HOW did George W. Bush ruin the economy?

Question

Ok, I know pretty much everybody is on an incessant rant about how Bush ruined the economy. But I have never heard how. They say he spend too much, but don't even go there. Spending arguments are null and void for this question. Obama has already spend more than Bush ever did and plans to spend far more (http://blog.heritage.org/2009/03/24/bush-deficit-vs-obama-deficit-in-pictures/ just to quote one source). I want a good, solid, well written argument with cited details on HOW Bush himself ruined our economy. Again, no arguments about how he spent so much on the war (that's included in the graph in my source) or on anything else. Please give well-thought-out, intelligible answers.

P.S. Man I'd make a good English teacher, haha.

Answer 1

I don't know, The IRS doesn't think he did.



How to Soak the Rich (the George Bush Way)



By STEPHEN MOORE

With the House and Senate preparing to vote on extending George W. Bush's investment tax cuts, it's no surprise the cries against "tax giveaways to the rich" grow increasingly shrill. Just yesterday Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid charged that the Bush tax plan "offers next to nothing to average Americans while giving away the store to multi-millionaires" and then fumed that it will "do much more for ExxonMobil board members than it will do for ExxonMobil customers."



Oh really. New IRS data released last month tell a very different story: In the aftermath of the Bush investment tax cuts, the federal income tax burden has substantially shifted onto the backs of the wealthy. Between 2002 and 2004, tax payments by those with adjusted gross incomes (AGI) of more than $200,000 a year, which is roughly 3% of taxpayers, increased by 19.4% -- more than double the 9.3% increase for all other taxpayers.



Between 2001 and 2004 (the most recent data), the percentage of federal income taxes paid by those with $200,000 incomes and above has risen to 46.6% from 40.5%. In other words, out of every 100 Americans, the wealthiest three are now paying close to the same amount in taxes as the other 97 combined. The richest income group pays a larger share of the tax burden than at anytime in the last 30 years with the exception of the late 1990s -- right before the artificially inflated high tech bubble burst.



Millionaires paid more, too. The tax share paid by Americans with an income above $1 million a year rose to 17.8% in 2003 from 16.9% in 2002, the year before the capital gains and dividend tax cuts.



The most astounding result from the IRS data is the deluge of revenues from the very taxes that were cut in 2003: capital gains and dividends. As shown in the nearby chart, capital gains receipts from 2002-04 have climbed by 79% after the reduction in the tax rate from 20% to 15%. Dividend tax receipts are up 35% from 2002 to 2004, even though the taxable rate fell from 39.6% to 15%. This is as clear evidence of a Laffer Curve effect as one will find: Lower rates produced increased revenues.



What explains this surge in tax revenues, especially at the high end of the income scale? The main factor at play here is the robust economic expansion, which has led to real income gains for most tax filers. Higher incomes mean higher tax payments. Between 2001 and 2004, the percentage of Americans with an income of more than $200,000 rose from 12.0% to 14.2%. The percentage of Americans earning more than $50,000 a year rose from 40.8% to 44.2% -- and that's just in two years. While these statistics are not inflation-adjusted by the IRS, price rises were relatively modest during these years, so adjusting wouldn't alter much.



We can already hear the left objecting that the rich are paying more taxes simply because they have hoarded all the income gains, while the middle class and poor wallow in economic quicksand. But, again, the IRS data tell a more upbeat story of widespread financial gains for American families. The slice of the total income pie captured by the richest 1%, 5% and 10% of Americans is lower today than in the last years of the Clinton administration.



So how can the media contort these statistics to conclude that the Bush tax cuts only benefited the affluent? The New York Times claims that the richest 0.1% got 5,000 times the tax benefit than those with less than $50,000 of income. That figure can only be true if one assumes that there were no economic benefits from the tax cuts whatsoever; and that lower taxes on income, capital gains and dividends resulted in no changes in the real economy -- not the value of stocks, not business spending, not employment, not capital flows into the U.S., not corporate dividend payments, not venture capital funding -- nothing. The underlying assumption of this static analysis is that tax cuts don't work and that incentives don't matter.



