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More headlines: Barack Obama on Budget & Economy

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McCain calls 2008 White House meeting; but Obama has package

McCain wanted me to convene a White House meeting on the rescue package. I knew John was in a tough position. He was trailing in the polls to Obama. No question the economic trouble was hurting John. Yet I thought the financial crisis gave John his best chance to mount a comeback. In periods of crisis, voters value experience and judgment over youth and charisma. By handling the challenge in a statesmanlike way, John could make the case that he was the better candidate for the times.

I opened the meeting by stressing the urgency of passing legislation as soon as possible. Obama had a calm demeanor and spoke about the broad outlines of the package. I thought it was smart when he informed the gathering that he was in constant contact with [Administration officials]. His purpose was to show that he was aware, in touch, and prepared to help get a bill passed.

When Obama finished, I turned to John McCain. He passed. I was puzzled. What had started as a drama quickly descended into a farce.

Source: Decision Points, by Pres. George W. Bush, p.460-462 Nov 9, 2010

Make government fiscally responsible & live within budget

Q: This year’s deficit will reach $455 billion. Won’t some programs you are proposing have to be eliminated?

OBAMA: Every dollar I’ve proposed, I’ve proposed an additional cut hat it matches. To give an example, we spend $15 billion a year on subsidies to insurance companies. It doesn’t help seniors get better. It’s a giveaway. I want to go through the federal budget line by line, programs that don’t work, we cut. Programs we need, we should make them work better. Once we get through this economic crisis, we’re going to have to embrace a culture of responsibility, all of us, corporations, the federal government, & individuals who may be living beyond their means.

McCAIN: I’d have an across-the-board spending freeze. I know how to save billions of dollars in defense spending. One would be the marketing assistance program. Another one would be subsidies for ethanol. I would fight for a line-item veto, and I would certainly veto every earmark pork-barrel bill.

Source: 2008 third presidential debate against John McCain Oct 15, 2008

When Bush came in, we had a surplus; now we have a deficit

Q: How can we trust either of you with our money when both parties got us into this global economic crisis?

OBAMA: I understand your frustration and your cynicism. Most of the people here, you’ve got a family budget. If less money is coming in, you end up making cuts. Maybe you don’t go out to dinner as much. Maybe you put off buying a new car. That’s not what happens in Washington. And you’re right. There is a lot of blame to go around.

But I think it’s important just to remember a little bit of history. When George Bush came into office, we had surpluses. And now we have half-a-trillion-dollar deficit annually. When George Bush came into office, our national debt was around $5 trillion. It’s now over $10 trillion. We’ve almost doubled it.

And so while it’s true that nobody’s completely innocent here, we have had over the last 8 years the biggest increases in deficit spending and national debt in our history. And Sen. McCain voted for 4 out of 5 of those George Bush budgets.

Source: 2008 second presidential debate against John McCain Oct 7, 2008

Middle class needs a rescue package with tax cuts

Q: What’s your plan to save people from financial ruin?

OBAMA: This is a verdict on the failed policies of the last eight years that said that we should strip away consumer protections, let the market run wild, and prosperity would rain down. Step one was a rescue package that means making sure taxpayers get their money back. The middle-class need a rescue package. That means tax cuts for the middle-class. It means help for homeowners. It means we are helping state governments set up projects that keep people in their jobs. We’ve got to fix our health care system, we’ve got to fix our energy system. You’ve got to have somebody in Washington who is thinking about the middle class and not just those who can afford to hire lobbyists.

McCAIN: I have a plan to fix this problem and it has to do with energy independence. We’ve got to stop sending $700 billion a year to countries that don’t like us. We have to keep Americans’ taxes low. All Americans’ taxes low.

Source: 2008 second presidential debate against John McCain Oct 7, 2008

Every citizen should save energy & resources

Q: What economic sacrifices will Americans have to make?

OBAMA: Each and every one of us can start thinking about how can we save energy. And one of the things I want to do is make sure we’re providing incentives so that you can buy a fuel efficient car that’s made right here in the U.S., not in Japan or South Korea, making sure that you are able to weatherize your home or make your business more fuel efficient.

