well, I for one would appreciate a breakdown of those figures. One would think that much of what is on the Obama side are carry overs from the previous administration. To assume that Obama has created all of that spending, just because it occured during his watch, is just as ridiculous.

Not ridiculous at all, when you consider a trillion for the useless stimulus, even more for Obamacare, bailouts, etc.

and:

With President Obama and Republican leaders calling for cutting the budget by trillions over the next 10 years, it is worth asking how we got here — from healthy surpluses at the end of the Clinton era, and the promise of future surpluses, to nine straight years of deficits, including the $1.3 trillion shortfall in 2010. The answer is largely the Bush-era tax cuts, war spending in Iraq and Afghanistan, and recessions.

And:

I think the stimulus and bailouts probably saved a lot of butts. Maybe not all of the right butts but...  I would like to have seen more controls/safeguards put in place against the banks, lending institutions, financial services, investment banking, etc. to be more transparent and responsible, again a big but... 

ObamaCare, I don't really know at this point however if I had a child that need medical care that either I couldn't afford or had been rejected as a pre-existing condition, I'd be pretty relieved.

Spencer, I make an assumption that religion plays a part in your life and ask you to consider, "what would Jesus do?"

The media is a willing stooge, but even they forget about the alternate media.  Check out the graphs here: http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2011/07/14/well-theres-your-problem-fed-spending-299-home-income-27/

They clearly show that while taxes have remained fairly constant (trend line flat at 18%), spending has skyrocketed.  No, it is purely a democrat spending problem (it was not helped by republicans failure to exercise some fiscal responsibility).

No he did not.  He inherited a $400 billion dollar deficit.  He created the $1.2 trillion by adding the Porkulus (that is now part of the baseline) to it.

not lie about who created it or who is responsible for it.

I was waiting for someone to bring up that NYT nonsense.  It's already been shown to be false, and their first notion that tax cuts caused the deficit is purely BS.  Common from the DNC/NYT (same thing really) who try to use class warfare.

http://www.heritage.org/research/commentary/2011/05/the-tax-cuts-did-not-cause-the-deficit

The 2001/2003 tax cuts are blamed for past, present, and future budget deficits. The numbers tell a different story.

When the tax cuts were enacted in 2001, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) forecast a $5.6 trillion surplus between 2002 and 2011. Instead, Washington is set to run a cumulative $6.1 trillion deficit over that period. So what caused this dizzying $11.7 trillion swing? CBO data reveal that the much-maligned tax cuts, at $1.7 trillion, caused just 14 percent of the swing from projected surpluses to actual deficits (and even that excludes any positive economic impact of the tax cuts).

The bulk of the swing resulted from two recessions, two stock market crashes, and other economic/technical factors (33 percent), other new spending (32 percent), net interest on the debt (12 percent), the 2009 stimulus (6 percent) and other tax cuts (3 percent).

I was talking about Obamacare, you know compassion oh, and I guess he did kick the money lenders out of the temple but...

heritage.org? this is just an arm of the republican party, not a very unbiased source. while the writers that I referenced may have their own agenda it was taken out of time magazine and not moveon.org (wikipedia, The Heritage Foundation is a conservative American think tank). With all of the divergent opinions out on the web it isn't difficult to find opposing views or methods to spin the same data to serve a purpose.

c'mon you guys aren't even being realistic. the big amount of spending in the first year had much to do about saving the economy. You think the economy tanked just because Obama got elected? well, in a sense it might have because of all the institutions that got caught with their hands in the cookie jar.

We (you and I) all got screwed, I'm at a loss how anyone can support/defend those institutions that screwed us or those politicians that are in their pockets.

raise the debt ceiling, let the tax cuts expire, cut the pork and don't mess with my social security benefits.

As the NYT is an arm of the democrat party.  But again, do not take our word for it. do the research yourself or go to my link where the numbers were crunched and put into a nice neat chart.  They even source where the numbers came from in case you want to check the math yourself.

As for WWJS on Obamacare?  I believe he said "give unto Caesar what is Caesars, and unto God what is God's".  he did not say "Take from Caesar to pay God".

I think that this really deals with separation of church and state and why churches that get involved in politics need to pay taxes, but that's just my take on it.

I'm not disputing the numbers only why Obama spent the amount recorded. it wasn't that he woke up one morning and thought to himself, "wow, wouldn't it be great to spend trillions of dollars just because I can". He spent the money because he felt he needed to to keep the economy from going into a depression. He didn't bring on the recession, he inherited it.

Oi!  I thought you asked WWJS?  As for getting involved, what is your definition of that?

Here's where we differ.  I do not believe he thought that.  Rahm Emmanuel as much said it "Never let a good crises go to waste".  Seeing the crises, they woke up and said "time to pay back friends and penalize enemies".  And did.  That is what the Porkulus did.  He said it was to stimulate because the truth would have been political suicide.  But Rahm pretty much spilled the beans on that one (although Obama has plausible deniability since he did not say it).

you're funny.

with regards to what?

Would that "first" year be Obama's first year as president or the Democrats (Obama included) first year as the majority (2007)? Sounds like part of what Obama "inherited" was due in part of his and his colleagues own making. Not everything ran as smooth as the 2010 budget... oh wait there was no 2010 budget, just spending.

You mention the wars. Seems they were so bad, Obama decided we needed another one to pay for in Libya too. Bush at least asked and received bipartisan support, whether one likes it or not.

If I remember correctly we were attacked, emotions ran high at the time. there was no increase in revenue to pay for these wars and he lied about Iraq. Iraq had no WMD but Iran on the other hand...

It seems to me that you all are putting all of the blame on Obama and that just isn't the case. He did inherit a tanked economy and two wars. They did what they thought was necessary with the hopes that we wouldn't end up in a depression. The Bush tax cuts played a big part in this as well. how do you fund two wars without the necessary funding to do so. As with all executive decisions only time will tell.

in order to balance the budget we need to apply a balanced approach: raise the debt ceiling, let the Bush tax cuts expire and (good luck with this one) cut the pork.

I believe (conspiracy thoughts coming) that there is a effort by some to keep the people at odds with each other in order to push agendas that are not in our best interests. "our" being you and I. People seem to forget that we do have a ruling class in America, I'm not a part of it and I'm pretty sure that you aren't either.

What would you consider a church doing to be construed as getting involved in politics?