What you show how little you truly know. The debt did increase from 5.7 trillion to 10.6 trillion during the Bush term and that includes the costs of the wars. The debt today is 16.2 trillion dollars so do the math, 4.9 trillion added to the debt by Bush and 5.6 trillion added by Obama in 4 years. As for ending Iraq, Bush negotiated the Status of Force Agreement that agreed to a withdrawal by the end of last year. Obama didn't end the war he implemented the SOF agreement.
Part of the rise in the debt after Bush was not spending: it was accrual of interest on the debt. The problem was that we were in a much worse recession than anyone at first imagined, and the solution was more money circulating in the economy, but people did not have the money to circulate. We also had the debt, the solution to which is cutting spending and raising revenue. I'm not a big economics girl, but that suggests a double bind, problems with opposing solutions. I'm amazed Obama managed it as well as he did.
I guess my wording on ending the war was not precise enough for you. But Hillary would have pulled out in January of that year, because she was adamant about that.
What he really wanted was the disatrous European healthcare model that has bankrupted those nations. You seem to lack a basic understanding of who pays for the uninsured. Under Obama, the federal taxpayers and in the real world that is a state expense.
Actually, he did not emphasize the Euro model; he gave Congress free reign to work a policy out even though he stated a preference for what I said. The Japanese model allows private insurance to just continue on, while public insurance is available at such a low cost that people on low incomes and people working for small businesses that do not provide insurance can afford it. It isn't great insurance, so there is an incentive to seek higher paying employment or work at larger companies that can afford to offer better insurance, but it isn't bad and covers an annual physical exam, two annual dental exams/cleanings a year, emergency care, etc., etc. It would have forced insurance companies to compete. Meanwhile, health care reform was supposed to target the outrageous pricing and also the problem of malpractice suits and exorbitant malpractice insurance. Pelosi and a few other Congressional Dems were the ones who insisted unrealistically that the insurance coverage be as good as that which Congress gets. They were terrible. Obama was not.
It isn't the Federal Government's role to punish private business, but rather control govt. greed and growth. We live in a private sector economy that Obama is demonizing. I succeeded in the private sector and you could too but have to change your attitude.
I disagree. I think that we live in a democratic republic which allows a private sector economy to operate as a free enterprise system with some capitalism. But as John Stuart Mill knew, politics always trumps economics, because a democratically governed population can decide at any time to change what it allows and does not allow in the way of economic activity. Capitalism does not even equal free enterprise, and it certainly does not equal democracy. It is what happens when some individuals, through free enterprise, have already reached a level where they have subsistence in the form of food, clothing, housing, including necessary heat and water and, in contemporary life, modern facilities for sewage, electricity, and means of communication, e.g., phone or internet, as well as basic education and health care, and a level of well being that allows aspiration beyond in meaningful free enterprise. Beyond that stage of meaningful enterprise, using some money as play money occurs, and that is true capitalism, money making money for no other reason than making money. It is not, after all, meaningful activity and its only utility is that some of the money can be used for better subsistence or more meaningful enterprise. When it becomes destructive of overall subsistence, it can certainly be punished.
What makes you think I didn't ever succeed in the private sector? I have worked for a multinational corporation, taught in private colleges on two sides of the Pacific, and supported myself and a private research project through self-employment for nine years, if not lucratively. Quite a few millionaires are Democrats. But I don't think that chasing money for its own sake is success. I think it's shallow and when done the way Romney did it, it becomes vulture capitalism. Ick. Success as a person is about meaningful activities, not money.
Pro Choice doesn't matter because no President can change the law by himself. To me it is a non issue just like the made up war on women. This election should never be this close, Obama should lose in a landslide. What the polls show however is the ignorance of far too many who apparently are in need of Obamanomics. I find it interesting that people who haven't been aborted have firm support for Abortion.
Pro-choice doesn't matter to you. It matters to me. No people have ever been aborted. Only embryos and fetuses have been aborted, and they are not people. The point of that right to choose is not just as a safety net for girls and women in a country with a high rape rate and those who want to plan their families. It is for equality under the law and for human dignity and ownership of one's own body. If you can't understand that, you can't understand anything about private property, because there is no property of any woman more private than her own sex organs and immune system.
