Yes, it’s time to talk about George W. Bush
Twenty-one months ago, George W. Bush left office after eight years.
When he stepped aside, the United States was sliding into a Code Red national emergency, with the finance sector imploding, two wars underway, a massive wave of home foreclosures cresting, and hundreds of thousands of jobs being eliminated each month.
Almost immediately, Republicans began a carefully crafted and largely successful campaign to convince the media that none of the mayhem that followed was their fault.
“Blame it on Bush” became a term of derision and scorn coming from conservative commentators — the clear message being that Democrats now controlled the Federal government and, by extension, owned the national crisis.
Their campaign was so effective that many Americans no longer remember that some of the most unpopular elements of the bailout — including TARP and the automobile bailout — were crafted by Mr. Bush’s team.
Many Republicans have even taken to mocking President Barack Obama for underestimating the magnitude of the financial emergency, which pushed unemployment rates into double digits.
But the release last week of the GOPs Pledge to America makes it clear that we must revisit the philosophy and policies that shaped our nation for nearly a decade, from 2000 through 2006, when Republicans controlled the government.
The Pledge essentially promises more of the same, which is why an honest debate is needed over the impact of years of deregulation and tax cuts which immediately preceded the crisis.
The tea party movement has largely rallied around one major and laudable issue: shrinking the massive Federal deficit.
Yet it is simply a matter of fact that in this document, Republicans offer no fresh ideas for reducing that red ink.
Indeed, their cornerstone pledge — maintaining tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans — blows a much bigger hole in the bottom of the bucket, accelerating our rush to collective bankruptcy.
This isn’t to say that Democrats are necessarily the better choice this year.
It may be that we will decide collectively to give Republicans another chance to get this right — despite the flimsiness of this document.
But before pulling the lever in the voting booth, we need to compare and contrast honestly and bluntly the performance of Republicans from 2000-2006 with the performance of Democrats from 2006-2010
Frankly, it’s too bad that we find ourselves in this predicament.
If the GOP had offered a more thought-provoking, honest, and inspirational plan — and not a document haunted by the legacy of Mr. Bush — many voters might have seen their way to an easier choice.
Tags: election10
An amazing thing happened today. I listened to an NPR interview with David Stockman, The architect of ‘trickle down’ economics and I agreed with him. Back when he was advising Reagan I doubted I’d ever agree with him on anything but in the interview he said that “we couldn’t afford the Bush tax cut when they did it and we can afford it less now”. In my opinion (which won’t be popular) we should let the entire Bush tax cut expire. We need to start paying for our overspending and the sooner the better. Yes, it will probably prolong the recovery and maybe we should do it in stages over 3 years but we have to start paying our collective bill and what the Republicans are promising is to kick the can further down the road. That is not a plan.
When the tax cuts were passed I believed they were a mistake, so much so that I sent my share $300 to the Concord coalition a nonpartisan group lobbying for a balanced budget.
It will take us decades to recover from the Bush years, if we ever do. It true there were challenges before the Bush II presidency, but W took us far down he wrong path.
Kevin Phillips, the Republican consultant, sounded the warning in his recent books of great powers who have overextended themselves, financially and militarily. That is where we are today.
I agree with the above, let the tax cuts expire so we can pay off our collective bills.
Yes I would say that the last administration did nothing to control the deficit and some of those decisions were not good ones.
However this administration has increased the deficit from that point hugely; with no end in sight, they have to take responsibility for that part of the expansion of the deficit. That is all on this administration you can’t lay what has happened since 2009 on the Bush administration that is the responsibility of this President and this Congress. The alternative is to say that this president and this congress is inefectual and weak unable to have any impact on the situation, just a poor litttle bunch of people being tossed about by circumstances beyond thier control, basically victims of circumstance. Is that the platform, Bush was so bad we really can’t do anything about it so vote for us? We have seen their economic plan and their social plan lets see if they work, lets see if these programs from the stimulas to the health care reform really do work it won’t be hard and they can’t squirm out of the results. Will unemployment go down, will health care get better will the deficit shrink? These are questions that President Obama and the Democratic Congress are responsible for. Frankly unlike some conservatives I really do hope some of these things work, my life will be better if they do that is for sure. But I just find it very frustrating to worry about President Bush, it is looking backward and it is an excuse, lets look forward that is what this President was supposed to be about.
So let’s forget all about the Bush administration mistakes. Let’s pretend the “Pledge” ideas are all new and have never been tried before. That should work out just swell.
Unfortunately the Pledge to America is mostly a return to the past. The notion that we can lower taxes and balance the budget is fantasy at it worst. I wish Obama would be straight with every one, just come right out and say “the bill for past overspending is due folks. We’ve been avoiding responsibility and now we have to own up to it.” That means both spending cuts and higher taxes. If we had raised the SS tax modestly 10, 15, 20 years ago and set the excess aside instead of just rolling it into the federal budget as a loan, SS wouldn’t have a problem now. My frustration with congress for years has been their lack of leadership and inability to stand up to special interests. My frustration with Obama is that he is trying to hard to be reasonable and bipartisan and not using the bully pulpit hard enough. OTOH going back is an abhorrent idea.
Actually there is no problem with Social Security now. SS is fine for another 30 years without any change. Remove the cap and SS is fine indefinitely.
