I abhor chain mail and forcing people in my contacts list to proactively determine if the crap I’m sending them is more crappy than usual. In an effort to continue in that vein, but also pass on something very interesting I shall put it here.

A pre-warning to all of you, this is highly political in nature (big surprise I’m sure) and I have copied the text exactly as was given to me. If you get annoyed by the text, skip to the end. I’m going to try to provide some references and factual basis, and probably some opinion.

The day the Democrats took over was not January 22nd 2009, it was actually January 3rd 2007 the day the Democrats took over the House of Representatives and the Senate, at the very start of the 110th Congress. The Democrat Party controlled a majority in both chambers for the first time since the end of the 103rd Congress in 1995. For those who are listening to the liberals propagating the fallacy that everything is “Bush’s Fault”, think about this: January 3rd, 2007 was the day the Democrats took over the Senate and the Congress. At the time: The DOW Jones closed at 12,621.77 The GDP for the previous quarter was 3.5% The Unemployment rate was 4.6% George Bush’s Economic policies SET A RECORD of 52 STRAIGHT MONTHS of JOB GROWTH Remember the day… January 3rd, 2007 was the day that Barney Frank took over the House Financial Services Committee and Chris Dodd took over the Senate Banking Committee. The economic meltdown that happened 15 months later was in what part of the economy? BANKING AND FINANCIAL SERVICES! Unemployment… to this CRISIS by (among MANY other things) dumping 5-6 TRILLION Dollars of toxic loans on the economy from YOUR Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac FIASCOES! Bush asked Congress 17 TIMES to stop Fannie & Freddie – starting in 2001 because it was financially risky for the US economy. And who took the THIRD highest pay-off from Fannie Mae AND Freddie Mac? OBAMA And who fought against reform of Fannie and Freddie? OBAMA and the Democrat Congress So when someone tries to blame Bush. REMEMBER JANUARY 3rd, 2007…. THE DAY THE DEMOCRATS TOOK OVER!” Budgets do not come from the White House. They come from Congress and the party that controlled Congress since January 2007 is the Democrat Party. Furthermore, the Democrats controlled the budget process for 2008 & 2009 as well as 2010 & 2011. In that first year, they had to contend with George Bush, which caused them to compromise on spending, when Bush somewhat belatedly got tough on spending increases. For 2009 though, Nancy Pelosi & Harry Reid bypassed George Bush entirely, passing continuing resolutions to keep government running until Barack Obama could take office. At that time, they passed a massive omnibus spending bill to complete the 2009 budgets. And where was Barack Obama during this time? He was a member of that very Congress that passed all of these massive spending bills, and he signed the omnibus bill as President to complete 2009. If the Democrats inherited any deficit, it was the 2007 deficit, the last of the Republican budgets. That deficit was the lowest in five years, and the fourth straight decline in deficit spending. After that, Democrats in Congress took control of spending, and that includes Barack Obama, who voted for the budgets. If Obama inherited anything, he inherited it from himself. In a nutshell, what Obama is saying is I inherited a deficit that I voted for and then I voted to expand that deficit four-fold since January 20th. There is no way this will be widely publicized, unless each of us sends it on!

110th Congress according to Wikipedia: The described makeup of the 110th Congress is accurate. In fact, it seems like the author of the above used Wikipedia for the basis of that argument.

Hate to use Wikipedia again, and such a political statistic at that… Job Growth by Presidential terms shows that the first 4 years of Bush saw job growth (albeit meager, especially compared to Clinton) after the 2001 fallout and the second term actually lost all of that growth and then some. More interesting though is the plotting of the employment data. There is clear growth past 2005 into the 2007-2008 time frame. I also managed to generate the following graphic from http://www.bls.gov/ces/cesbtabs.htm, table 1, all employed not seasonally adjusted:

The other elements about what budgets were passed and when are a matter of public record, the more interesting piece of it is really the opinion that the Democrats were moving their policies ahead slowly while simply lying in wait for a Democratic president.

As a Conservative (non-Republican — since I get accused of wearing the R quite often), I really want to believe this is true. At very least, it seems like a decent way to force Obama away from the “It’s Bush’s fault” mantra. However, I find something very wrong with the quote. I can’t honestly believe that any politician wants to hurt the country. The thought that the Democrats want explosive debt that is weighing down our economy and if allowed to continue will kill the economy is comical. I think all of the rich Senators and Congress people would really like to stay rich and an imploded economy won’t allow that. That said, the core of what the quote is getting at, Bush isn’t to blame, does actually seem to be factually sound, but you also have to consider two foreign wars at an estimated cost of $4 trillion (both wars actually did have congressional approval… both houses were Republican) and a bad mortgage market that had been around since long before Bush. I also don’t believe that Reid and Pelosi could single handedly destroy our economy in 18 months only to double down when Obama got in office.

Ultimately, what I want people to get out of this: Republicans didn’t “drive us into the ditch”, and Democrats aren’t “driving us forward”. We need leaders who are better at making rational decisions than politicking and for everyone to stop grandstanding about how their opponents hate the American people for various reasons and that their ideology will grant us unlimited rainbows and unicorns. Realize our problems, find rational, logical solutions that will likely hurt everyone a little today but leave us in a better place tomorrow. Taxing to infinity can’t work, more unemployment and medicare won’t work, and an totally open/free market is so abusive to the consumers that no one would succeed.