Government Fiscal Year 2009 Deficit – 1.4 billion
Fiscal Year 2009 (Oct 1st 2008-Oct 1st 2009) Deficit – 1.4 billion
Fiscal Year 2008 Deficit – $450 billion
Don’t blame Bush (Republican) or Obama (Democrat) for the large government budget deficit of 2009. Rather, blame them both. Bush was in office when the 2009 fiscal year was planned and for the first four months of the 2009 fiscal year. Obama followed through with the planned budget adding his own spending bills and stimulus in the remaining eight months of the 2009 fiscal year.
The problem is government spending more money than they collect resulting in a budget deficit. There are two ways to immediately solve a deficit, spending restraint and/or higher taxes. Two other ways for government to resolve a deficit, which harm everybody in the long run, are to issue more debt or print more money.
The best approach to solving the deficit would be to eliminate the budget deficit in the first place. Government spending must be reined in and political role models of this mentality are unfortunately difficult to currently find.
Don’t blame Obama for Bush’s 2009 Deficit
this is overly simplistic. the majority of the Bush-era deficit increases came from, obviously, the ramped-up wars and tax cuts for the wealthy (don’t get me wrong, i sort of support the wars, -ish), whereas the majority of the Obama-era deficit increases came from a dramatic drop in tax-bases because of the Great Recession which had already started. (housing bubble from deregulation->financial Armageddon (goldman, bear stearns)). Furthermore, structural deficit is different than short-term Stimulus deficit. If anything, Obama has been criticized for not taking on ENOUGH deficit to combat the unemployment, and so on. Stimulus deficit can be leveraged to end up being a good investment in ways that the structural deficit of the bush and reagen years cannot.