Of course, in the real world, financial incentives through tax policy changes matter a great deal in altering economic behavior. And we now have the evidence to confirm that the latest round of tax cuts worked -- five million new jobs, a 25% increase in business spending, 4% real economic growth for three years and a $4 trillion gain in net wealth. So now the very class-warfare groups who, three years ago, swore that the tax cuts would tank the economy rather than revive it, pretend that this robust expansion would have happened without the investment tax cuts. Many Democrats on Capitol Hill recite this fairy tale over and over.



One final footnote to this story: Just last week, the Department of the Treasury released its tax receipt data for March 2006. Tax collections for the past 12 months have exploded by 14.4%. We are now on course for a two-year increase in tax revenues of at least $500 billion, the largest two-year

Answer 2

You can't ask a question then prohibit people from using large portions of the facts as part of the answer. So here goes:



George Bush is really part victim and part suspect. After years of economic growth it was inevitable that we would have some sort of economic slow down. When this began to happen, Bush cut taxes for the wealthiest Americans. His fault in this is that he did not decide how to pay for this tax cut. This probably would have been ok except that 9/11 happened. This is where I think Bush gets vicked!



If you remember, the stock market shut down because major banks were caught up in the towers and were not able to trade or track their investments. If you'll remember, the Airline Industry was shut down for 5 days (except for those flights that got the Bin Laden family out of the country.) If you'll remember, even when the market opened again, no one was buying and everyone was selling low. Shoppers were afraid to go to the mall so retail suffered. As a result, Bush offered a stimulus check. Again, not paid for. Then he later offered a second stimulus check, also not paid for. Then there were the wars. Again, not paid for and not even put in the budgets. So, all this spending raises the debt and challenges the strength of the dollar (not that it matters so much but it does affect credit ratings of the dollar.)



Then, he signs all of the deregulation bills that allowed the banks, who are already on shaky ground, to begin the risky lending practices and credit default swaps that created the environment for the crash of 2008. These polices were put in place during the Bush Administration. Therefore, they're his fault. You can try to put some of the blame on the Community Reinvestiment Act but if it was so bad the Republican Congress should have changed it. Instead, they used it to game the system and buy McMansions, take out all the equity and buy subsequent McMansions.



The final straw was that as banks failed in 2008, Bush was forced to write further checks (which Obama cashed) to save failing banks and corporations who's possible failure could have upset world financial markets...again, not paid for.



Hope this helps.

Answer 3

No president can ruin the economy. The president is only a part of our government, which is a free-capalist society. Anyone who claims Goerge Bush ruined the economy is a liberal drone. Obama won't ruin the economy either. Now if congress passes tax cuts on the 95% of Americans Obama said he wouldn't and then he signs the bill into law, that would have a drastic effect on the economy, but it wouldn't be Obama's fault, it would also include our congress and the American people who continue to vote these people into office.

Answer 4

He started two wars in the middle east. Wars cost money to wage. So, the American tax payer was stuck with the bill.



As much as I diddn't like Bill Clinton as President, I do have to give him credit as being the first President in decades to actually balance the budget AND start to pay down the national debt. Less debt for a country (or a household) is a very very good thing.



G.W. Bush seemed to spend an aweful lot of time vacationing on his ranch in Crawford, Texas...while the country was left to sort of manage itself.



That's how Mr. Bush Jr. did it my friend.

Answer 5

He started with a surplus. Then he spent so much money we were in debt for 28 trillion dollars. Then Obama had deals with China and borrowed some money putting us in eternal debt to them. Which is how he sold out to communists.



No one in history has ever messed up so bad that they lost 28 trillion dollars. TRILLION. That means countless businesses shut their doors all over the world. If we lose something like 30 trillion it hits some weird unknown tipping point that does something no ones ever heard of to banks because they actually do have a limit on the amount they will print. That would have collapsed the global economy. We just crashed our economy so it was cool and Greece took the biggest hit.

