The Incomplete Cynic

jeffmiller:

So I’ve seen this chart on a million progressive blogs the last few days, and like just about every chart you see on a political blog, it’s not exactly right.  Which is a gentle way of saying it’s wrong.

There are the obvious defects, of course, like the omission of any spending by Obama on Iraq and Afghanistan, and I’m pretty sure Libya isn’t free.  Bush started the first two, but Obama increased our Afghanistan involvement, so he should get some credit for its cost.

But the biggest problem is the chart’s treatment of tax cuts.  Bush’s tax cuts had an expiration date.  During his campaign, Obama announced his own tax plan, which would keep the tax levels in place for 95% of American.  He believed that only the “rich” needed to pay more.  The cost of this extension of tax cuts over a decade is $3 trillion dollars.  Why isn’t that on Obama’s side of the chart?  I think it’s missing because it would make Obama look bad.  That’s a pretty bad reason to leave something off a chart.

Something else seems off on the chart.  Oh, yeah … Obamacare.  The CBO put the cost at $1 trillion.  And that was based upon accounting gimmicks.  Democrats think they’ll pay for this with taxes.  Businessmen think otherwise, warning about potential revenue hits.  We’ll see.  

Let’s not forget the ridiculous assumption that Obama wouldn’t come up with any new ways to spend money in the remaining five years of a theoretical second term.