It's Only Congress Unless It's Reagan Cutting Spending

What strikes me about the pro-Reagan video produced by the Center for Freedom and Prosperity-- I mentioned below--  that is being brandished all across the Internet (heck I had my facebook news stream full of links to the video by Republican friends) is that Republicans routinely like to claim Congress sets the budget and not the president.  That is unless they are trying to zero in on domestic spending and how Reagan slashed it a total of one GDP percentage point, then other than that it's totally Congress that controls the budget.

They are always quick to mention that Clinton's surpluses didn't come until a Republican Congress came to power.  If that's the case, and presidential policy has no bearing on spending, then Reagan's huge 1% cut in domestic spending is because of a Democratic Congress.  Yeah, I bet their Fantasy World would agree to that.

*Update:

Also, it's important to point out that when Republicans try to lump Bush and Obama together on budget matters, and that's absolutely what the video does, is that Obama inherited the $1.4 trillion deficit.  He didn't create it.  Unlike George Bush who inherited a budget surplus and turned it into the largest deficit in human history, Obama did no such thing.  That's a point Republicans purposely want to blur when talking about why the president's budgets are so full of red ink.

So what would you do?

You come into office with a $1.4 trillion deficit given to you by a Republican president, two ongoing endless wars completely left to you by a Republican president, the economy in almost total collapse with millions of jobs being lost, again, handed to you by the same Republican president, and two years later you have kept the deficit near the same level the Republicans gave to you.  You have finally began the slow process of ending one war that never should have happened in the first place while trying to create stability by managing chaos in the second war your predecessor totally neglected.  You have finally leveled off the economic free fall and returned GDP back to positive territory while creating way more private sector jobs than public sector and have for the first time in almost three years a dropping unemployment rate.  And the people who gave you the mess are demanding that you are not doing enough and should follow their policies or be labeled fiscally irresponsible by them of course.  Now what would you do??

I know one thing.  I sure wouldn't be as nice to Republicans as President Obama is.

**Update:

It's possible I'll be posting about this very inaccurate and misleading video for quite some time.  Another point I want to make is the Republican propaganda video explicitly mentions that the key to a sound budget is one that creates a strong economy by creating private sector jobs.

I absolutely agree with that thesis.  For there to be a true recovery the private sector has to grow much more than the public sector.  Essentially what this means is private companies hiring versus government doing the hiring.  Like I said, I totally agree.

So yesterday the Republican Speaker of the House, John Boehner, completely invented some fake number that the Obama administration had created 200,000 public sector jobs and if those new government employees lost their jobs "then so be it."  Let's look past how callus it is for a government employee to say he doesn't care if government employees lose their jobs.  Boehner must have over heard the 200,000 figure in a local tanning salon or something because it's not true.  Quite the opposite is true to be exact.  More private sector jobs have been created since Obama took office than public.

The chart is from Jan. 10-Jan 11.  The Obama administration has a net loss in public sector jobs.  Like I highlighted earlier.  It's good news when the Republican video says the key to a sound budget is making domestic cuts because Obama's blueprint makes more cuts to domestic spending than any president in American history.  It's even better news that the video says the key to economic growth is private sector job growth because the president is doing just that as well.

Anyone that can stand by this video and promote it as a subtle reminder of how fiscal responsibility is achieved either has no clue about anything on planet earth, or has their Fox News teevee sets turned up so loud that there's just nothing else getting through.