Answer 6

A misunderstanding about government debt is that if there is a lot of debt, it hurst the economy. This is simply not true, there has been economic growth ever since the government has been in debt in the 80s. We have gone through recessions with huge amounts of government debt and we have gone through great economics times during government debt. So that is not the reason Bush ruined the economy. And on a positive note about government spending during the bush administration, he did spur job growth in the defense industry because of the two military operations overseas and across the world.



We have to look back about around the time Reagan was in office to find the seeds of this economic crisis. Reaganomics is all about deregulation and cutting taxes and social programs. The deregulation hurt us when company's like Enron got in trouble. Deregulation also hurt us with this housing crisis because Republicans basically made it possible for people to buy a house who couldn't afford one because they could put down whatever amount of income they felt was right and the bank could not check this. This lead to foreclosure after foreclosure while a housing bubble was going on.



The reason people blame George Bush for the economy is because his economic policy is to let everything run its course. He took a huge policy turn when he did the bailouts because he was totally against government intervention by all means.



Bad economic times are often blamed on the person in office, which is understandable if they do nothing to stop it like George Bush did. The American public does not realize that sometimes the government has nothing to do with bad economic conditions but, this recession was caused by government deregulation.



The biggest thing to remember about blame is that someone is going to get blamed and george bush was that "someone."

Answer 7

Bush merely did what he was told. He didn't ruin the economy. The economy is endemically flawed. It is built on contradictions.



Obama is now the one handing out trillions to the very speculative vultures who caused this current crisis (that is, who were its proximate cause).



The capitalist system will always come to crises, and they will become worse as the contradictions between capitalism and the supposed promises of liberal democracy become untenable.



Obama is the new overseer of the interests of the corporate oligarchy. He's no more a change agent than I am the Pope, and I'm agnostic.



@Dogtear5: Voting will not solve our problems. We cannot "elect" people into the government we want. We must BE the government we want. That means revolution by the people who really create all the value in the economy--the working class.

Answer 8

This is from year 7 of Bozo Bush administration.



Budget Deficit - We're almost $9 trillion in debt. We went from budget surplus under President Clinton to deficits as far as the eye can see under President Bush.



Health Care - More than 40 million Americans are without health care. Bush vetoes bill that would give more children health insurance.



Foreign Relations - What do you think? Iraq was a disaster. Afghanistan was in the win column, but we pulled troops and weapons from there and put them in Iraq. Now Afghanistan is teetering. In Pakistan, we support Musharraf and not the Pakistani people; now we may the price. Iran is bellicose. The world viewed us as its great friend six years ago, and now views us as a big threat.



How about food safety? Between 2003 and 2007, the FDA food safety inspections have dropped by 47%.



What about those toys coming in from China? Guess what? The President has used the Consumer Products Safety Commission to help big business and not the people. I know, what a surprise. The CPSC has few than half the number of staffers it had in the 1970's. Nancy Nord, acting chairwoman of the agency, goes on trips funded by the industries she's supposed to regulate. There's one full time toy tester.



FEMA - You think that gutting an agency and hiring friends who work in the horse jumping business does not impact your life? FEMA went from a model of government efficiency under President Clinton a model of inefficiency under President Bush. Now look at New Orleans.

Answer 9

In George Orwell's allegorical novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four," the picture of "Big Brother" appears constantly in the adoring media.



Perceived enemies are everywhere — supposedly plotting to undo the benevolent egalitarianism of Big Brother. Citizens assemble each morning to scream hatred for two minutes at pictures of the supposed public traitor Emmanuel Goldstein. The "Ministry of Truth" swears that the former official Goldstein is responsible for everything that goes wrong in Oceania.



In Orwell's Oceania, there is a compliant media that offers "Newspeak" — recycled government bulletins from the Ministry of Truth. "Doublethink" means you can believe at the same time in two opposite beliefs.



America is not Oceania, but some of this is beginning to sound a little too familiar.



We see Barack Obama's smile broadcast 24/7, in a fashion we have not seen previously of earlier presidents. A Newsweek editor referred to Obama as a "god." MSNBC's Chris Matthews claimed physical ecstasy when Obama speaks. A Washington Post reporter swooned over Obama's "chiseled pectorals."



