Bush's Fuzzy Math George W. likes to brag about his crappy grades. When it comes to numbers, he ain't lyin'.

• Here's his fuzzy math on:JOBS  || SPENDING  ||  TAX BREAKS  ||  BUDGET || TROOPS

JOBS

OUR ECONOMY IS STAGNANT.  These idiots only see recovery.  But it is a PAPER RECOVERY, one that benefits only Wall Street.  The bottom line is JOBS.  We're losing them faster than we're creating them.  Industry leaders say they're barely hiring. Unemployment appears to be at an all-time low, but that's not accounting for all the SHIT jobs created, plus the fact that many people have stopped applying.

N. Gregory Mankiw, chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers, said that outsourcing American jobs overseas helps the US economy because it reduces costs for US companies and consumers.  Let's repeat that one: he said that sending US jobs overseas is a good thing for our economy. 

In 2003, Bush predicted the creation of over two million jobs.  We in fact LOST jobs.  Then in early 2004, he again predicts a gain, this time of 2.6 million jobs.  No sooner are the words out of his mouth, then members of his own economic team say they can't support those numbers.  In fact, his treasury secretary and commerce secretary were on a bus together, during a trip to plug Bush's economic policies, when they were asked about it. 

In February 2004, Bush advisers (and Bush himself) blamed everybody but themselves for everything going wrong in the world.  At one point, Bush even indicated that he got pulled into Iraq because of a Clinton policy regarding getting rid of Saddam Hussein.  His spokesman blamed "numbers crunchers" for the wacky prediction of 2.6 million jobs getting created. 

The fact is, since Bush took over, the USA has lost 2.2 million jobs, the worst jobs record of any president since Herbert Hoover.

March 2004, Bush names a  MANUFACTURING CZAR. He was supposed to help create jobs in the manufacturing sector.  Turns out the guy had downsized his own company and shipped jobs to CHINA.  That guy immediately disappeared.

FEDERAL SPENDING

October 30, 2007: Bush showed the ULTIMATE in hypocrisy by saying the Democratic-controlled Congress has "the worst record" in twenty years, that they were fiscally irresponsible, that they were holding US soldiers "hostage," and that they couldn't move a bill along without sticking a tax hike into it. Well, what this flaming bag of shit seems to have forgotten is that his previous GOP-controlled Congress had turned record surpluses into record deficits, has accumulated more debt than any president EVER, he never vetoed a spending bill until his party lost power, he withheld the true costs of the Medicare bill until it passed, and has never put forth or approved one single piece of legislation in his entire time in office that directly benefited the middle class backbone of the USA.
 
 

In 2000, Bush said Gore would “grow the federal government in the largest increase since Lyndon Baines Johnson.” In 2005, the Cato Institute reports that “Bush has presided over the largest overall increase in inflation-adjusted federal spending since Lyndon Baines Johnson.”: And by the way, that would still be true even WITHOUT the Iraq war. In October 2007, Bush was officially declared to have created more spending and grown government more (even after leaving out the two wars) than any president since LBJ. Whaddaya know. In October 2000, Al Gore warned that Bush would wreck the economy. He was RIGHT. http://archives.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/10/19/campaign.wrap/

Bush employees were specifically ordered not to tell Congress the true costs of the Medicare prescription drug plan. It subsequently passed by one lousy vote. 

Tony Snow, Bush's replacement for Scott McLellan, used to shit all over Bush when Snow worked for Fox. He wrote that Bush was "something of an embarrassment," described his domestic policy as "listless" and said he was "the boy who can't say no" on federal spending.
 

In 2002, Bush said he disliked deficits, and wanted fiscal responsibility.  But he's let the deficit go throught he roof, and he NEVER vetoed a GOP spending bill, literally dozens of them. He kept raising spending, but couldn't tell us how he was going to pay for any of it.

Bush has managed to finally get the deficit down, but a lot of that is smoke and mirrors. He still gets his war spending through separate appropriations outsidet he budget. He still wants permanent tax breaks, and he depends entirely on even MORE tax breaks, and the fading economy coming back. Hmmm, let's see now, the tax breaks will help fix the deficit that was caused by, hmmmm, the tax breaks.  Brilliant!!!

