I just love the way our fiscal conservatives have managed the books:
The Bush administration gave details Wednesday on how it plans to borrow the billions of dollars it will need to cope with the soaring budget deficits.
Those plans include raising $27 billion by selling a new 10-year note and a new 30-year bond at the regularly scheduled quarterly auctions to be held next week. The government needs to borrow $171 billion during the current July-September quarter, the second highest quarterly borrowing total on record.
The increased borrowing needs reflect the exploding federal budget deficit which is projected to more than double in size this year and to hit an all-time high of $482 billion in the 2009 budget year.
As a commenter noted, this is like paying off interest on your credit card using… another credit card. And remember, John McCain has admitted to not knowing much about the economy. And, if you look at his current press releases, you can see it isn’t much of a priority for him. A current screenshot:
I have taken the liberty of marking the posts. Of the last 19 press releases, seven have been the McCain smear about Obama not visiting Landstuhl that the mainstream media is now openly calling a lie (and, amusingly enough, the McCain campaign is now calling a lie). Approximately one (1) is about the disastrous deficit.
Before someone accuses me of cherry-picking from the McCain website, let me nip that in the bud. This is from THEIR website. Front and center in the news releases. This is what THEY have chosen to focus on these past few days. Smearing the opposition. That is their main priority as indicated by the things THEY have chosen to release to the press.
Overall, I guess, this is probably a good thing, since McCain has stated several times that he doesn’t know much about the economy. In his one press release about this current financial disaster that has us borrowing at the second-highest rate in history to pay interest on our other debts, McCain states the following:
Strong economic growth is the first step to getting back to a balanced budget. My Jobs for America plan — a comprehensive strategy that includes keeping taxes on individuals, investment, and small businesses where they are today; incentives for businesses to invest more and keep well-paying jobs in this country; and leading to more jobs, higher pay, and — ultimately — growth in revenues.
John McCain’s solution to this crisis is a novel one- tax cuts and smearing the opposition. Attention, media. I just did your job for you. Again.
jamey
You blew McCain? Way to take one for the team, Johnny!
Blondie
Colbert did this whole thing on Monday about how the new McCain campaign strategy is to do so badly that people would feel sorry for him and then want him to win out of pity. I’m beginning to think that there is a kernel of truth to that satire. A common debate strategy is to lower expectations about the candidate’s expected performance so that it is more likely that they will win by beating expectations and not necessarily by being the best debater. GWB perfected this strategy in 2000 so that all he had to do was actually show up in person and not drool on himself and Al Gore lost. What if they are doing badly now so that after the Convention when things really matter, all they will have to do would be to put two sentences together and the (already fawning) media will spend all their time about how he finally has his shit together- and the campaign can use the crap momentum this creates to (attempt to) win.
Just a thought.
Gus
POTD!
SpotWeld
Is it me, or is the McCain campaign spending more and more time positioning thier canidate relative to Obama (negative campaigning) rather than positioning him relative to the Office of President (positive campaigning).
It’s like they’ve already conceeded the 2008 election and are trying to lay the groundwork for McCain in 2012.
jenniebee
What will be our first clue that we’ve moved away from shifting debt from card to card and are now actually making our minimum payments by taking out payday loans?
John Cole
I would guess when the credit dries up. But I am as clueless as McCain. My only hope at this point is that the rest of the world looks at us the way we look at Fannie Mae- we are too big to fail, and they bail us out.
DannyNoonan
Um, and it might behoove Obama to point this weak point out a bit more. Something like: the other guy carries around 100K of debt on his credit card and figures that’s a good way to run the economy. Oh and he just crapped his pants.
Incertus
Or for McCain to get an ad deal for Cialis.
nightjar
But you it’s Obama’s fault MCcain now has to go negative. If Obama wasn’t winning and prancing around like an all uppity negro president, McCain wouldn’t have to be
tougha sewer trout andtell the truthmake up brazen lies about Obama.From a commenter (gbear) in the previous thread, Mccain admits the phony anti-troop ad was, well, phony. BUT BUT BUT
This is good news for Hillary. Mcain attacks and blames his base. The ever loving press.
Gus
There’s a reason they’re spending so much time smearing Obama: negative campaigning works beautifully. I’m watching Norm Coleman’s campaign pick up steam on the strength of a negative attack. He was losing ground running a bunch of ads about how he “gets things done.” His most recent ad is an attack on Franken, and I think it will be a lot more effective than any previous ad. No matter what people say in polls, they’re looking as much for a reason not to vote for one guy as to vote for the other one.
Zifnab
And even then it took massive voter roll purges across multiple states, Diebold voting machines, a series of nasty legal fights, and a Bush-friendly Supreme Court. And he still lost the popular vote by a quarter million voters.
