|
Banned
|
Is It True that President Bush has Been As Unfairly Criticized as Obama Has?
In another thread, GonadWarrior response to comments posted about a McCain campaign official made, stressing that the McCain campaign is not about issues;
Quote:
Originally Posted by GonadWarrior
To be accurate, I thought it was absurd when it was being done to Bush, and I think it's absurd when done to Obama.
For more absurdity, note my new av. I seem to recall a similar one awhile back.
|
(I thought he had it wrong.....what is your opinion....could Bush's tenure done more to wreck our government's fiscal soundness, if he intended to do so, deliberately?)
"Done to Bush"....when the fuck was anything comparable, "done to Bush"?
GonadWarrior changed his avatar to this:
Here is the Bush I know:
National debt increase; 10/01/99 to 09/30/00 = $18,000,000.000
Government - Historical Debt Outstanding - Annual 1950 - 1999
Government - Historical Debt Outstanding - Annual 2000 - 2007
Jamuary 20, 2001; Bush takes office as President of US
National debt increase; 10/01/00 to 09/30/01 = $133,000.000,000
Total National Debt, on 09/30/01 = $5,807,463,412,200
Total National Debt, on 09/30/2007 = 9,007,653,372,262
National Debt as of 09/11/08 = $9,682,116,996,293
Debt to the Penny (Daily History Search Application)
By Sept. 30, 2008. National Debt will have increased $700,000,000,000 since last October 1st.
Quote:
Bloomberg.com: News
Under Control
....Sept. 11 (Bloomberg) -- The Bush administration is considering whether to fold Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's $5.2 trillion in debt into the federal budget, the White House budget office and the U.S. Treasury Department said.
``We're discussing how to present this in the federal budget with Treasury and stakeholders right now, but a conclusion hasn't been determined,'' said Corinne Hirsch, a spokeswoman for the Office of Management and Budget. The Government Accounting Office and other federal agencies are also weighing in on the issue.
The federal takeover of the government-sponsored enterprises, or GSEs, on Sept. 7 failed to address whether the debt of Fannie and Freddie should be included in the budget, or whether it carries an explicit government guarantee. In an interview this week, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson cited the ``incongruities'' in the law and said ``we should be clear, is there a government guarantee or isn't there?''
Any decision to add Fannie and Freddie to the budget wouldn't automatically translate into an explicit government backing for the companies' combined $1.7 trillion in unsecured debt and $3.5 trillion of mortgage guarantees. Granting the full faith and credit of the U.S. would require an act of Congress to change the companies' legal status......
.......The Treasury is talking to the budget office about how to treat Fannie and Freddie in the budget, said Jennifer Zuccarelli, a Treasury spokeswoman. She declined to discuss what options are being considered.
``The reason Fannie Mae was originally turned into a GSE was to take it off the budget,'' said Peter Wallison, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative policy think tank in Washington. Wallison was general counsel for the Treasury during the Reagan Administration. ``The U.S. budget is a completely cash flow system, it's like a Mom and Pop candy store. They don't have any reserves or deferred expenses like private corporations do. It's completely cash in, cash out.''
The Treasury and Federal Housing Finance Agency put the beleaguered mortgage-finance companies back under federal control for the first time in about 40 years after their $14.9 billion in net losses threatened to further disrupt the housing market. The Treasury committed to invest as much as $200 billion in preferred stock and extend credit through 2009 to prevent a collapse of Fannie and Freddie, protecting investors owning more than $5 trillion of their debt and mortgage-backed securities.
Treasury Risk
If the companies were given explicit backing, their debt costs would plunge to bring them closer to the U.S. Treasury debt, Wallison said.
Fannie's five-year debt trades at 65 basis points more than Treasuries and has averaged 40 basis points more for the past five years.
Investors in the credit-default swap market for U.S. Treasuries are already concerned a guarantee is coming, demanding record high fees to offer investors protection against losses on Treasuries.
Five-year credit-default swap contracts on U.S. government debt increased 3.5 basis points on Sept. 9 to a record 18, up from 6 basis points in April, according to CMA Datavision in London. Credit-default swaps pay the buyer face value in exchange for the underlying securities or the cash equivalent should a country or company fail to adhere to its debt agreements. A rise indicates deterioration in the perception of credit quality.
Losses
The U.S. budget deficit will grow next fiscal year to $438 billion from $407 billion, the Congressional Budget Office said Sept. 9, making it harder for President George W. Bush's successor to either cut taxes or increase spending.
