worst enemy.
G
March 31st, 2009
7:38 pm
I just saw the video of President Obama and the First Lady exiting Air Force One in London. Such a good looking couple. And they got a rock star welcome, of course.
Quite a change from George Hoover Bush and the rather plain Laura. No one was glad to see them.
By the way, I wonder why Laura was never arrested for running the stop sign and hitting that car and killing the young driver?
Money? Connections? Both?
G
March 31st, 2009
7:39 pm
Taxpayer,
So true, so horribly, horribly true.
@@
March 31st, 2009
7:39 pm
Taxpayer:
You think? Does that mean you’re not sure?
Maybe you did, even so….having the bulk of our troops in Afghanistan would have resulted in far more casualties. The topography works against us there.
Our guys killed untold numbers of terrorists in Iraq. Bush set a trap for them and they walked into it.
I’m hoping Obama’s Afghanistan will succeed like Bush/McCain/Petraeus’s Iraq, but I have very strong doubts that it will.
In an article I was reading a couple of days ago, it was said that Obama’s advisors have given themselves 1 year to turn Afghanistan around. The reason for the haste was in the interest of the 2010 election. I have a big problem with that kind of thinking. Why bother if you’re not in it to complete a mission?. Why risk lives to begin with if an election is going to be the determining factor?
RW-(the original)
March 31st, 2009
7:42 pm
And to my conservative friends there’s no reason to let the cult/mob inundate the lovely Michele Bachman’s office with complaints when you can use their very own smear campaign contact information to send her messages of support.
G
March 31st, 2009
7:46 pm
Somebody send those secret death squads against this clown.
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/03/31/hersh-cheney-behind/
RW-(the original)
March 31st, 2009
7:48 pm
Things you don’t get arrested for. Having a tragic accident born of incredibly bad timing, but also you don’t get arrested for getting drunk, driving your car off a bridge, swimming to safety where you can sober up before reporting it, and leaving a young woman to suffocate to death while trapped inside your car that sits in four feet of water.
Taxpayer
March 31st, 2009
7:50 pm
@@,
What was our original mission for going into Iraq. We know it was not to go after Osama or any other terrorists that were involved in the Trade Center attacks. We know it was not for WMDs. Bush took his eye off the ball. The ball was the terrorists that were responsible for 9/11. That is what we the people supported and backed him on.
G
March 31st, 2009
7:54 pm
Palin Out, Gingrich In For GOP Dinner
Never mind Airhead Palin, I don’t see Newty-Newt leading the Rushpublicants out of their downward spiral either – he’s just as polarizing as any of them. NEXT!…
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0309/20726.html
Taxpayer
March 31st, 2009
7:56 pm
G,
Newt is in again because he has bowed to the deity, Reagan, and honored him with a motion picture, or something like that.
DB, Gwinnettian
March 31st, 2009
7:56 pm
Our guys killed untold numbers of terrorists in Iraq. Bush set a trap for them and they walked into it.
Lordy, someone still believes in the flypaper theory?
Midori
March 31st, 2009
7:59 pm
The Man Who Ate the G.O.P.
By Michale Wolff
In an ailing radio industry, with a graying audience and a pro-government landscape, Rush Limbaugh should be shuffling off into irrelevancy. Instead, his ever more outrageous attacks have everyone debating whether he’s the G.O.P.’s de facto leader, while the party shapes its ideology to fit his needs.
Rush Limbaugh, it seemed to me, had to be in huge trouble. Beyond his history of drug problems—in liberal circles there remains a constant is-he-isn’t-he speculation about the status of his prescription-painkiller addiction—beyond even the fact that the mighty conservative tide which he’d ridden to such success had certainly peaked, there were the terrible problems in his core business. Radio advertising rates were falling—even before the recession—Internet competition was rising, and Rush’s much-vaunted audience of 14 million was down from its high of 20 to 25 million during the Clinton years to closer to cable-TV size. The view at MSNBC was that, on a minute-by-minute basis, Limbaugh’s audience was now no bigger than that of its liberal stars, Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow.
So, when, in the beginning of February, Limbaugh said he hoped that the new president would fail in his efforts to deal with economic calamity, this seemed much more like a desperate bid to stay in the game than it did a stroke of master showmanship. By any logical assessment of behavior, it still seems as if the man may be imploding. And yet, within a month of his issuing his provocative or nihilistic view about an Obama-led recovery, the argument had become not whether he was hopelessly marginalized but whether he was the most significant figure in the Republican Party.