Bush and his party continue to rag on the Democrats as "tax and spend" guys.  But the GOP are the guys who have spent us into a gigantic deficit.  They filled every nook and cranny of every bill with pork.  Finally even the conservatives said "what the hell" and helped kill the energy spending bill, which was merely a subsidy for oil companies.  The GOP spent and spent, but didn't raise any cash to help pay for any of it. 

Cheney himself was quoted by the former treasury secretary as saying "Reagan proved that deficits don't matter."  Well, yeah, they do.  Reagan's deficits killed the economy and doomed George Sr.'s second crack at the White House.
 

Fall 2005: The Deficit Reduction Act MADE THE DEFICIT BIGGER. They cut $13 billion in student loans, $8 billion in child support, and medical care for more than 100,000 families. It also added $50 billion in tax cuts for Americans making $1 million or more. 

Let's repeat that: the Deficit Reduction Act added $50 billion to the deficit.
 

The Tax Break is wonderful, 
       if you're somebody who doesn't need it
 

Summer 2007: For many months now, Bush paints Democrats and anybody else who wants to start paying down the debt he's run up as somebody who wants to "raise taxes." This includes anybody in Congress who simply wants to let lapse the tax breaks he's given to the wealthy. Instead of looking at that as allowing to expire the stuff he gave his buddies, he calls that a tax increase.

April 2006: An in-depth analysis of IRS data proves what everybody already knew, that Bush’s tax cuts grossly benefit the wealthiest Americans.
 

Echoing his father's rather foolish "read my lips" bit, G.W. said of proposed Democratic tax hikes, "not over my dead body."  Now, you KNOW he didn't think of that off the top of his head.  It had to have been written for him, to sound like an off the cuff, emotional statement.  But the phrase SHOULD be "over my dead body."  So even when he TRIES to sound emotionally charged, he still can't get it right. 

All through the 2000 campaign, Al Gore said that Bush's tax break would mainly benefit the richest one percent of the population.  Bush kept countering that it was an across-the-board tax rate drop.  And guess what, they're both right.  It helps everybody.  But most people it helps BARELY.  Essentially, if you're making money hand over fist, you're getting a boatload of it back.  So the tax burden really, truly is getting shifted more onto the backs of the stiffs who can't handle it. And in the meantime, we'll be throwing off track our schedule to pay down the debt, significantly.  Several in Congress, including GOP stalwarts, have suggested changing this tax break so that it kicks in only when there are surpluses.  Good idea.

March 2001 : Bush claimed his state had tax surpluses while he was Texas governor, and pushed through a tax break.  So guess what?  They scrambled to figure out how to pay for things in the 2001 budget. They went from a surplus to being in the hole.  Most Texans didn't see any tax cut, because the school districts had to raise their levies to make up for the cut.  Chances are they'll be looking at hiking taxes back up to cover the shortfall.  This tax mess in Texas could end up helping elect a Democratic governor.  My, my, wouldn't that be embarrassing?  Even with a record budget of $114 billion, Texas isn't going to get public services up to a bare minimum.

April 2001:  Democrats and Republicans alike agreed that Bush's tax break plan was deeply flawed, and hacked it back.  But what was the point? Everybody gets back five bucks, and the national debt goes back up?  Later that month, Bush indicated a willingness to compromise, otherwise he would have never gotten the thing through, especially when he hadn't accounted for fixing social security (remember that thing?  the thing he wanted to invest in the stock market?), Medicaid, education, infrastructure.

The tax cuts gave 45 percent of the benefits to the richest 1 percent of the population.  Bush himself got a $39,000 break, and Cheney got $2.3 million.

The budget being negotiated in spring 2004 had a chance to help pay for the war and other slashed public programs by reducing the tax cuts.  The wealthiest folks would have had to settle for $83,000 in tax cuts instead of $88,000.  The White House said no way.  Instead, they cut veterans benefits, education, the EPA, etc.

May 2001 : Bush got his abbreviated tax plan passed.  As predicted in this space at that time, economic disaster was right around the corner.  And we still haven't fixed Social Security. We had a chance to secure it for years to come, and we blew it.  What it means is, I'm paying into a system that will not be around to give back to me when I retire. What it means is, the compromise bill still gives 32 percent of the benefit to the richest folks. Thanks, W., you flaming idiot.

