Economy added 255,000 jobs in July

Why are you excluding the over half a million plus government jobs eliminated by state and local governments? Don't they have an impact on employment?

There was a net difference of about 1.4 million government jobs between the recoveries under Reagan and Bush, and under Obama.

You don't think 1.4 million additional jobs would have any impact on employment?

 

Because State and local governments hire State local workers. The Federal government hires Federal workers and the discussion is Federal spending.

Do you think we have a need for a larger Federal Workforce? What for? The ones I come across now don't look particular busy, I'm not sure what more would be accomplished with more. But I guess if there are tasks to be done that we need them for, that we should probably hire them.

 

OK.

So why are you excluding the over half a million plus government jobs eliminated by state and local governments? Don't they have an impact on employment?

There was a net difference of about 1.4 million government jobs between the recoveries under Reagan and Bush, and under Obama.

You don't think 1.4 million additional jobs would have any impact on employment?

We need to rebuild our national infrastructure. We'll probably need for federal employees to deal with the boomers' as they get older.

During the recovery, do you think we need more jobs? Millions of people were unemployed. Still are.

You don't think 1.4 million additional jobs would have any impact on employment?

 

Why do we have to rely on surveys when we have the technology to have the exact numbers?

 

Of course, but the discussion was on the Federal Budget and the Federal Government doesn't hire State and Local workers.

That is certainly true, but given Federal Contracting rules, I don't think that a simple thing to ramp up. If we could find ways to reduce the marginal cost of infrastructure projects, we could certainly do a lot more them and more quickly ramp up this spending when we are trying to smooth the economic cycle. I think this is a large part of why the expected "multiplier" did not appear to be a positive number with the Stimulus bill spending.

Or water distribution systems. Take the West. Las Vegas, I don't know if you know the situation with Lake Powell, but we clearly have too many people trying to obtain water from the Colorado river. If you go straight north, to Idaho, you find one of the biggest rivers in the Nation, the Snake, that currently feeds the Columbia and mainly the Pacific Ocean. A nice big canal, right down through Nevada, which if were large enough would probably convert useless land in NV to arable land, and supply Las Vegas and Southern California, in my mind is a perfect Federal project. But as Obama said "we will probably never build another Hoover Dam." Why is it that we can't do things today that we were perfectly capable of doing almost a hundred years ago? Well, the point is we can, but we don't and there is a cost to not doing it.

In Federal elder care facilities? Do we have those?

Oh my gosh yes. Our roads are crap, our bridges are crap, our airports are crap. But everything we try to do, to me, seems to just turn into a corrupt boondoggle. You put the project up, put the money aside to do it and like a swarm of ticks its soon covered with parasites. And, this army of ticks seems to crawl off with all the value. So, I can see the wisdom in your position, but we need a great deal of clean up and shape up before we can once again do this effectively.

And I seriously do not want to get into partisan bickering, it terrible management by both sides, we change who is control and the problems remain, it's deeper than partisanship. The Huffington Post posted a story that of the $800B stimulus bill, $30B actually went to infrastructure.

The good news is using that as a starting point, this is a process with a ton of upside possibility. But, given the circumstances that exist today, I'm not certain that if we tried it again that we wouldn't similar unsatisfactory results, so I'm reluctant to mortgage the kids future for it.

So, if we determine that spending is needed to create demand, rather than trying the "trickle-down" approach through government spending, I think we should simply do direct to household transfers. If we want to do a Trillion dollar stimulus, then direct deposit $3,000 to every person in the country.

But given government employment rules, I would be very hesitant to just go hire a bunch of people so you can give them a paycheck If you can productively employ them, then sure, but if you can't and are only doing it to create trickle down stimulus, I would be much more supportive of cash payments to everyone. And there is no point in direct payments to the highest income brackets, so you would probably exclude those folks and may the payments a bit fatter to the rest.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/philip-k-howard/howards-daily-finding-inf_b_4808898.html

 

ROFL yes by him and his fellow Democrats.

"In FY2009, Congress did not complete work by September 30, 2008. President Bush did sign some appropriations bills and a continuing resolution to keep the government running into President Obama’s first term, yet a Democrat controlled Congress purposely held off on the big spending portions of the appropriations bills until Obama took office. They did so for the purposes of jacking up spending. President Obama signed the final FY2009 spending bills on March 11, 2009.