In a jaunty and rapid-fire manner, he’d dealt with Republican congressman Phil Gingrey, who had mildly suggested—to a reporter’s question about Limbaugh’s derogatory comments about the Republican leadership—that there were able gentlemen running the party. After a torrential news cycle, Gingrey offered Rush an abject apology, which had the added sweetener (a little carrot and stick) of getting him an appearance—to reiterate his apology—on Rush’s show. Then Limbaugh laid into Republicans who had expressed reservations about Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal’s response—lame by every estimation—to the president’s speech on February 24 before a joint session of Congress.
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/05/rush-limbaugh200905?printable=true¤tPage=all
G
March 31st, 2009
8:00 pm
Such a wonderful video. Our long, national nightmare is FINALLY over.
http://www.politico.com/largevideobox.html?id=18163942001
Taxpayer
March 31st, 2009
8:00 pm
DB,
It was actually all a part of Osama’s master plan. He lured Bush into Iraq and then attacked us. We lost hundreds of billions of dollars and more lives than from 9/11 and the terrorists lost a few million dollars and no more lives than we did. That Osama just plain whooped the tar out of Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bush, and company and they know it.
@@
March 31st, 2009
8:01 pm
Taxpayer:
The terrorists responsible for 9/11 were from countries throughout the Middle East. To martyr OBL would have left his mission intact. As it stands now, the extremists, due to the tactics they use, have been rejected by rational-thinking muslims.
G
March 31st, 2009
8:06 pm
Every time Poppy Bush is on TV now, he cries. Maybe he’s finally developed a conscience.
Nah.
Midori
March 31st, 2009
8:09 pm
G,
if your son was the biggest joke/failure in US History, wouldn’t you cry, too?
I see RW is still cheering on losers.
and he wonders why I left him.
Bud Wiser
March 31st, 2009
8:10 pm
Oh, I thought this topic was going to be about Barney Frank.
Did anyone else see the total annihilation Glen Beck laid on that moron known as the Attorney General of Connecticut, in relation to the AIG bonus fracas?
Did it also occur to you that left unchecked or unreported, this kind of abuse by those supposedly enforcing the laws becomes yet another goose step toward socialism, when the government officials can just sort of make up stuff to try to bow to sentiment and call it ‘a law’?
Blumenthal should be forced to resign immediately. Hell, he already ran for governor there once and was thrashed, and it is very apparent why.
And did I mention, he is a Democrat?
Wow, I bet that’s a real stunner.
G
March 31st, 2009
8:17 pm
Brought to you by:
Boner Crow, the latest and least likable Muppet.
Maybe the Count can help him out – but I doubt it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuAstDdFA2M
G
March 31st, 2009
8:18 pm
Midori,
I don’t know why you stayed as long as you did. Wasn’t he impotent?
Midori
March 31st, 2009
8:21 pm
LOL, G —
Let’s just say “politically”
Corporal
March 31st, 2009
8:23 pm
Taxpayer:
Sometimes in law enforcement you have to use some pretty evil people as “snitches” or “undercover operatives” in order to get bigger fish. Otherwise, it doesn’t get done. It’s just the real world so people can sleep safely in their beds.
We gave the Russians all kinds of supplies, munitions, tanks, aircraft, etc. to help fight the Nazis. Was that wrong?
Sometimes you use a weak enemy to fight a stronger one. That’s just the real world. That’s why we later helped some of the Afghans against the Russians and that’s why we used Saddam when we had to. You do what you have to do at the time you have to do it …….
Right now we are “using” Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Ten years from now we may be fighting them. So what?
I could give you numerous other examples but I hope you get the point.
P.S. Did you overlook or are you ignoring my 7:04? Be polite ….
)
G
March 31st, 2009
8:26 pm
Presenting…The English language’s newest word:
Budget-ish
Adjective
1. Of or resembling a budget. Lacks specificity such as numbers and/or ideas.
Usually encased in blue glossy folder and 19-pages, including cover pages and table of contents.
Noun
2. State requisite for GOP press conference.
Origin; 21st century English. From GOP budget proposal, March 2009
It was not a budget in the sense that it had numbers. It was more budget-ish.
RW-(the original)
March 31st, 2009
8:28 pm
Let’s recap,
I have a Republican Governor, a Republican Lt. Governor, a Republican Secretary of State, two Republican Senators and a Democrat Congressperson that is no longer CyMc.
Who’s politically impotent?
Corporal
March 31st, 2009
8:28 pm
For You Isolationists:
Someone will always be the world’s policeman as there is always a vacuum there. The question is WHO will it be?
Do you want a powerful, despotic, basically evil officer or …
Do you want a powerful, freedom loving, basically good officer ?
If the U.S. ever retires, someone else will step in. If you think it should be the U.N., that’s like asking a “meter-maid” to fight a “serial killer”.
Corporal
March 31st, 2009
8:33 pm
Any of you libs. think he will “get the boot” ?