I was more impressed with how he won in 2004 by basically standing around and alternating between screams of “John Kerry is a liberal” and “The terrorists will kill us”. Then he actually won the popular vote after another round of voter roll purges across multiple states, Diebold voting machines being deployed more aggressively, redistricting, legal fights, and various strong armed tactics employed by Bush-friendly Governors and State Secretaries.
McCain was never going to win this election because much of that support has dried up. Now its just a matter of how big a thumping he’s going to take in the Fall.
Incertus
Make a limp dick joke and wind up in moderation. Fucking spammers.
The Other Steve
An interesting little experiment… Go to this site.
http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/BPDLogin?application=np
Enter in some dates… Say January 1, 2001 to Dec 31, 2007.
Starting debt: 5,662,216,013,697.37
Ending debt: 9,229,172,659,218.31
Difference: 3,566,956,645,521
Divide by 7.
Result: 509,565,235,074
Interesting, no? They tell us $490 billion is a record deficit, but on average over the past 7 years we’ve had $509 billion a year in deficit spending.
Why?
Because they aren’t including the money borrowed from Social Security in their published deficit numbers.
EL
John, how about putting up another link for contributions for Obama? It’s the end of the month, with 1 more day to add to the July totals. I just made a contribution to Balloons for Obama via Actblue, and I challenge others to do the same!
Gay Veteran
“The increased borrowing needs reflect the exploding federal budget deficit which is projected to more than double in size this year and to hit an all-time high of $482 billion in the 2009 budget year.”
uh, no, the 2009 deficit will be 600 Billion:
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/07/29/abc-without-creative-white-house-accounting-bushs-deficit-is-actually-600-billion/
dslak
This was, in fact, Andrew Hamilton’s argument for the US to carry significant amounts of debt.
When you owe somebody $1,000, he has leverage over you. When you owe somebody $1,000,000, you have leverage over him.
Doug H. (Fausto no more)
So why has Obama’s favorability polling remained in the high 50s while McCain’s is sinking like a rock?
Llelldorin
As I recall, they’re also not considering the war. They’re continuing to use the now-standard approach that since you can’t tell exactly how much it’s going to cost, the only sensible thing to do is to budget it at $0.
Jeff
@Gay Veteran — You beat me to it. That story is also now on the front page of Digg.
The Moar You Know
The only “groundwork” any sane person will be laying for McCain in 2012 would be a plot in Forest Lawn.
Gus
Good point, but I’m sticking to my guns on this one based on 30 years of watching politics. I’m guessing a couple more months of smears will get those numbers down. Or maybe the volume of the attacks makes me think that they’re more effective than they are. Years of voting for losing candidates has definitely made me a pessimist. I really though there was no way a nincompoop like Bush could be elected, even with the help of electoral shennanigans.
PeterJ
McJob.
Jim
Sadly, I’m leaning towards Gus’ point of view. Obama is mainly reacting to McCain’s charges rather than taking the offensive. Now, it is only July, and I think the public at large isn’t paying that much attention, but the fact that, with the notable exception of the troop visit issue, where the press actually exposed the lie, mainly the press just reports both sides stories and doesn’t separate the smear from the truth.
Teak111
Why are the comments so wide?
TR
McCain’s on CNN, butchering a speech like it’s the fatted calf. I know it’s hard to live up to Obama’s level, but McCain makes Bush look like a gifted stump speaker.
Martin
They’re trying to hook up with comments from neighboring blogs. Did you not notice the tapping?
Punchy
Let’s talk in Nov. after McCane wins.
It’s ridiculous that McCane can actually issue an ad that says something like “Obama, convicted of raping his sister in 1988, now wants all rapists to go free!!”, and the media response is, “I’m not sure this is….well, maybe….let’s replay the ad 1,200 times on the air first before we decide what’s fact or not”. McCain will win it using this tactic; just make shit up, let it run on cable for a week, then blame teh lib’ral media for all the confusion.
Laughingriver
Its worse than that, on September 27th of last year the total debt was 8.972 trillion dollars, yesterday it was 9.537 trillion dollars for a total of 605 billion dollars, adding in this 171 billion will bring the total to 776 billion dollars of additional debt added in one year and could easily be larger when social security borrowings is factored in.
You have to keep in mind that they do not include the amounts they borrow from social security and they also to not keep on the books the costs for the wars. So all in all we could actually see a year when around 900 billion dollars is borrowed.
George Bush should be labeled the economic terrorist he actually is…
Tim H.
I would guess when the credit dries up. But I am as clueless as McCain.
The fact that they’re apparently inventing new Treasury securities to sell is probably a bad sign.