McCAIN: Some of those programs may not grow as much as we would like for them to, but we can establish priorities with full consultation, not done behind closed doors & shoving earmarks in the middle of the night that we don’t even know about until months later.

Source: 2008 second presidential debate against John McCain Oct 7, 2008

FactCheck: National debt up from $6T to $10T under Bush

Obama said, “When George Bush came into office, our national debt was around $5 trillion. It’s now over $10 trillion.” Actually, it was closer to $6 trillion when Bush took office. On Jan. 22, 2001 (two days after Bush was sworn in) the debt stood at $5.728 trillion. On Sept. 30, 2008, it was $10.025 trillion.
Source: FactCheck.org on 2008 second presidential debate Oct 7, 2008

We need both bottom-up politics and bottom-up economics

The power of bottom-up economics, according to Obama, is that it is an economically just system that encourages everyone to work hard, to educate themselves, and to be their most productive because it fairly rewards those who do so.

All are equally motivated to excel, because they know the system will treat them fairly and reward their hard work and effort.

Obama wrote, "It taught me that ordinary people can do extraordinary things when given the chance. Change does not happen from the top down, but from the bottom-up, because the American people stand ready for change. Just like we need bottom-up politics, we need bottom-up economics. We need to think about working people."

Source: Obamanomics, by John R. Talbott, p. 34 Jul 1, 2008

Clinton left behind a surplus; Bush squandered it

We could have done something to end our addiction to oil, but instead we continued down a path that that funds both sides of the war on terror, endangers our planet, and has left Americans struggling with $4 a gallon gasoline. We could have invested in innovation and rebuilt our crumbling roads and bridges, but instead we’ve spent hundreds of billions of dollars fighting a war in Iraq that should’ve never been authorized and never been waged.

Worse yet, the price-tag for these failures is being passe to our children. The Clinton Administration left behind a surplus, but this Administration squandered it. We face budget deficits in the hundreds of billions and our nearly ten trillion dollars in debt. We’ve borrowed billions from countries like China to finance needless tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and an unnecessary war, and yet Sen. McCain is explicitly running to continue and expand these policies, without a realistic plan to pay for it. I want to take us in a new and better direction.

Source: Speech in Flint, MI, in Change We Can Believe In, p.247-8 Jun 15, 2008

A different economic approach vs. McCain’s 4 more years

Q: The GOP is arguing already that you want to increase capital gains taxes on investments and stocks: A lot of middle-class people have those kinds of accounts.

A: If they have a 401(k), then they are going to see those taxes deferred, and they’re going to pay ordinary income when they finally cash out. So, that’s a phony argument. You know, as I travel around the country, what I’m absolutely convinced of is that people recognize that if only 1% of the population is doing well, when we’ve got wage and incomes for the average worker actually going down during a period of economic expansion, much less economic recession, that something’s being mismanaged. And they want a different approach. And that’s what we’re going to be offering them. John McCain is essentially offering four more years of the same policies that got us into this rut that we’re in now.

Source: CNN Late Edition: 2008 presidential series with Wolf Blitzer May 11, 2008

Can’t do anything at home with $12 billion a month on Iraq

The fact that we’re spending $12 billion every month in Iraq means that we can’t engage in the kind of infrastructure improvements that are going to make us more competitive, we can’t deliver on the kinds of health care reforms that Clinton and I are looking for. McCain is willing to have these troops over there for 100 years. The notion that we would sustain that kind of effort and neglect not only making us more secure here at home, more competitive here at home, allow our economy to sink.
Source: 2008 Democratic debate at University of Texas in Austin Feb 21, 2008

Protect consumers with Credit Card Bill of Rights

Source: Campaign booklet, “Blueprint for Change”, p. 10-15 Feb 2, 2008

Bush stimulus plan leaves out seniors & unemployed

We heard the President say he has a stimulus plan to boost our economy, but we know his plan leaves out seniors and fails to expand unemployment insurance, and we know it was George Bush’s Washington that let the banks and financial institutions run amok, and take our economy down this dangerous road. What we need to do now is put more money in the pockets of workers and seniors, and expand unemployment insurance for more people and more time. And I have a plan that to do just that.
Source: Response to 2008 State of the Union address Jan 28, 2008

Account for every single dollar for new proposed programs

Q: You have some $50 billion worth of new programs that you cannot account for.