WASHINGTON (CNN) – “Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, has signed a bill into law banning the use of state funds for embryonic stem cell research.
The move puts the DNC chairman at odds with President Obama, who signed an executive order earlier this month reversing the Bush administration’s ban on federal funding for research on embryonic stem cells.”
G
March 31st, 2009
8:34 pm
I say give Glenn Beck a break. He’s an ex (?) drug addict and an ex (?) alcoholic who entertains millions of Americans. He’s obviously not the most stable person but was Bush, Cheney, or Rove much more stable? Uneducated Americans truly buy in to this guy…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUe8gw-6UGQ
Eleanor Rigby
March 31st, 2009
8:34 pm
America is just being a good modern day empire, spend all resources on the military while the country crumbles within.
Frederick Douglass
March 31st, 2009
8:38 pm
Corporal, I’ve been around the block long enough to understand simple ecomomics, but what I’m trying to articulate is that these aren’t normal times. Bernie Madoff, and the Stanford guy are more prevalent
than you think, they’re the rule, instead of the exception when it comes to the rich. Much of what you say is white washed rhetoric
from the fifties and sixties.
G
March 31st, 2009
8:46 pm
What a stupid man. No wonder President Obama has such a mess to clean up.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fze2J2Ve9is
Midori
March 31st, 2009
8:57 pm
yes, you do have all those things. and what do all of you have in common?
You’re all LOSERS!!!
RW-(the original)
March 31st, 2009
9:03 pm
Bitter?
BWAHAHAHAHAH
/Yes I recall all those election night “loser” speeches right before they were sworn into office.
Taxpayer
March 31st, 2009
9:40 pm
Corporal,
You have changed your tactics tonight. Now, you are talking about we the people taking on the role of world cops instead of war mongerers. Are you having a change of heart.
Corporal
March 31st, 2009
9:40 pm
Frederick Douglas:
I hear you but welfare state system (other than helping those in short-term emergency need which will always be there) has existed since the fifties/sixties and it just hasn’t worked.
I hear you but must agree to disagree.
Thanks for you input …………..
Agree to disagree.
Corporal
March 31st, 2009
9:41 pm
Man, the infantile name calling and rhetoric on here vs. debate/dialogue is mindboggling. I wish I could talk Jay into setting down some tough rules ………
Taxpayer
March 31st, 2009
9:42 pm
The prosecution described a chain of death operated by Duch. His victims — most of whom were either disgraced members of the Khmer Rouge or their families — were tortured with electric shocks, waterboarding or beating to extract a confession, which would implicate new victims. After confessing, the victims would be killed, most often by a sharp blow to the back of the head.
Ewww. Now that looks like torture.
Taxpayer
March 31st, 2009
9:44 pm
If Reagan had simply delivered on his promise of Star Wars technology, we would have the Death Star and everyone would bow to our mighty might…especially whenever we talked in that low raspy voice.
@@
March 31st, 2009
9:44 pm
For Paul if he returns this evening. Check your e-mails from Stratfor. They’ve got a piece that lays out the difficulties Obama faces in his “surge” into Afghanistan/Pakistan.
Geopolitical Diary: Obama’s Afghanistan Strategy and the Reliability Question
Corporal
March 31st, 2009
9:47 pm
Taxpayer:
I don’t know where you are coming from? I haven’t changed a bit.
We “have” to be the world’s policeman whether it’s North Korea, Iraq, Iran, or terrorists (excuse me “the amorously challenged according to Obama) in general. We have to be wise and circumspect but we have to do it or the vacumm will be filled by someone we DON’T want there.
By the way, not trying to be ugly, but we are through for the night unless you respond to my 7:04 (third request).
Midori
March 31st, 2009
9:50 pm
Taxpayer,
I propose that Corporal dig up so that he can use that famous voice in order to force more debate and civility on this blog.
blow cookies
March 31st, 2009
9:54 pm
midori, you just be white noise
Taxpayer
March 31st, 2009
9:57 pm
Well, Corporal, I thought you were just throwing out the rhetorical stuff in that 7:04. But, if you really want to know what I define as torture, I would have to say that it is stuff like they show in my 9:42 link. And, since we are taking on the role of world cop, we have to quit shocking and awing because cops don’t do that sort of stuff. People have rights and cops are supposed to bring suspects in so they can have their day in court. That is so not like Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld, etc.
Taxpayer
March 31st, 2009
10:03 pm
Dick Cheney is Luke Skywalker’s father or maybe he is Luke Skywalker’s father’s master — that evil looking dude that threw out crackling lightning bolts from his fingertips.