The Democrats purposely held off on the appropriations process because they hoped they could come into 2009 with a new Democrat-friendly Congress and a President who would sign bloated spending bills. Remember, President Obama was in the Senate when these bills were crafted and he was part of this process to craft bloated spending bills. CQ reported that “in delaying the nine remaining bills until 2009, Democrats gambled that they would come out of the November 2008 elections with bigger majorities in both chambers and a Democrat in the White House who would support more funding for domestic programs.” And they did.
The Truth about President Obama's Skyrocketing Spending


"Unlike last year, when Bush forced Democrats to accept lower spending figures, this year could prove more difficult for the president. The fiscal year begins Oct. 1, less than four months before he leaves office.

"He doesn't have us over a barrel this year, because either a President Clinton or a President Obama will have to deal with us next year," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. "We are not going to be held hostage to the unreasonableness of this president."

Much of the president's plan has little chance of passage, lawmakers and budget experts say. Nearly $200 billion in Medicare and Medicaid savings need congressional approval, which Democrats are unlikely to provide. "Dead on arrival," vowed Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/washington/2008-02-03-bush-budget_N.htm

 

Hogwash!
The biggest spending was signed by Bush!

• Fiscal 2009 began Oct. 1, 2008. That was before Obama was elected, and nearly four months before he took office on Jan. 20, 2009.
• President Bush signed the massive spending bill under which the government was operating when Obama took office. That was Sept. 30, 2008. As The Associated Press noted, it combined “a record Pentagon budget with aid for automakers and natural disaster victims, and increased health care funding for veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.”
• Bush also signed, on Oct. 3, 2008, a bank bailout bill that authorized another $700 billionto avert a looming financial collapse (though not all of that would end up being spent in fiscal 2009, and Obama later signed a measure reducing total authorized bailout spending to $475 billion).
• On Jan. 7, 2009 — two weeks before Obama took office — the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office issued its regular budget outlook, stating: “CBO projects that the deficit this year will total $1.2 trillion.”
• CBO attributed the rapid rise in spending to the bank bailout and the federal takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — plus rising costs for unemployment insurance and other factors driven by the collapsing economy (which shed 818,000 jobs in January alone).
• Another factor beyond Obama’s control was an automatic 5.8 percent cost of living increase announced in October 2008 and given to Social Security beneficiaries in January 2009. It was the largest since 1982. Social Security spending alone rose $66 billion in fiscal 2009, and Medicare spending, driven by rising medical costs, rose $39 billion.

 

You seem to think Obama rode into Washington DC in January of 2009. FALSE. He was a member of the Democrat controlled Congress. Had been for several years.

And fiscal year 2008 began a year before that and that DEMOCRAT budget increased spending 9% over the previous REPUBLICAN budget and took the last REPUBLICAN deficit of a paltry $161B to $400B and both of those numbers would have been higher had it NOT been for Bush43 threatening vetos of their spending. The budget for fiscal year 2009 was held off by the Democrats so that they could include either President Obama or Clinton's spending request and that of course ended up being President Obama who signed the 2009 Omnibus Spending bill into law. That budget increased spending another 18% and took the deficit to a whopping $1,400B totally swamping any previous deficits.

Wrong, the Omnibus spending bill for 2009 was not signed until March of 2009 by President Obama.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/111th-congress/house-bill/1105

Yes TWO YEARS after the Democrats took over the budget.

The bank bailout was paid back and the FF and FM were results of Democrat polices. And let's not forget the Democrats kept spending at that high level and the deficit over $1,000B for the next FOUR YEARS.

Democrats including Obama passed that, why do you pretend he was not part of the Democrat Congress?

So again the historical record as reported at the time dispells the myth that it was Bush who created that HUGE deficit jump and HUGE increases in spending.

"In FY2009, Congress did not complete work by September 30, 2008. President Bush did sign some appropriations bills and a continuing resolution to keep the government running into President Obama’s first term, yet a Democrat controlled Congress purposely held off on the big spending portions of the appropriations bills until Obama took office. They did so for the purposes of jacking up spending. President Obama signed the final FY2009 spending bills on March 11, 2009.

The Democrats purposely held off on the appropriations process because they hoped they could come into 2009 with a new Democrat-friendly Congress and a President who would sign bloated spending bills. Remember, President Obama was in the Senate when these bills were crafted and he was part of this process to craft bloated spending bills. CQ reported that “in delaying the nine remaining bills until 2009, Democrats gambled that they would come out of the November 2008 elections with bigger majorities in both chambers and a Democrat in the White House who would support more funding for domestic programs.” And they did.
The Truth about President Obama's Skyrocketing Spending


"Unlike last year, when Bush forced Democrats to accept lower spending figures, this year could prove more difficult for the president. The fiscal year begins Oct. 1, less than four months before he leaves office.