A: We account for every single dollar that we propose. This is one of the things that’s happened during the course of this campaign, that there’s a set of assertions made b Clinton and her husband, that are not factually accurate. Part of what the people are looking for right now is somebody who’s going to solve problems and not resort to the same typical politics that we’ve seen in Washington. That is something that I hear all across the country. So when Clinton says I wasn’t opposed to the war from the start or says it’s a fairytale that I opposed the war, that is simply not true. Clinton asserts that I said that the Republicans had better economic policies since 1980. That is not the case. The viewers are concerned about is who’s actually going to help the get health care, how are they going to get their kids going to college, and that’s the kind of campaign I’ve tried to run.

Source: 2008 Congressional Black Caucus Democratic debate Jan 21, 2008

Bankruptcy bill pushed by banks & financial institutions

OBAMA: When we talked a while back, we talked about the bankruptcy bill, which had been pushed by the banks and the financial institutions, that said, basically, it will be harder for folks who have been lured into these teaser rates and then see their credit cards go up to 30%, that they would have a tougher time getting out of bankruptcy. In the last debate, Clinton said she voted for it but hoped that it wouldn’t pass. Now, I don’t understand that approach to legislation.

CLINTON: I regretted voting for the bankruptcy bill and I was happy that it didn’t get into law. By 2005, there was another run at a bankruptcy reform, motivated by the credit card companies and the other big lenders. I opposed that bill. There was a particular amendment that is very telling. It was an amendment to prohibit credit card companies from charging more than 30% interest. It was one of the biggest lobbyist victories on that very bad bill that the bankruptcy bill represented.

Source: 2008 Congressional Black Caucus Democratic debate Jan 21, 2008

Lack of an energy policy is a financial burden

Part of the reason that Kuwait and others are able to come in and purchase, or at least bail out, some of our financial institutions is because we don’t have an energy policy. We are sending close to a billion dollars a day. A realistic plan is going to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and to invest in solar & wind & biodiesel. That would make a substantial difference in our balance of payments, and that would make a substantial difference in terms of their capacity to purchase our assets.
Source: 2008 Democratic debate in Las Vegas Jan 15, 2008

Rejects free market vision of government

In a 2005 commencement address, Obama described the conservative philosophy of government as “to give everyone one big refund on their government, divvy it up by individual portions, in the form of tax breaks, hand it out, and encourage everyone to use their share to go buy their own health care, their own retirement plan, their own child care, their own education, and so on. In Washington, they call this the Ownership Society. But in our past there has been another term for it, Social Darwinism, every man or woman for him or herself. It’s a tempting idea, because it doesn’t require much thought or ingenuity.“ Obama has rejected this free market vision of government, preferring to see the power of the state as something that can serve the public interest. According to Obama, ”We’re going to put more money into education than we have. WE have to invest in human capital.“
Source: The Improbable Quest, by John K. Wilson, p.155 Oct 30, 2007

Return to PayGo: compensate for all new spending

We were told by our President that we could fight two wars, increase our military budget by 74%, spend more on education, initiate a prescription drug plan, have tax cuts, all at the same time. We were told by Congress that they could make up for lost revenue by cutting government waste.

The result is the most precarious budget situation we have seen in years. We now have an annual budget deficit of almost $300 billion, not counting more than $180 billion we borrow every year from the Social Security Trust Fund.

It is not the debt that is most troubling. The bulk of the debt is a direct result of the President’s tax cuts, 47.4% of which went to the top 5% income bracket.

We can eliminate tax credits that have outlived their usefulness & close loopholes that let corporations get away without paying taxes. We can restore a law that was in place during the Clinton presidency--called Paygo--that prohibits money from leaving the treasury without some way of compensating for the lost revenue.