Corporal
March 31st, 2009
10:09 pm
Taxpayer:
1) Sorry, I should have said “world soldier”. Didn’t mean to confuse the issue. I’m not trying to be a jerk to you but I have been a soldier in close combat and a law enforcement officer in close combat and to “my knowledge” you have not. Guess what? They are entirely different even though both can be deadly. A military confrontation is not law enforcement and we forget that at out peril.
2) I would agree that beatings and electrical shock are torture (do you have one of those electric collars/fence lines for your dog – I hope not). I believe “waterboarding” is a gray area. Just being honest.
Now, I’m asking for your honesty. Here is an excerpt from the Army Field Manual on Interrogation that Gen. Petraeus supports (and by implication Mr. Bookman supports since he supports General Petraeus).
“The Army Field Manual allows use of isolation for 30 days or more, sleep deprivation, modified sensory deprivation, use of fear/manipulation of phobias, some use of sensory overload, use of drugs in interrogation …..”
Do you feel any of those are “torture” or even “inappropriate” for use in interrogating terrorists?
@@
March 31st, 2009
10:11 pm
DB:
Lordy, someone still believes in the flypaper theory?
The “someone” has a name although not my given.
Feel free to use it. I’m not like your liberal friends…..I don’t boo hoo with every snide remark.
Outta here.
Midori
March 31st, 2009
10:13 pm
Blow cookies,
here — let me blow you a kiss http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/29963478#29981289
Taxpayer
March 31st, 2009
10:23 pm
Corporal, I think that any interrogation technique that has been agreed to via the Geneva Convention is not torture. Otherwise, they would be called ‘torture’. As far as any of those techniques being inappropriate, I guess that depends on what you expect to accomplish. I think it is inappropriate to take pictures of such things and post them on the internet. I suppose there are other things that I think are inappropriate as well. I also happen to agree with others that have stated, based on first-hand knowledge I presume, that torture is an ineffective method of obtaining reliable information and that likely is true for many of the other interrogation techniques. How many people have you extracted information from, useful or otherwise, through the use of torture or the use of Army Field Manual interrogation techniques.
RW-(the original)
March 31st, 2009
10:35 pm
A Call to The White House Auto Warranty Department
Corporal
March 31st, 2009
10:42 pm
Taxpayer:
So ……….
1) The Army Manual we are referring to is not based on the Geneva Convention. Why? Because the Geneva Convention says a prisoner only has to give name, rank and serial number. So why is there a 384 page interrogation manual? We both know why.
2) I ask one more time. Forget the Geneva Convention. Forget the Army Manual Interrogation Manual. DO YOU think these techniques are torture? Any or all?
a) isolation for 30 days or more,
b) sleep deprivation,
c) modified sensory deprivation,
d) use of fear/manipulation of phobias,
e) some use of sensory overload,
f) use of drugs in interrogation.
I Report/ You Whine
April 1st, 2009
5:21 am
So far in New York, home of the dimwitted liberal, in a district that went full blown Oblahmi, One Term’s “approval” rating seems to be down to about 50%-
Scott Murphy (Dem) 77,344, James Tedisco (GOP) 77,279
And who knows how many fake ACORN votes there are, maybe you libs should have had ABC “News”/WashingtonPost run this election, Obambi would have got 64% of the vote, yay!
Ben
April 1st, 2009
6:04 am
I’m all for strong military and national defense, but, in a rare event, you are right, Jay. There is too much waste in defense spending. Of course now that we are spending a few trillion extra on other things, I’m sure the waste in other areas will soon far exceed wasted money in defense spending.
I Report/ You Whine
April 1st, 2009
6:54 am
Indeed, the last budget passed by a Congress with GOP majorities was for fiscal 2007. That budget had a deficit of $162 billion, or 1.2% of GDP. But under Obama’s budget, the deficit for this year would total $1.845 trillion, according to the CBO, the highest ever. That would be more than 7 times Reagan’s largest deficit of $221 billion, which caused so much howling among liberals and Democrats.-Amspec
Any other questions?
I Report/ You Whine
April 1st, 2009
7:01 am
In his press conference last week, Obama said, “But, I’m — look, I’m not going to lie to you. It is tough. As I said, that’s why the critics tend to criticize, but they don’t offer an alternative budget, because even if we were not doing health care, we were not doing energy, we were not doing education, they would still have a whole bunch of problems in those out years, according to CBO projections. The only difference would — is that we will not have invested in what’s necessary to make this economy grow.”
Paul Ryan is going to make Obama regret that taunt.
hehehehe
Bud Wiser
April 1st, 2009
7:01 am
Anyone watching the massive protests for your Messiah in London?
Just curious.
Maybe he is so loved now since the rest of the world also is afraid he will spin the entire world economy into a massive Depression.