When Reagan came up with his tax cut in 1981, one GOPer voted against it, predicting (correctly)  that a break would lead to a deficit.  That guy was Jim Jeffords.

September 2001 : Bush and company were part of the finger-pointing, once they figured out the tax break has helpd contribute to the surplus becoming a deficit.  So everybody got their little Xmas present, and the country's f****d.  We pissed away a great opportunity to put Social Security way ahead, make it secure for when I retire.  Now we're back in a hole, AND we had to pay for two expensive wars.  Idiot, idiot, idiot.

May 2002 : It is now the conventional wisdom that the tax breaks and the Afghan war contributed to a brief recovery.  But with the war over, the stall in the recovery was largely blamed on the deficits which were largely created by the tax breaks.  And then came the farm subsidies !!!!

March 2003 : The proposed break on dividend taxes was positioned by Bush as benefiting seniors.  Yeah, seniors making $200,000 or more.  He's all about rich people.

January 2004 : This bonehead took the biggest surplus ever and turned it into the biggest deficit ever.  This is exactly as right-minded economists predicted.  Bush says that the tax breaks will help fix the deficit he created with the tax breaks.  Fuzzy math, indeed.

May 2005: Bush's former budget chief, Mitch Daniels, now governor of Indiana, has proposed raising taxes on the wealthy, breaking from the orthodoxy of tax breaks for the rich.

January 2005 : Bush and Congress are going to allow the expiration of two different taxes that were put in place by Bush's dad for the purpose of stemming the deficit in 1990. These expirations will take $27 billion out of the U.S. Treasury, and will benefit ONLY millionaires. Seriously.
 

OCTOBER 2006: Bush was all happy about getting the new deficit down to a rock-bottom $247 billion.  The problem IS that it's still a ridiculous, gargantuan, unnecessary deficit, fueled by runaway pork spending. If you leave out spending for the Iraqi war, which he usually does so that the numbers aren't as bad, it's STILL a huge deficit. And ANY year with a deficit adds to the growing DEBT, which doesn't go away until it's paid down. The shrinking deficit does NOTHING to shrink the DEBT. OCTOBER 2007: He's got the deficit down under $200 billion. But the debt is now $9 TRILLION.

FEBRUARY 2007: Finally, finally, finally, this freaking moron was forced to put spending for the war in the BUDGET. He always made his budget look smaller by not including Iraq and Afghanistan in it. In 2005, he submitted his budget, NOT including the wars, then a month later asked for emergency war appropriations. What a joke! He submitted a 2007 budget of $2.9 TRILLION, expecting to make his tax cuts for the rich permanent. He also projected eliminating the deficit altogether by 2009, but only by leaving out billions in costs, such as the elimination of the Alternative Minimum Tax, and presuming that there will be NO costs for war in Iraq after 2009. This dipshit is saying that the USA will spend NOTHING on fixing the Iraq he broke,  in another couple of years. It's all a shell game. There's not an honest bone in this asshole's head.

His budget of the previous year, submitted in February 2006, had additional wackiness. He counted on revenues from things that hadn't been approved yet, such as the sale of oil leases for drilling in the Alaskan Wildlife Preserve, which Congress has already shot down twice, and higher airline fees, which Congress ALSO rejected. Meantime, a week after submitting the budget, Bush put in for an additional, non-budgeted appropriation for Iraq and Afghanistan. Once again, he knew the costs were there, but didn't put them in the budget. This guy is on crack.

September 2007: Bush and his cronies are pulling a couple of fast ones with regard to the ongoing debacle in Iraq.

1) Bush now calls for troop withdrawals to begin in 2007. He's talking about a measly couple of thousand. THEN he and his precious General Petraeus talk of bringing home 30,000 troops by summer 2008. These would be the same additional 30,000 he just put into Iraq in the summer of 2007. This means that by middle of 2008, he will finally be back to the troop levels of early 2007. And he calls this a "withdrawal."

2) In claiming that violence is down in Iraq, Petraeus cited numerous charts with figures and lines. The new math there now is counting any corpses with bullet wounds in the front of the head as being from common crimes, while bullet wounds to the back of the head being victims of sectarian violence. No shit. The placement of the wound determines who killed you, according to eh Pentagon. No shit.