{"id":10547,"date":"2011-08-07T17:57:06","date_gmt":"2011-08-07T21:57:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=10547"},"modified":"2012-12-09T12:27:32","modified_gmt":"2012-12-09T17:27:32","slug":"mitchell-obama-bears-only-15-of-the-blame-for-the-downgrade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2011\/08\/07\/mitchell-obama-bears-only-15-of-the-blame-for-the-downgrade\/","title":{"rendered":"Mitchell: Obama bears only 15% of the blame for the downgrade"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In a blog post guaranteed to tick off members of both parties, <a href=\"https:\/\/danieljmitchell.wordpress.com\/2011\/08\/07\/to-be-fair-obamas-responsibility-for-the-downgrade-is-only-15-percent\/?utm_source=twitterfeed&#038;utm_medium=twitter\" target=\"_blank\">Daniel Mitchell<\/a> tries a first approximation of where the blame should be assigned:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:left; padding: 0px 10px 0px 0px\" src=\"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/presidential-responsibility-for-downgrade.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"Presidential responsibility for downgrade\" width=\"293\" height=\"258\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-10548\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/presidential-responsibility-for-downgrade.jpg 293w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/presidential-responsibility-for-downgrade-150x132.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 293px) 100vw, 293px\" \/>Well, it turns out that Social Security is a relatively minor part of the problem, so even though President Roosevelt\u2019s policies exacerbated and extended the Great Depression, the program he created is only responsible for a small share of the fiscal crisis. To give the illusion of scientific exactitude, let\u2019s assign FDR 13.2 percent of the blame.<\/p>\n<p>The health care numbers are much harder to disentangle because it\u2019s not apparent how much of the increase is due to Medicare, Medicaid, Bush\u2019s prescription drug entitlement, and Obamacare. A healthcare policy wonk may know these numbers, but the CBO long-run forecast didn\u2019t provide much detail.<\/p>\n<p>So with a big caveat that these are just wild estimations, I feel reasonably comfortable in saying that both Bush and Obama made matters worse with their reckless entitlement expansions, but that they merely deepened a fiscal hole that was created when President Johnson imposed Medicare and Medicaid.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a blog post guaranteed to tick off members of both parties, Daniel Mitchell tries a first approximation of where the blame should be assigned: Well, it turns out that Social Security is a relatively minor part of the problem, so even though President Roosevelt\u2019s policies exacerbated and extended the Great Depression, the program he [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,84,7,13],"tags":[158,71,866,668,106,595,545,379],"class_list":["post-10547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-government","category-history","category-usa","tag-barackobama","tag-debt","tag-fdr","tag-georgewbush","tag-greatdepression","tag-lbj","tag-socialsecurity","tag-stimulus"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-2K7","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10547"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18125,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10547\/revisions\/18125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}