Blowing.Rock Master wrote:
And roughly $1.5 trillion of the new debt from 2008 and 2009 can be accounted for by 2 programs - TARP and the Stimulus (that didn't work). Obama voted for TARP when he was a Senator and pushed hard for the Stimulus after he was President. You Democrats need to quit pretending your party had nothing to do with this, they're just as much to blame as the Republicans.
Check your facts. TARP has cost less than 1% of GDP and quickly approaching zero as AIG announced today plans to repay $37 billion. GM is expected to repay everything once they go public again. The government will likely make money from TARP when all is said and done. Also, the stimulus was 1/3 tax cuts which Tea Partiers and Republicans love so much and 1/3 to keep state governments solvent. There is a pretty broad consensus among economists that the stimulus did exactly what it was supposed to do (stabilize the economy and restore growth) which is also backed up by economic indicators. It was not meant to cause an artificial boom, just to create the conditions that would allow the private sector to rebound.