Barack Obama has spent the last four years blaming George Bush for the failed U.S. economy. He is running for re-election with the argument that Bush mucked things up so badly that Obama needs more time to repair the damage. So I thought it might be interesting to point out the specific things Bush did to destroy our economy. Please understand that this is more than a little tongue in cheek.
DEREGULATION OF THE BANKING INDUSTRY
The principle event that triggered the financial crisis was over leveraging of financial institutions. Democrats blame Bush for failing to properly regulate the banks and preventing this from happening. Bush was brilliant in engineering this even before he took office. In 1999, before he was elected President, George W. Bush tricked Bill Clinton into signing the Graham-Leach-Billey act into law.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/11/glass-steagall-act-the-se_n_201557.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramm%E2%80%93Leach%E2%80%93Bliley_Act
(Note: The merger of Travelers and Citibank actually started in 1998, but was subsequently made legal by the passage of Graham-Leach-Billey in 1999.)
That law, the brain child of Robert Rubin, repealed Glass-Steagall, the law that prevented banks from getting into the insurance business. (It was a Republican congress that passed this law, but Clinton signed it.) As soon as the law was signed, Citi-Bank completed the merger with Travelers Insurance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citigroup
Then Robert Rubin resigned his position as the greatest Treasury Secretary in history and joined Citigroup. He was paid millions for his sage advice. It is a disgrace that Bush would sabotage the Clinton administration with this irresponsible legislation.
FAILURE TO REGULATE FANNY MAE AND FREDDIE MAC
George W. Bush was even more irresponsible with regard to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac:
Because of the negligence of George Bush, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac exploded in size during the period from 1992 through 1998. I know that Bush wasn’t even involved in national politics at the time, but that is no excuse. Then in 1999, Bush tricked Andrew Cuomo and Bill Clinton into launching the sub-prime mortgage explosion. The decision to require Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to start giving loans irresponsibly, regardless of ability to pay, led to the enormous housing bubble that was destined to collapse. In addition, a high percentage of people who lost their homes were minorities who were coerced into taking on mortgages they couldn’t possibly afford.
The fact that Bush did this even before he was elected President is particularly disturbing.
Then, hypocritically, George Bush demanded that congress give him the authority to regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. As everyone knows, Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd were already responsible for this oversight and Bush just created an unnecessary distraction.
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2005/01/24/8234040/index.htm
BUSH CUT TAXES
Just because he inherited a declining economy, headed toward recession, Bush irresponsibly pushed through tax cuts that reduced taxes only on the rich.
http://taxfoundation.org/article/summary-latest-federal-individual-income-tax-data-0
If you look only at the raw data in table 2, you might draw the conclusion that top wage earners actually paid a higher percentage of total tax after the Bush tax cuts and that lower wage earners paid no tax at all. That may be technically true, but it was only because top wage earners were making more money from a booming economy.
Although the Bush tax cuts resulted in the fastest recovery from a recession in the history of the United States that was probably a coincidence. In addition, unemployment was only down to 5.7% by 2003, obviously the classic definition of a jobless recovery.
http://www.ombwatch.org/node/1541
I know some people will argue that there was sustained job growth throughout the Bush Presidency, but that ignores the dramatic change in employment once people realized that Barack Obama had been elected President.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/story/2012-05-31/federal-workforce-decline-growth/55318944/1
By pursuing policies that deliberately promoted job growth during his administration, President Bush left a problem that was very difficult for President Obama to handle.
BUSH CAUSED THE DEFICIT BY LAUNCHING THE WAR IN IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN
Some economists argue that the country was headed toward deficit spending in 2001, regardless of who was President, because of the rapid decline in the Social Security surplus.
Granted that this surplus reached its peak in 1998 and congress did spend the money to make the budget look balanced. Also granted, that baby boomers started leaving the work force in 2000, starting a steep decline in Social Security tax revenue. While some people argue that some of the defense spending under Bush was necessary to make up for eight years of underfunding under Clinton, and Bush actually spent far less than for any previous war, it is clear that the War in Iraq that caused the huge budget deficit. The following chart would appear, to some, to show that defense spending under Bush was consistent with historical patterns, but that is also just a distraction.
BUSH PUSHED THROUGH THE TARP PROGRAM
Bush irresponsibly gained bi-partisan support for the TARP program, which was responsible for restoring faith in our financial system. He then intervened to provide a bridge loan to GM, preventing them from going bankrupt. By taking decisive action, before Barack Obama was even elected, Bush prevented Obama from receiving full credit for the only two actions taken by him that had any positive impact on the economy.
The record is crystal clear: George W. Bush is solely responsible for the financial mess that Obama inherited, and it is absolutely vital that we learn from this lesson. Never again should we allow such an evil man to influence policy in such a devastating manner even before he assumed office. Never again should we allow a President to make sound financial decisions to save an economy on the brink and rob the next President from his day in the sun.
TDM
Note: The biggest mistake being made by Republicans in this election is to allow Democrats to blame George Bush for the failed economy. This is the second time Republicans failed to back President Bush, even though the FACTS are all on his side.
Republicans also failed to back Bush with regard to the WMD in Iraq. There is zero evidence that Bush ever made a single statement about the WMD in Iraq that was not backed by the intelligence and that was not supported by representatives of the Clinton administration. Republicans let Democrats lie about that, just like they are now letting them lie about the Bush economic record. What is obviously true is obviously true and Republicans need to realize that the truth is a powerful weapon in this election.
Pingback: the encyclopedia