"He doesn't have us over a barrel this year, because either a President Clinton or a President Obama will have to deal with us next year," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. "We are not going to be held hostage to the unreasonableness of this president."

Much of the president's plan has little chance of passage, lawmakers and budget experts say. Nearly $200 billion in Medicare and Medicaid savings need congressional approval, which Democrats are unlikely to provide. "Dead on arrival," vowed Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/...h-budget_N.htm

 

They can always get an Obamanomics part-time job and live in poverty.

The new normal.

 

That's right, I keep forgetting Bush was not president in 2001 when 9/11 happened and he wasn't president after the 2006 election, he was the only 5 year 2 term president.

 

HOGWASH!

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/washington/2008-09-30-spending-bill_N.htm

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[TD]Bush signs sprawling spending bill[/TD]
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[TD="class: datestamp"]Posted 9/30/2008 8:41 PM | Comment | Recommend[/TD]
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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Bush on Tuesday signed a sprawling, stopgap spending bill to keep the government running for the next 12 months.

The president's move, which came on the last day of the government's budget year, was expected even though the measure spends more money and contains more pet projects than he would have liked. The legislation is one of the few bills this election year that simply had to pass.
The $630 billion-plus spending bill wraps together a record Pentagon budget with aid for automakers and natural disaster victims, and increased health care funding for veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.[/TD]
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The huge bill, approved by the House and the Senate last week, has been overshadowed by the financial crisis gripping the country. The legislation settles dozens of battles between the Democrats who run Congress and the White House and its GOP allies.
The measure is dominated by $488 billion for the Pentagon, $40 billion for the Homeland Security Department and $73 billion for veterans' programs and military base construction projects.
The administration won approval of the defense budget while Democrats wrested concessions from the White House on disaster aid, heating subsidies for the poor and smaller spending items. Automakers gained $25 billion in taxpayer-subsidized loans.

 

Not at all. Go back through the thread. We're talking about austerity and the elimination of over half a million government jobs when the economy already had millions unemployed and was struggling to recover from the worst recession in 80 years.

Tell us how in your view the elimination of over half a million government jobs as opposed to adding almost 900,000 more like when Reagan was president helped our economy recover.

It's not an issue of "federal contracting" at all. It is an issue of the Republican House continuously blocking every single bill Obama proposed to fix those things and get people working again.

Because their top priority was not the country.

False equivalency.

One party sent bill and bill and proposal after proposal to rebuild the infrastructure and put unemployed people back to work.

One party blocked the other every single time. Because for the Republicans, the welfare of the country was not their top priority. They didn't want a robust growing economy.

Change the circumstances. Vote Republicans out of Congress.

That would do it, but I disagree that makes better sense than creating jobs where people are adding value.

That is basically what tax cuts do, but the way they are implemented that usually benefits the richest, and not the people that spend the money.

I disagree that creating projects to fix our decaying bridges and roads and airports and ports, or even adding more policeman teachers and firefighters, would be less productive than just mailing people a check.

 

It was a CONTINUING RESOLUTION. And it was parlaid on the previous DEMOCRAT budget for FY2008. What don't you understand here? The Democrats held back the budget for FY2009 until the Democrat President elect could participate in forming of the spending bills and that was finalized in March of 2009 and President Obama, with his input, signed the Budget into law.


President Obama Signs Final 2009 Omnibus Spending Bill, Increases Funds for Many Local Priorities
By Conference Staff
March 23, 2009

President Barack Obama signed into law March 11 a $410 billion omnibus spending bill that combined nine of the federal government’s 12 regular appropriations bill into a massive spending package to fund most federally assisted domestic programs for the remainder of Fiscal Year 2009, which ends on September 30. Last year, congressional leaders disagreed with President George W. Bush on spending levels for many domestic programs. Thinking their chances for increasing funding for these programs would be better in a new Administration, congressional leaders decided to delay action on the FY 2009 appropriations until after the November elections.

http://www.usmayors.org/usmayornewspaper/documents/03_23_09/pg1_omnibus.asp

Are you saying you would have supported Bush shutting down the government?

 

You keep forgetting Bush had been in Texas as their Governor. He DID ride into town in January 2001. Obama WAS in Washington DC as a full voting member of the Senate full supporting and voting for the FY2008 budget, the continuing resolution the Democrats used to keep Bush43 out of the FY2009 budget and then he sign the 2009 Omnibus Spending bill into law.