I don’t think we should forget about the mistakes of the past. But come on lets see if the group in there now can do this or not. I don’t think they have had enough time to really tell but in another year yes we will know much more. They have had the power and they indeed have done a whole bunch of things it will not be hard to see of those things work or not. Will the massive health care reform bill work or not, it will not be hard to see if they can help fix this economy and the deficit number is easy to read. Instead of venting about poor old George I think we should analyze if this new path is any better or worse. It’s always easier to blame but it gets us nowhere the verdict was passed in 2008 it is why President Obama was elected. Lets see if his policies are even worse than Bush’s? Only time will tell.
Mervel,
The problem is that when Obama came into office the country was in a financial crisis. When you are in a crisis you can’t decide that it is all of a sudden time to start fixing long term structural problems.
The time to fix long term structural problems was when the economy was in better shape.
Instead of keeping the country in a position to weather a storm the Bush administration failed to repair the ship of state when seas were calm, then they threw out the life jackets. Once everyone understands that we can all try to start bailing and save the ship but half of us still want to play shuffleboard and lounge by the pool while the engine room is filling with water. Will there be plenty of life boats available for the loungers after the crew trying to bail out the engine room drowns?
I agree with James and DBW; let all the tax cuts expire.
So sad that Obama is such a failure.
It’s like the FDR failure. Sure, he walked into a recession. Then, he turned it into the “Great Depression” with his tax-raising.
Reagan never blamed Carter for the similar situation he inherited. He didn’t have to. He got us out of it in short order.
When do we send the bill to Iraq. I thought they could pay for that war with the oil money and that is why the costs were never included in the budget.
Good point TS (I really wish you’d find another screen name). Iraq should be paying us back. So should Israel, South Korea, Germany, Italy, all the other places we’ve rebuilt. Not gonna happen, but it would be right.
Yeah, Bush screwed it up. So did Clinton. Bush inherited a failing economy but no one recalls that. The only reason Clinton “reformed” welfare and worked on a balanced budget was because of a strong right wing Congress. And to be honest every President since FDR has inherited the bills from the New Deal and it’s entitlements and those that followed.
Yeah, Bush screwed it up. What’s Obama the Magnificent done to fix it? Nothing, not a darn thing. He’s added what, twice the debt load now? They tell us the recession ended last year, BULL. And they have no plan for fixing things any more than the Repubs do. Their concern is staying in power and diverting blame. That’s it.
First let’s assume that these government policies are somehow the cause or the fix for our problem. Clearly that is behind Brian’s point here right? The policies of Bush (and Obama) now have to be a substantial driver of the effects we are seeing if there is any point in having the discussion.
Brian, so we can have a clear discussion. What exactly are the actions that the Bush administration took that led to the “code red national emergency”? If you can list a few pieces of specific legislation that would help with the discussion.
By the way Mr. Bullard- the SS tax was raised modestly 30 years ago. A guy named Reagan did it IIRC. And then a few years later a guy named Clinton raised the tax on SS received by seniors. That’s compassionate.
That’s right, Clinton deserves no credit for reforming welfare because what he did was because of a “strong right wing Congress”. But Reagan deserves all the credit for solving Social Security issues in 1983. Let’s conveniently forget that it was a bipartisan effort led by Tip O’Neil and a Democratic majority in the House of Representives. Yes, Clinton raised the tax on SS, but who started the taxation of SS? Reagan signed the Bill in 1983 (yes, with bipartisan help – back in the day when there were still moderate NorthEastern Republicans).
This discussion always seems to get far afield. I assume that the “code red” emergency that Brian is describing is the financial crisis that hit hard in 2007-2008 (and continues today). The consensus on this issue is that that the root of the problem was in the housing market. The root of the problem was that too many people were buying homes that they could not afford. Banks and financial firms held a key role in that they loaned money to folks through instruments that were putting them into loans they could not afford (sub-prime mortgages). This was exacerbated by the fact that other financial firms were creating other financial instruments to take advantage of the money that was out there (for example credit default swaps). But the bottom line is that the problem was caused by encouraging home buyers to enter into loans that they could not afford. The banks did not care because they were going to off-load the shaky notes onto somebody else. Once it came time to own-up everything collapsed. The housing market collapsed and the rest of the economy tied to that market (a very large deal) crashed with it.
So George Bush (if he is to blame, and he very well maybe) had to do something that encouraged people to buy homes they could not afford, whether that was through the buyers themselves, or if it was with the lenders, or both. Brain, what was it that he did?
This is a good BBC article from 2009 that tries to touch on most of the issues:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7814704.stm
The problem was caused by people buying homes they could not afford. Here we see the Clinton administration telling the largest mortgage companies in the country to “ease credit to aid mortgage lending”:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0DE7DB153EF933A0575AC0A96F958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1
Now if Bush did nothing to try and stop this later he shares some of the blame. Did he? Look at this NYT article where the Bush administration put forward legislation to try and regulate the two largest mortgage companies in the country. Who was opposed to the legislation:
“Among the groups denouncing the proposal today were the National Association of Home Builders and Congressional Democrats who fear that tighter regulation of the companies could sharply reduce their commitment to financing low-income and affordable housing.”
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E06E3D6123BF932A2575AC0A9659C8B63&sec=&spon=&scp=3&sq=%202003%20fannie%20freddie%20labaton&st=cse&pagewanted=2
I would argue that if legislation put forward by the Bush administration and rejected by the democratic congress to have been enacted that we would not be having this discussion today.
My favorite quote from the 2003 article is this one by one of the leaders of today’s “blame Bush band wagon”:
“”These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not facing any kind of financial crisis,” said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ”The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.”