Source: The Audacity of Hope, by Barack Obama, p.187-189 Oct 1, 2006

Bush’s economic policies are not working

Obama believes that there is no such thing as a “jobless recovery.” When millions of Americans aren’t working, neither are the Bush Administration’s economic policies. As US Senator, Obama will champion policies that get our economy moving and people working instead of short-sighted tax-cuts for the rich that have failed to spark a recovery.
Source: 2004 Senate campaign website, ObamaForIllinois.com May 2, 2004

Save $150 billion in tax cuts for people who don’t need them

Every proposal I’ve put forward during this campaign we have paid for, and we have specified where that money is going to come from. Let’s just look at our tax code because it’s a great example of how we could provide relief to ordinary citizens who are struggling to get by. Right now we’ve got a whole host of corporate loopholes and tax havens. There’s a building in the Cayman Islands that houses supposedly 12,000 US-based corporations. That’s either the biggest building in the world or the biggest tax scam in the world, and we know which one it is. If we close some of those loopholes, we’ve put forward tax relief plans, that will not only restore fairness to our tax code, but it also puts money into the pockets of hard-working Americans who need it right now, who will spend it, and will actually improve our economic growth over time, particularly at a time when we’re seeing a credit crunch. But it requires leadership from the white house that restores that sense that we’re all in this together.
Source: 2007 Des Moines Register Democratic Debate Dec 13, 2007

OpEd: Goal is to redistribute wealth via expanded government

The change Barack Obama believes in is not the change we believe in. His strategic mantra is REDISTRIBUTE!

He plans to redistribute wealth, to redistribute access to health care and to raise taxes until it no longer makes sense for productive people to keep working.

But that's not all. He envisions creating an expansive, and expensive, federal government that regulate, controls, and pays for an ever-increasing percentage of our daily lives.

Source: Take Back America, by Dick Morris, p. 2 Apr 13, 2010

We inherited $8T of debt; and only added $1T more

Rep. HENSARLING: A year ago I [heard] your sincere commitment to ensuring that our nation's children do not inherit an unconscionable debt. The cost of government is due to grow from 20% of our economy to 40%, right about the time our children are leavin college and getting that first job.

Pres. OBAMA: When we came into office, the deficit was $1.3 trillion, before I had passed any law. We came in with $8 trillion worth of debt over the next decade--had nothing to do with anything that we had done. It had to do with the fact that in 2000 when there was a budget surplus of $200 billion, you had a Republican administration and a Republican Congress, and we had two tax cuts that weren't paid for. Now, we increased it by a trillion dollars because of the spending that we had to make on the stimulus. The major driver of our long-term liabilities, everybody here knows, is Medicare and Medicaid and our health care spending. That's going to be what our children have to worry about.

Source: Obama Q&A at 2010 House Republican retreat in Baltimore Jan 29, 2010

OpEd: 2008 crisis from deregulated markets running wild

The McCain-Obama debates in 2008 were symptomatic of how politicians are abandoning the cause of freedom and promoting socialist solutions. Both candidates blamed the massive Wall Street and financial market collapse on corporate greed. Obama went further, citing markets running wild after deregulation. Neither candidate defended free enterprise or explained how bad government policies had been the root cause of the problem. Both candidates proposed more government solutions. Obama confidently mad his case with socialist principles.

The socialist principles of "equality" and "justice" sound like ideas we should all support, but the socialists' definition of equality is not equality of opportunities but an equality of outcomes. They are not speaking of equal justice under law. Socialists promote a more arbitrary "affirmative justice" government action to combat perceived discrimination or suspected prejudice.

Source: Saving Freedom, by Jim DeMint, p. 29 Jul 4, 2009

Fundamentals were weak BEFORE crisis; focus on middle class

Q: Sen. McCain, to address the economic crisis, you proposed a $52 billion plan that includes new tax cuts on capital gains, tax breaks for seniors, write-offs for stock losses, among other things. Comments?

McCAIN: Americans are hurting right now, and they’re angry. They’re innocent victims of greed and excess on Wall Street and as well as Washington, D.C. But we also have to have a short-term fix, in my view, and long- term fixes [as you outlined about my plan].

Q: Sen. Obama, you proposed $60 billion in tax cuts for middle- income and lower-income people, more tax breaks to create jobs, new spending for public works projects to create jobs.

