The Blame Game

A day hardly passes that we don't hear from the Obama administration cries about the mess which they inherited from the Bush administration. My, but memories become short and selective when it is convenient.

In the election of 2006 both houses of congress came under the control of the democrats. If my memory is correct all legislation is passed by the congress. All spending is authorized by the congress. I think it is then reasonable to ask who really was in control of the economy the last two years of the Bush administration?
I think President Bush only vetoed one bill during that time - the CHIPS program expansion.

When the democrats took control of congress in 2007, the Dow was about 12,500. GDP had grown about 4.8%. The national debt was less than nine trillion and unemployment was at 4.6%. Inflation was in check with the CPI around 2.5%. This hardly sounds like a mess to me.

All of the spending bonanza passed in 2008 was authorized by a democratic congress. TARP was passed by a democratic congress. I am not trying to say that the republicans were not complicit in what went on. President Bush should have used the veto pen more often or, at least, the bully pulpit of his office more effectively to reign in spending. His political myopia on the war and national defense is good in that we won in Iraq - despite what the media says - and at home we were free from further attack. It was bad in that more attention on what was happening at home was lacking by the country's chief executive.

In any crisis there is going to be plenty of blame to go around. To plead innocence for the so called mess that developed when you controlled both houses of congress is hypocrisy taken to a new level.