The CBO, a provider of independent assessments on U.S. economic and budgetary decisions to Congress, said the Treasury should incorporate Fannie and Freddie's assets and liabilities into the budget. The CBO, which doesn't set budget policy, will include the projections in its own data starting in January.
``What the administration chooses to incorporate in its budget is up to them, but we hope they will agree,'' CBO Director Peter Orszag said in an interview yesterday.
Though much of the companies' unsecured debt will likely be counted as new federal debt, their mortgage securities won't necessarily translate into the same amount of federal debt since loans and other assets back those liabilities, Orszag said.
The degree of government control suggests the companies' expenses, including salaries and electricity bills, should be counted as federal spending and all fee revenue and other income from operations should be reflected as revenue, Orszag said.
CBO will treat Fannie and Freddie's debt similar to that of government-owned electricity producer Tennessee Valley Authority, which Orszag said won't directly affect the federal debt ceiling.
Any cash investments by the Treasury, such as buying mortgage securities or preferred stock, will directly add to the federal debt outstanding. U.S. officials said Treasury plans to buy $5 billion of the companies' mortgage bonds this month. Fannie and Freddie are also issuing $1 billion each this week in senior preferred shares to Treasury without any cost to the U.S. government.
FT.com / Home UK / UK - White House rejects Fannie and Freddie reclassification
White House rejects Fannie and Freddie reclassification
By Krishna Guha in Washington
Published: September 13 2008 03:00 | Last updated: September 13 2008 03:00
The White House refused yesterday to follow the lead of the Congressional Budget Office in classifying Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as part of the government sector, insisting that they remained outside the federal budget.
Jim Nussle, the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, said: "I have decided to maintain the GSE's [government sponsored enterprises] non-budgetary status."
He said the OMB had "considered many factors in this decision, including the level of federal ownership, degree of control, economic risk to the taxpayer and temporary nature of this arrangement".
The decision means that the Bush administration will now present its budgets to Congress on a different basis from that on which Congress's own budget watchdog will assess them.
In effect, the Bush administration is saying that Fannie and Freddie remain arm's length entities, while the CBO is saying government control over them is now so tight they are in effect part of the government.
At stake is the appropriate treatment of $5,400bn (£3,000bn) in Fannie and Freddie assets and liabilities - equal to the entire publicly held debt of the US - as well as continuing operations by the two companies.
The CBO says that following this week's decision by the government to take control of the companies they should be accounted for as part of the government.
However, it cautions that this does not necessarily imply a $5,400bn increase in reported US debt, since $3,600bn of the Fannie and Freddie liabilities are in the form of mortgage guarantees, and the treatment of all their obligations will be subject to public rather than private accounting rules.
The White House insists that Fannie and Freddie should not be incorporated into the budget at all but accounted for separately.
In terms of future operations, the CBO will treat Fannie and Freddie outgoings and receipts as government spending and revenues. But it will not treat transfers between the Treasury and the two entities as government spending - merely as transfers between two arms of government.
The White House will not treat their outgoings and receipts as government spending and revenues.
However, it will treat transfers between the Treasury and the two entities as government spending.
|
The $190,000,000,000 collected from payroll withholding each year but not paid out to Social Security recipients is borrowed by the government and spent as general revenue. but is not include in the annual deficit number...it is simply added to the national debt total. In the fiscal uear ended 09/30/00, omly $18 billion of these surplus collections was borrowed from Social Security trust fund and spent....now, all $190 billion, plus $510 billion in additional borrowing, is spent each fiscal year and added to the national debt total.
The meetings last weekend on Fannie and Freddie's insolvency were held in secret with executives of privately owned Wall Street firms. The meetings this weekend related to the fate of the now nearly insolvent Lehman Bros. Investment Bank and Brokerage, as the meetings related to the sale of distressed Bear Stearns last march, were also held in secret with the same private parties. Henry Paulson, appointed by and a member of the presient's cabinet, is the closest entity to a representative of the interests of US taxpayers, as the Bush administration has chosen to allot us in these secret deliberations..... We will all have to explain to our grandchildren what we were doing while the debt we will pass along to them, escalated to a level beyond imagination, compared to the level of the national debt of just a few years ago....