And you seem to forget the Democrats took budget control in 2007 for FY2008. You DO know Presidents don't control the Budget, Congress does. Presidents can negotiate and certainly are in a good position to do so when one or both houses of Congress are controlled by his party. But budget responsibility lies with Congress.

 

ROFL

Your source:

Bush issued a veto threat on the bloated spending bills pending in Congress in late 2008. CQ estimated that the final spending bill “provided about $31 billion more in discretionary funding than was included in the fiscal 2008 versions of the nine bills” which is “about $19 billion more than Bush sought.” I would argue that Obama gets credit for the whole $31 billion in new spending.


Sure, we can tag Obama with a $31 billion part of the increase.

 

It's up to the State and Local government to determine how to best use their power to tax. If that is the decision they made, why should I, who doesn't know what went to the decision, second guess it?

I don't know what specific bills you are talking about. The President isn't a Legislator, his job is to execute the legislation passed by Congress. Now of course the President will propose legislation and engage in the give and take that builds the consensus needed to get legislation passed, but Obama has never seen particularly good at that, and to be fair, its up to Congress to pass legislation, not the President, even if some Presidents are more gifted in accomplishing this.

Further, it was the Senate that failed to produce a budget, year after year after year and they were controlled by Democrat until the 2015 session. Under normal operations the House passes a budget, the Senate passes a budget, the budgets are reconciled and then submitted to both Houses. But I don't recall that the Senate developed a budget, much less passed one. Didn't Reid wait until the borrowing limit was reached and then they hammered one out at the last minute, time and time again?

But, were it me, I would certainly have to think long and hard about whether the Constitution even empowers Congress to do what you suggest. The spending power entrusted to Congress is for the General welfare, but what you are talking about is Congress appropriating our money to shower it on a particular constituency, Federal Employees, or itself. I don't think we entrusted Congress with the Spending power so it could make sure it blesses itself first. And frankly for the Government to say during a time of scarcity that it should take from all of us to spend more on itself seems to be a bit self-serving, and frankly I think we have all had enough of that.

Well, according to your peculiar theory of trickle down government spending, where if the government draws from us, pays itself first, its supposed to trickle back all over us. I find that concept to be rather dubious, both from an economic standpoint and certainly from a constitutional standpoint.

This appears to another restatement of your questionable theories of "trickle down" government spending and you seem to have skipped right over my point that even of the $800B stimulus bill that only about $30B actually went to infrastructure. I can certainly see the case for infrastructure investment, but there has to be a more effective method than that. Frankly, if I spend $100 and only get $3 of value, I don't think I would do it twice. If I spend a $100 I want at least a hundred dollars in value and frankly if I can't get more, I'll probably keep the $100 and search for a better opportunity. I expect this same kind of stewardship out of those we entrust with the duties of government.

Sure and Republicans say vote the Democrats out. Yet we switch to various configurations and yet the problems remain. I think the problem runs deeper than the party rah! rah! horse(*)(*)(*)(*).

I'm fine with taxing the rich, but long experience shows that rarely have we found a way to effectively tax them. Time after time, we say were going to "tax the rich" spending is increased in the expectation of these increase revenues and then we come up short when "loopholes", which is another way of saying ways to avoid paying that are in the construction of the rules, which means either the law was written poorly or these "loopholes" were a deliberate feature. I always roll my eyes when I hear a legislator griping about "loopholes" because the next comment should always be "didn't you pass the fkn law with the loophole in it, you numbnuts?"

I'm for effective infrastructure investments.

If we need more federal police, firefighters and teachers, and we can afford it, sure, why not.

Well, we have both fairly stated our positions, that may simply be an area we have to agree to disagree agreeably. I do not support a general assessment by the Federal government to benefit a specific faction. I'm a big checks and balances guy and I don't see where we have ever authorized those we entrust with Federal duty, to take from us generally and give to factions specifically. I think this is a power they have arrogated. As for economic effectiveness, I don't see the evidence for trickle down government spending on Federal workers producing prosperity for anyone other than Federal workers. It certainly strikes me as self-serving.

But, I can see the economic argument for trying to stimulate demand, but rather than any questionable "trickle down" theory these payments simply need to go to everyone. Because of the political reality of difficulty of including the wealthy in this, I would expect that there would probably be a income threshold in any legislation that actually passed Congress and was signed by the President. And you could argue "well, that's still a faction!" and you would be right, but what the hell, we don't live in a perfect world and we have to do the best we can with the world we do live in.

