NOT FUNNY

I was just getting ready for bed to nurse a bug when this caught my attention (a H/T to Echidne for posting this earlier):



The interviewer, Barbara West, must be a Freeper for the McCain campaign, and her questions are so obviously hostile they border on parody.  Here are some background statistics before I continue this rant:

Federal deficit (Carter years):   $54.5 billion annual average
Federal deficit (Reagan years):   $210.6 billion annual average

Federal budget (Carter administration):  $590.9 billion (1980)
Federal budget (Reagan administration):  $1.14 trillion (1988-89)

National debt as a percentage of GNP (Carter years):  31.5%
National debt as a percentage of GNP (Reagan years):   70%

Furthermore, it should be noted that the federal bureaucracy grew by 5% during the Reagan administration despite campaign promises and years of rhetoric about shrinking the size of government. But wait, there’s more:

Personal savings rate (Post WW-II to 1979):  8 to 10% of disposable income

Personal savings rate (1985):  Zero.

(Since Bush #43, household debt now exceeds household income.)

My point:  The current economic meltdown has roots going back to the Reagan administration, and the Republican mantra for almost 30 years has been “smaller government” and “fiscal responsibility” that, hypocritically, was never put into practice until ... you guessed it … Bill Clinton, a Democrat, who was the first president to actually balance the federal books. 

Now the Republicans are trying to demonize Obama as a socialist.  It is an outrageous lie when one considers that 20 years of Republican mismanagement set the stage for the current meltdown.  Wish the kids a Happy Halloween for me.