Former President George W. Bush — our new Emmanuel Goldstein — remains a daily target of criticism. Diplomats continue to discuss the need to hit a "reset" button that will erase the past. Last week, the president said those in the past administration caused our present problems — and so should keep quiet and get out of his way.



Bush is somehow culpable for the newly projected $2 trillion annual deficits. Bush caused the new unemployment levels to soar to nearly 10%. Bush's war on terrorism failed. Bush is responsible for the most recent trouble abroad with Iran, the Middle East, North Korea and Russia.



There are similar Big Brother attacks on recent critics of the Obama administration's health care initiatives. Once-praised dissent has become subversive. Protesters are a mob to be ridiculed by the government as mere health-insurance puppets.



Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., is suspicious of the nice clothes the protesters wear. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi used a few isolated incidents to claim that the health care dissidents were "carrying swastikas and symbols like that" to compare Obama and Democrats to the Nazis.



At a meeting with Democratic senators, Obama's deputy chief of staff, Jim Messina, urged them to "punch back twice as hard" against these critics, according to two people who were in the room.



An official presidential Web site now asks informants, in Big Brother style, to send in e-mails and Internet addresses that seem "fishy" in questioning the White House health care plans.



Doublethink is common. Presidential sermons on fiscal responsibility tip us off that deficits will soar. Borrowing an additional trillion dollars to manage health care is sold as a cost-saving measure. Racial transcendence translates into more racial identity politics, reflected both in rhetoric and presidential appointments.



The government wants to determine how some executives should be paid. The administration assures millions of citizens it will now intrude into everything from buying homes and cars to how they go to the doctor.



If some Americans choose to purchase a roomy gas-guzzler rather than an uncomfortable but more efficient compact car, a kindly Big Brother will now "correct" that bad decision and buy the "clunker" back.



If we bought a house for too much money, the government will assure it was not our fault and redo the mortgage. If our doctor wants to conduct a procedure, a government health board will first determine whether it is cost-effective and in the collective interest.



Despite the absence of another 9/11-like attack, we are still told by the new terrorism czar, John Brennan, that the old war was largely a Bush failure. Administration officials keep inventing euphemisms. Some have dubbed the war on terror "an overseas contingency operation."



We were once told that military tribunals, renditions, the Patriot Act and Predator drone attacks in Pakistan were George Bush's assault on the Constitution rather than necessary tools to fight radical Islamic terrorists.



Not now. These policies are no longer criticized — even though they still operate more or less as they did under Bush. Guantanamo is still open, but no longer considered a gulag. The once-terrible war in Iraq disappeared off the front pages around late January of this year.



George Orwell, a man of the left, warned us that freedom and truth are not just endangered by easily identifiable goose-stepping goons in jackboots. More often he felt that state collectivism would come from an all-powerful government — run by a charismatic egalitarian, promising to protect us from selfish, greedy reactionaries.



Orwell was on to something, Bush was right and Obama is lying to us all.

Answer 10

Presidents handed the economy over to the banks a long time ago. Bush just removed the safety nets.

Answer 11

Whereas I do not support Obama's massive spending spree, he's a Democrat - really, what do you expect?

Bush, however, was not a Democrat (in name). Yet he did not veto a single spending bill up until 2006. He increased federal spending by 30% in his first four years, more than all the presidents before him since the Nixon administration. He paid for those with tax cuts for the wealthy during two active wars.



Any questions?

Answer 12

Q tip the tragic story of the destruction of our nation is way to long to explain and the story is not over yet. Bush and Cheney and Karl Rove destroyed the nation those three stooges. I would give you a better answer but I'm tired. I can tell you that this story will have a peaceful ending once Obama fights off those Republicans.

Answer 13

Presidents just barely effect the economy, he didn't do anything to "ruin" it. If we think that Presidents effect the economy as much as we tend to elect and un-elect presidents over the issue, then we are looking at ENTIRELY the wrong people to hold that office.

Answer 14

Look in the real world.

Decode this lyrics " You'll see "

"What's up"

" 25 years"

"Above the law"

"The Final Count down"

How?

"25 years" ago was not even in office.