The exposure of guaranteeing the decline in value of Fannie and Freddie MBS, not implicitely guaranteed when they were purchased by domestic and foreign investors, will add a risk of loss as high as $1.5 trillion additional to the US Treasury .....although US Treaury Secretary has attempted to calm large holders of this MBS, especially in China and Japan, by implying that the US Treaury will guarantee losses that were formerly only covered by Fannie and Freddie, it will take an act of congress to make this a legal guarantee. There is no need to guarantee MBS already sold, or any legal obligation by the US government to do so. Simply offering a US Treaury guarantee against losses of MBS sold since last monday, would be sufficient to promote the sales of newly issued MBS, which would provide funds for ongoing qualified home mortgage applicants, but it seems Bush/Paulson want to go the further step of doing something they have no right or obligation to do.....to guarantee with taxpayer risk, the $5 trillion of MBS sold by Fannie and Freddie before last week's government takeover of the two insolvent GSEs.....
Quote:
Social Security Online - HISTORY: Budget Treatment of Social Security Trust Funds
....So, traditionally, the way the administration chose to present its budget material defined how the federal budget was presented. When the Congress began its own independent budgeting activities in 1974 it adopted the existing convention of treating Social Security as part of the unified budget.
"Off-Budget" Again-
In the 1983 Social Security Amendments a provision was included mandating that Social Security be taken "off-budget" starting in FY 1993. This was a recommendation from the National Commission on Social Security Reform (aka the Greenspan Commission). The Commission's report argued: "The National Commission believes that changes in the Social Security program should be made only for programmatic reasons, and not for purposes of balancing the budget. Those who support the removal of the operations of the trust funds from the budget believe that this policy of making changes only for programmatic reasons would be more likely to be carried out if the Social Security program were not in the unified budget." (Note that this was a majority recommendation of the Commission, not the unanimous view of all members.) This change was in fact enacted into statute in the Social Security Amendments of 1983, signed into law by President Reagan on April 20, 1983. .....
|
The number below on the left is the amout in billions of dollars, collected from payroll contributions, the 2nd number is the amount dispersed, the 3rd number is the annual surplus, spent "off budget" as general revenue, and the number at the right is the $2.2 trillion now owed to the SSA trust fund....it is included in the national debt increase, but not in the annual budget deficit number touted by the white house:
Quote:
Social Security Trust Funds
Year 2000: 568,433 415,121 153,312 $1,049,445
Year 2007: 784,889 594,501 190,388 $2,238,500
|
Quote:
Bush challenges hundreds of laws - The Boston Globe
Bush challenges hundreds of laws
President cites powers of his office
By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff | April 30, 2006
WASHINGTON -- President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution.
Among the laws Bush said he can ignore are military rules and regulations, affirmative-action provisions, requirements that Congress be told about immigration services problems, ''whistle-blower" protections for nuclear regulatory officials, and safeguards against political interference in federally funded research.
Legal scholars say the scope and aggression of Bush's assertions that he can bypass laws represent a concerted effort to expand his power at the expense of Congress, upsetting the balance between the branches of government. The Constitution is clear in assigning to Congress the power to write the laws and to the president a duty ''to take care that the laws be faithfully executed." Bush, however, has repeatedly declared that he does not need to ''execute" a law he believes is unconstitutional......
|
GonadWarrior, I'd love to be a fly on the wall, listening to you tell your bankrupted grandchildren, that while president Bush was turning an $18 billion annual increase in the national debt, into trillion dollar annual increases, even as he did his level best to hide the enormity of the spending increases during his tenure, from the "on budget" deficit number, you were posting how he was "mistreated" in the political discourse of the period, and changing your TFP avatar to one depicting a charicature of Barak Obama as a vampire at the throat of the Statue of Liberty.
I have never read anything more absurd than that !
....and the attempt to hide the enormity of the actual spending explosion did not even end with the above data and description:
Quote:
Bush budget won't fully fund Iraq war - David Rogers - Politico.com
By: David Rogers
Jan 23, 2008 08:03 PM EST
The White House refused to say precisely how much bridge funding will be requested for Iraq and Afghanistan in the new budget
The White House confirmed Wednesday that its new budget next month will not request a full year’s funding for the war in Iraq, leaving the next president and Congress to confront major cost questions soon after taking office in 2009.
The decision reverses the administration’s stance of just a year ago, when President Bush’s budget made a point of spelling out in advance what he thought the costs would be for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan for 2008. By comparison, the new budget, to be unveiled Feb. 4, requests only incremental “bridge” funding into 2009 and won’t sustain the military through the full length of the fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30, 2009.
In confirming the decision, the White House refused to say precisely how much bridge funding will be requested for Iraq and Afghanistan in the new budget....
|
Last edited by host; 09-13-2008 at 08:11 PM..
|
09-13-2008, 07:16 PM