Delia
To go all historian on you, this is what the French government did in the late 1780s to pay their bills. Sure, they didn’t have credit cards. Hell, they didn’t even have paper money. But the principle was the same. And we all know how well it worked out for them.
And for the record, the French Revolution was not started by rebellious workers and peasants. It was started by recalcitrant nobles who didn’t want to solve the financial crisis by starting to pay taxes.
Just saying . . .
jvill
I had the same reaction this morning when reading the WSJ.
They reported:
Maybe I’ve missed the reporting on McCain, but it just seems like Obama is seriously preparing for — you know, a presidency — while McCain is left whining about every imaginary slight he can think of. There’s nothing stopping McCain from meeting with the important leaders our future, or from making trips to Europe to buff up his bona fides, except his campaign’s apparent and complete lack of imagination or foresight (and any GOP candidate’s now standard lack of any self-awareness).
More and more McCain is starting to remind me of the crybaby younger brother who’s pissed that his older brother keeps getting the car on weekends just because the older brother was clever enough… to effing ask first.
Billy K
He doesn’t need to. The Free Market will fix it!!
Free Market! Free Market! Free Market!
Kirk
Gus,
I’m only going to sort of agree – negative campaigning works, but there are some nasty caveats.
First caveat – when you throw negative, you go down too. The balance you have to hope for is that your negative from throwing mud isn’t as steep as the negative of the target.
Second caveat – Regardless how ugly the negative is, it will be believed by some. But to have significant impact, it must be accepted as at least possible to enough people. Which means you need your sources to be at least nominally trustworthy. When someone obviously beaten down to the floor, or a known liar/shill starts badmouthing, the effect is fairly minimal.
The latter is why I think the McCain campaign pretty well unzipped, rolled it out, and tap danced wearing golf shoes. As noted, the opinion pages will still probably support, but for at least a while now everything they throw out is going to get a BS test from most reporters. Oh, a lot will still get out. But don’t be surprised to see echoes of the “the information is incomplete/in error” message – a polite rephrase of “it’s a lie.”
I expect the negatives to have some effect, but far less than the McCain team hopes.
Joshua Norton
The “Fiscal Conservatives” don’t really give a rat’s ass about how much debt we accrue. Their solution has always been to default when it gets to be too much.
HyperIon
a little rant on humanity….
sadly, it takes only one idiot to spoil it for everybody.
example: GayVet did not embed her/his links. even though this topic has been mentioned many times and was even the subject of its own post recently. now i’m sure GayVet is a stellar human being but somehow s/he did not get the memo. and others after her/him will continue to NOT embed links. GayVet is evidently a “low information poster”. s/he is not alone.
the good news: failing to embed links is a small error in the universe of possible sins.
the bad news: entropy is not our friend. in the long run (which may be pretty short actually) the human race will be done in by someone who did not get/read “the memo”.
gbear
Hyperlon, Not everyone is aware of all internet traditions.
Z
gbear, that was teh awesome!
rawshark
Isn’t this exactly how supply side economics works? I’m only asking because this seems remarkably similar to the economic environment Ronny and daddy Bush left us.
patroclus
What you say might be true and all, but Christian the Lion hugged his old human mates!
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Kirk,
Good point all. A 3rd cavaet I’d throw in is that the McCain campaign appears to be trying to go negative on the cheap by running these ads in select markets and then getting cable news to run with the story.
That helps net them some free air time, but it also has the effect of beating down the credibility of the cable news outlets – the 2 caveats you mentioned apply to the messenger, not just the person who originated the message.
If they continue with this strategy, they may drive down Obama’s ratings but at the cost of making an increasingly large fraction of the electorate laugh and point, or throw things at the TV, every time Chris Matthews and his ilk are on screen. They are contributing to the DailyShow-ization of America, and I don’t think that is going to help the GOP in the long run, maybe not even in the short run.
Punchy
If McCane wants to win, wants to guarentee it, he nommy’s Patreaus for his VP.
rawshark
I may be wrong but I consider this site to be a part of the media.
Gus
POTD II!
oh really
Stop being so mean to John McCain. He was a prisoner of war before he became a saint. Besides, he’s just behaving the way any crazed, semi-senile moron consumed by ambition to be president would act. Is that so wrong?
And can anyone really say it wouldn’t be a lot more just for McCain to inherit the clusterfuck Bush is leaving behind than it would be to turn it over to Barack Obama?
If this were a video game, I’d definitely want McCain to be the next president. It would be fun to watch him destroy the world.
However, back here in real life I’m reduced to hoping that somewhere there are aliens searching for a really old ex-Navy man in desperate need of the ol’ anal probe, because if we can’t count on alien abduction that means we have to rely on the wisdom of America’s voters. Sorry, that’s just too painful to contemplate. Where the hell is ET when we need him?