Was not even aware those out there were puffing, huffing in pulling and ragging large heavy laden of concrete blocks all the way to the top of the pyramids in Egypt.

With the mystery of us-911.

Was in shock and awe.

Cried out " Jesus Christ ! "

When the pyramids suddenly collapsed.

"I didn't do anything'

Didn't even lean against the pyramids.

Who did that?

" 25 years " ago

At loss for words with " Silence is golden" and blurred in time.

Luke 21.30-36

Luke 6.39-40,41-45,46-49

Luke 9.25,55-56,60

Luke 8.5-8,10-17

Luke 4.4

Revelation 22.13-17

Genesis 11.1,3-9

Revelation 16.14

1 Timothy 6.7

Exodus 20.1-7

Luke 24.44-45,47-48

Exodus 20.12

Exodus 20.1-18

Matt 22.17-21,32

Exodus 23.24,32

What do you think?

Answer 15

Because all Americans wanted was to be protected from the terrorist, not to invade countries and save them from corrupt Islam. I think he assumed that all Americans wanted was to save the children of Iraq and set them free. As if everyone was donating taxes to save some women who have to wear veils. We are lucky to have got him out of office or we would have paid to bring back Jesus to fight Mohamed.

Answer 16

He wasn't pro-active and failed to correct Clinton's mistake in abolishing the Glass-Steagall act and closing the Enron Loophole.

Answer 17

The economy is dependent on many variables that have nothing to do with the President or his policies. I guess I can't answer the question because it's too vague and broad of a claim to try to support.



What I would argue, however, is that his policies, in particular the ones sold to us in the guise of fighting terrorism, have undermined our Constitution and laid the groundwork for an Orwellian government.



P.S.



"Obama has already spend more than Bush ever did."

+

"P.S. Man I'd make a good English teacher."

=

Hilarious.

Answer 18

The office of President gets the blame or praise. Congress does all the "stuff".

Answer 19

He didnt, its the libs that have said this for so long, people are starting to believe them. The truth is if this healthcare bill passes that will ruin the economy, unless youre rich with your own private dr.

Answer 20

He didn't. He did a great job of softening the blow of the inevitable negative effects of the Clinton administration.

Answer 21

UNTIL WE ALL SEPARATE the REPUBLICAN and DEMOCRATIC parties and realize they are nothing more than gangs who took over OUR country, WE WILL NOT EVER BE FREE !!!! THESE dirtbags are the problem and they all and will be voted out of office,,,,

Answer 22

If you're looking for well thought-out, intelligible answers here, you're out of luck.

Answer 23

he spent almost a trillion dollars on the Iraq war for starters and now it's a quagmire.

Answer 24

Doorsfan711 meant, "P.P.S." If she had a decent English teacher, then she would have known that.

Answer 25

It isn't my responsibility to correct your critical thinking problems.



I'm content to let you live your life with your illusions and delusions.

Answer 26

We had a surplus with Clinton

It disappeared when Bush won

Answer 27

Liberals will say the housing crisis - but Democrats forced people that could not afford homes to buy them or at least forced the legislation to make that possible.

Answer 28

I don,t blame it all on bush...Clinton had a hand in it to...He,s the one that gave the go for the forclosure meltdown.Giving loans to just about anyone...

Answer 29

Royaly.

Answer 30

by being stupid



thats what happens when we let stupid people try to run a country



Put that in your essay!

and youll need nothing else

Answer 31

One word : "de-regulation".

Especially the deregulation of those people who can't be left to their own integrity to do the right thing with other people's money and loans.

This is not to mention the cost of an unwarranted war on a country that had nothing to do with the attacks on our soil.

Answer 32

Obviously you simply don't want to know.

Answer 33

Trickle Down Economics----Tax cuts for the wealthy, and nothing for middle class

Answer 34

This is an easy question. He didn't see what was going on behind closed doors of congress after the democrats took it.



4.7% unemployment

Record tax cuts...

Record stock market

Record home values...



2006 the Dems take congress...

2007 recession begins.

Answer 35

P.S. Man, you wouldn't.

Answer 36

his an idiot