Many of the Tea Party’s gripes about President Barack Obama can also be laid at the door of Mr Bush. Mr Obama passed the stimulus, but Mr Bush gave the country the troubled asset relief programme. Mr Obama brought national healthcare but Mr Bush paved the way for it by adding a prescription drug benefit to Medicare. Mr Obama increased the deficit to dizzying levels but his predecessor gave him a big head start.
Christopher Caldwell, “Bush’s weak tea for the right”, Financial Times, 13 November 2010.
Journalist Christopher Caldwell (1962-) is a senior editor at The Weekly Standard, a neoconservative opinion magazine published in the United States.
The current federal budget deficit was caused mainly by unnecessary wars and related military spending, the worst economic downturn since the 1930s, and large tax cuts and bailouts for the rich, all stemming from the Bush administration.
Now a bipartisan commission proposes that we solve the long-term deficit “problem” by cutting back Social Security, Medicare and other social welfare programs. Thus the poor, the sick and the elderly would pay for the tax breaks and bailouts for the already wealthy.
Robert Ortner, Letter to the Editor, New York Times, 13 November 2010.
Robert Ortner was chief economist and under secretary of commerce during the Reagan government and is the author of Voodoo Deficits (Irwin, 1990).
Tags: Tea Party
