B-b-b-but it’s HIS fault
Verities & Balderdash
By Bob Robinson

More and more Americans are finally giving Pres. Obama credit for the state of today’s economy, despite continued efforts to explain to us how it was inherited “from the previous administration.” Some of the media excepted, of course.

I’ve had to bite my tongue dozens of times in favor of doing my own research and writing a column about “HIS fault” but have been unable to find the time... the following is unverified in its specifics but pretty much corresponds to columns I’ve written and my observations over the past four years or so.

I held - and hold - former Pres. Bush responsible for his ‘Compassionate Conservatism.” I wish someone had told him that conservatism IS compassionate. Anyone remember the Chinese fable about “give a person a fish and you feed him for a day, teach a person to fish and you feed him for a lifetime?”

By the same token I hold Pres. Obama and Washington Democrats responsible for today’s disaster. This was sent by a County News Online reader...

Why didn’t the Democrats vote on their budget last year before November? We have had NO budget for the past two years... so now the Republicans are taking the rap for everything - Are you confused?

“B-b-b-But It’s HIS Fault”

The Washington Post babbled again recently about Obama inheriting a huge deficit from Bush. Amazingly enough, a lot of people swallow this BULL.

So once more, a short civics lesson.

Budgets do not come from the White House. They come from Congress and the party that controlled Congress since January 2007 is the Democratic Party.

Furthermore, the Democrats controlled the budget process for FY 2008 & FY 2009 as well as FY 2010 & FY 2011.

In that first year, they had to contend with George Bush, which caused them to compromise on spending, when Bush somewhat belatedly got tough on spending increases.

For FY 2009 though, Nancy Pelosi & Harry Reid bypassed George Bush entirely, passing continuing resolutions to keep government running until Barack Obama could take office.

At that time, they passed a massive omnibus spending bill to complete the FY 2009 budgets.

A note on where Barack Obama was during this time? He was a member of that very Congress that passed all of these massive spending bills, and he signed the omnibus bill as President to complete FY 2009.
 
If the Democrats inherited any deficit, it was the FY 2007 deficit, the last of the Republican budgets. That deficit was the lowest in five years, and the fourth straight decline in deficit spending. After that, Democrats in Congress took control of spending, and that includes Barack Obama, who voted for the budgets.

If Obama inherited anything, he inherited it from himself.

In a nutshell, what Obama is saying is he inherited a deficit that he voted for and then he voted to expand that deficit four-fold since January 20th.