Inherited Debt vs. Inherited Deficits

The Obama Administration is using the excuse for the massive, record-breaking federal budget deficits it proposes for the next several years that it inherited these deficits from the Bush Administration. The Obama Administration has inherited the debt, as all presidents since Martin Van Buren in 1837 have, which is the accumulation of the annual budget deficits, but inheritance of the budget deficit is another matter.

Although it is true that the 2009 budget was partly set under George W. Bush, part of it was the huge $410 billion spending bill that Barak Obama recently signed into law, in addition to his $787 million so-called "stimulus" bill. Leaving aside the fact that Obama only inherited part of this fiscal year's deficit, the Obama Administration will propose its own budgets for the following four years, pending congressional approval. In other words, even if Obama had inherited the deficit fully for this year, he is responsible for proposing all subsequent budgets. He can propose to balance the budget if doing so were his goal. In short, one can only inherit a deficit for the current fiscal year, but afterwards not.

Obama inherited an economic recession that has led to massive federal spending and reduced government revenue, so his Administration could argue that it inherited the situation that will cause deficit-spending to continue. However, Obama has added unnecessarily to the spending himself and even his projections are for robust economic growth, so he cannot use the economy as a total excuse for his proposed budget deficits. Indeed, the deficit would be even higher should the growth be less than he hopes. The few significant spending reductions Obama proposes are from the withdrawal of troops from Iraq, which had begun under Bush anyway, and other massive cuts in defense spending in wartime. Thus, Obama has proposed record-breaking deficits, which would also represent the highest percentage of the gross domestic product since World War II, despite projecting a greatly-improved economy and massive cuts in defense spending. Obama has not proposed any other significant spending cuts that would gradually reduce, let alone eliminate the budget deficit.

We should not allow the Obama Administration to fool the American people into blaming the massive budget deficits Barak Obama proposes on anyone other than Obama and the Democratic Congress that would approve them.