Obama disclaims responsibility for deficit ?

Question by Regina (SOC): Obama disclaims responsibility for deficit ?
This is a long read, but worth it,…..let us know what you reckon?
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AP – President Barack Obama speaks during a town hall meeting Wednesday, April 29, 2009, at Fox Senior High …
Slideshow:President Obama’s Initially 100 Days Play Record Barack Obama Record:Obama: Remain vigilant against H1N1 bug AP Play Record Barack Obama Record:Beck’s Retrospective FOX News By CALVIN WOODWARD, Associated Press Writer Calvin Woodward, Associated Press Writer – 9 mins ago
WASHINGTON – “That wasn’t me,” President Barack Obama said on his 100th day in office, disclaiming responsibility for the huge budget deficit waiting for him on Day One.

It really was partly him — and the other Democrats controlling Congress the previous two years — who shaped the latest in a string of precipitously out-of-balance budgets.

And as a presidential candidate and president-elect, he backed the twilight Bush-era stimulus plot that made the deficit deeper, all before he took over and promoted spending plans that have made it much deeper still.

Obama met citizens at an Arnold, Mo., high school Wednesday in advance of his prime-time news conference. Both forums were a platform to review his progress at the 100-day mark and look ahead.

At various times, he brought an air of certainty to ambitions that are far from cast in stone.

His assertion that his proposed budget “will cut the deficit in half by the end of my initially term” is an watch-roller among many economists, given the uncharted terrain of trillion-dollar deficits and economic calamity that the government is negotiating.

He promised vast savings from augmented spending on preventive shape care in the face of doubts that such an try, but laudable it might be for public welfare, can pay for itself, let alone yield huge savings.

A look at some of his claims Wednesday:

OBAMA: “We started by passing a Recovery Act that has already saved or made over 150,000 jobs.” — from news conference.

THE FACTS: This assertion is flawed on several levels. For starters, the U.S. has lost more than 1.2 million jobs since Obama took office, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Even if Obama’s stimulus bill saved or made as many jobs as he says, that number is dwarfed by the number of recent job losses.

But Obama’s number is murky, at preeminent. The White Household has not so far announced how it intends to count jobs made by the stimulus bill. Obama’s number is based on a job-counting formula that his economists have developed but have not made public. Until that formula is announced — probably in the coming week or so — there’s no way to assess its accuracy.

Whatever the formula, economists who study job creation say it will require some creative math. That’s because Obama has lumped “jobs saved” in with “jobs made.” Even economists for organizations that stand to subsidy from the stimulus concede it probably is impossible to estimate saved jobs because that would require calculating a hypothetical: how many people would have lost their jobs without the stimulus.

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OBAMA: “We must lay a new foundation for growth, a foundation that will strengthen our economy and aid us compete in the 21st century. And that’s exactly what this budget starts to do. It contains new investments in culture that will equip our workers with the aptly skills and training; new investments in renewable energy that will initiation millions of jobs and new industries; new investments in shape care that will cut costs for families and businesses; and new savings that will bring down our deficit.” — news conference.

THE FACTS: While the budget does set a roadmap for achieving the president’s goals, it says nothing about how to pay for his shape plot, expected to cost more than $ 1 trillion over the next 10 years. And while the deficit, under the plot, would drop to $ 523 billion in 2014, it achieves it with unrealistic assumptions, such as projections that spending in Iraq and Afghanistan will amount to only $ 50 billion a year.

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OBAMA: “Number one, we inherited a $ 1.3 trillion deficit. … That wasn’t me. Number two, there is nearly uniform consensus among economists that in the midpoint of the largest crisis, financial crisis, since the Fantastic Depression, we had to take extraordinary steps. So you’ve got a lot of Republican economists who agree that we had to do a stimulus package and we had to do a touch about the banks. Those are one-time charges, and they’re lofty, and they’ll make our deficits go up over the next two years.” — in Missouri.

THE FACTS:

Congress, under Democratic control in 2007 and 2008, controlled the purse strings that led to the deficit Obama inherited. A Republican president, George W. Bush, had a role, too: He signed the legislation.

Obama supported the emergency bailout package in Bush’s final months — a package Democratic leaders sought after to make larger.

To be sure, Obama opposed the Iraq

Preeminent answer:

Answer by John Holmes
bo disclaims everything negative and takes all the credit for anything he thinks will play positive

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