Name:   MAJ USA RET - Subject:   Go back to the Bush years? Date:   9/10/2010 9:33:05 AM

Premise: "Obama inherited a huge deficit from Bush."   Amazingly enough, many people swallow this nonsense.

A short civics lesson:

Budgets do not come from the White House.  They come from Congress - and the party that controlled Congress since January 2007 is the Democratic Party.  Congress controlled the budget process for FY 2008 and FY 2009, as well as FY 2010. 

In FY 2008 (starting 01 OCT 07), they had to contend with George Bush, which caused them to compromise on spending, when Bush somewhat belatedly got tough on spending increases.

Subsequently, in FY 2009, Nancy Pelosi and 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 FY 2009 budgets.  Democrats wanted Republicans to look bad so they could get a Democrat back in office.  Obama did not have to sign that budget, but he did.

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 FY 2009. 

If the Democrats inherited any deficit, it was the FY 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.