OBAMA: The fundamentals of the economy were weak even before this latest crisis. Sen. McCain and I agree that we’ve got to help homeowners. I disagree with Sen. McCain in how to do it, because the way Sen. McCain has designed his plan, it could be a giveaway to banks if we’re buying full price for mortgages that now are worth a lot less.

Source: 2008 third presidential debate against John McCain Oct 15, 2008

I sought re-regulation; McCain boasts he’s a deregulator

McCAIN: Some of us stood up two years ago and said we’ve got to enact legislation to fix this. We’ve got to stop this greed and excess. Meanwhile, the Democrats in Congress defended what Fannie and Freddie were doing. They resisted any change.

OBAMA: I’ve got to correct a little bit of Sen. McCain’s history. Let’s, first of all, understand that the biggest problem in this whole process was the deregulation of the financial system. Sen. McCain, as recently as March, bragged about the fact that he is a deregulator. On the other hand, two years ago, I said that we’ve got a sub-prime lending crisis that has to be dealt with. I wrote to Secretary Paulson, I wrote to Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke, and told them this is something we have to deal with, and nobody did anything about it. A year ago, I went to Wall Street and said we’ve got to reregulate, and nothing happened. And Sen. McCain during that period said that we should keep on deregulating because that’s how the free enterprise system works.

Source: 2008 second presidential debate against John McCain Oct 7, 2008

Bailout will unfreeze credit & allow businesses to function

Q: Which parts of the $700B bailout will help people?

OBAMA: Let me tell you what’s in the rescue package for you. Right now, the credit markets are frozen up and what that means is that small businesses can’t get loans. If they can’t get a loan, that means that they can’t make payroll. If they can’t make payroll, then they may end up having to shut their doors and lay people off. And if you imagine just one company trying to deal with that, now imagine a million companies all across the country. So it could end up having an adverse effect on everybody, and that’s why we had to take action. But we shouldn’t have been there in the first place.

McCAIN: This rescue package means we will stabilize markets, we will shore up these institutions. But it’s not enough. That’s why we’re going to have to go out into the housing market and buy up these bad loans and we’re going to have to stabilize home values, and that way, Americans can realize the American dream and stay in their home.

Source: 2008 second presidential debate against John McCain Oct 7, 2008

The lax regulation that Bush favored got us in this disaster

Q: Do you favor this bailout plan?

A: We haven’t seen the language yet, & there’s constructive work being done. I am optimistic about the capacity of us to come together with a plan. But how did we get into this situation in the first place? Two years ago, I warned that because of the subprime lending mess, because of lax regulation, that we were potentially going to have a problem & tried to stop some of the abuses in mortgages that were taking place at the time. Last year, I wrote to the secretary of the Treasury to make sure that he understood the magnitude of this problem and to call on him to bring all the stakeholders together to try to deal with it. We’ve have to intervene to solve this problem short-term. But we’re also going to have to look at how is it that we’ve shredded some many regulations, we did not set up a 21st century regulatory framework to deal with these problems. And that, in part, has to do with an economic philosophy that says regulation is always bad.

Source: 2008 first presidential debate, Obama vs. McCain Sep 26, 2008

Other candidates on Budget & Economy: Barack Obama on other issues:
Incumbents:
Pres.Barack Obama
V.P.Joe Biden
GOP Candidates:
Gov.Mitt Romney(MA)
Rep.Paul Ryan(WI)
Third Party Candidates:
Mayor Rocky Anderson(J)
Roseanne Barr(PF)
Rep.Virgil Goode(C)
Gov.Gary Johnson(L)
Jill Stein(G)
Andre Barnett(Ref.)

GOP Withdrawals:
Rep.Michele Bachmann(MN)
Herman Cain(GA)
Rep.Newt Gingrich(GA)
Gov.Sarah Palin(AK)
Rep.Ron Paul(TX)
Gov.Tim Pawlenty(MN)
Gov.Rick Perry(TX)
Gov.Buddy Roemer(LA)
Sen.Rick Santorum(PA)
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Page last updated: Jan 22, 2013