 

I get it, Congress was president and Bush was powerless. So the GOP own all the government spending and debt since the 2010 election.

 

This is just about just Obama it is about the DEMOCRATS of which he was one of and fully particiatated in those Democrat budgets. Any spending he "inherited" was do to his and his fellow Democrats making.

Is that really over your head?

 

Obviously you don't get it. Which ever party controls the three powers here. The House, the Senate and the Presidency. The Republicans did not take control of the Congress, or the budget, in 2010 and the Democrats still maintained majority control.

The fact remains they took majority control in 2007 taking both the House AND the Senate. For you to suggest they then just rubber stamped Bush budgets is laughable at vestments. They were quite proud of the fact they could now raise spending and increase the deficits.

 

Yea the austerity you say was bad for the economy but then you turn around and claim what a great President Obama is because of the deficit reduction that resulted from the austerity cuts.

So which is it austerity cutting the deficit was great and a big Obama accomplishment or austerity was a bad thing and why the economy hasn't recovered?

 

Not at all. Your conservative/libertarian friends disagree with you.


The truth is that the nearly 18 percent spike in spending in fiscal 2009 — for which the president is sometimes blamed entirely — was mostly due to appropriations and policies that were already in place when Obama took office. ... Since pictures can convey information more efficiently than words, we’ll sum up the official spending figures in this chart. It also reflects our finding that Obama increased fiscal 2009 spending by at most $203 billion, accounting for well under half the huge increase that year. ... So by our calculations, Obama can fairly be assigned responsibility for — at most — 5.8 percent of the $3.5 trillion that the federal government actually spent in fiscal 2009, which was 17.9 percent higher than fiscal 2008.

http://www.factcheck.org/2012/06/obamas-spending-inferno-or-not/

When Obama took the oath of office, the $789 billion bank bailout had already been approved. Federal spending on unemployment benefits, food stamps and Medicare was already surging to meet the dire unemployment crisis that was well underway. See the CBO’s January 2009 budget outlook.

Obama is not responsible for that increase, though he is responsible (along with the Congress) for about $140 billion in extra spending in the 2009 fiscal year from the stimulus bill, from the expansion of the children’s health-care program and from other appropriations bills passed in the spring of 2009.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/obama-spending-binge-never-happened-2012-05-22?pagenumber=2

Listening to a talk radio program yesterday, the host asserted that Obama tripled the budget deficit in his first year. This assertion is understandable, since the deficit jumped from about $450 billion in 2008 to $1.4 trillion in 2009. As this chart illustrates, with the Bush years in green, it appears as if Obama’s policies have led to an explosion of debt. But there is one rather important detail that makes a big difference. The chart is based on the assumption that the current administration should be blamed for the 2009 fiscal year. While this makes sense to a casual observer, it is largely untrue. The 2009 fiscal year began October 1, 2008, nearly four months before Obama took office. The budget for the entire fiscal year was largely set in place while Bush was in the White House.

http://www.cato.org/blog/dont-blame-obama-bushs-2009-deficit

Having said that, it is impossible to look at the chart and not to see a large ramp up in outlays under George W. Bush — the president who reversed the direction of federal outlays, which had been falling. Indeed, it is perfectly reasonable to argue that much of the responsibility for 2009’s 25.2 percent rests with President Bush, and not with President Obama; in January 2009, before President Obama took office, the CBO released its forecast that fiscal year 2009 would see outlays of 24.9 percent of GDP based on pre-Obama policies.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2012/09/03/yep-obamas-a-big-spender-just-like-his-predecessors/

On Jan. 7, 2009, two weeks before Obama took office, the Congressional Budget Office reported that the deficit for fiscal year 2009 was projected to be $1.2 trillion.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-m...obama-inherited-deficits-bush-administration/

- - - Updated - - -

Back to falsefying my posts again, I see.

Link and quote my post where I claimed "what a great President Obama is because of the deficit reduction that resulted from the austerity cuts"

 

And when did the Dems take away Bush's veto pen rendering him as helpless as you pretend he was?????

 

The hall mark of Obama's legacy, King of the Part time job recovery.

 

Those part time jobs sure jumped with the last president Republicans put in office. Why do you want to do that again? Other than to keep the middle class down and make the billionaires like Donald richer?

But why did you leave out the number of full time jobs in your graph? Didn't you want to portray the truth?



Over 15 million new private sector jobs since Jan 2010, and virtually no increase in part time workers, and a big decrease in people who work part time because they have to.

RW propaganda exposed again.

 

LOL @ the obamapologists trying to make the lousy economy look better than it is.....