@maporsche,
maporsche wrote:
I don't think he would have borrowed nearly as much money as Obama is doing.
I know you can rebut with "Bush did X, Y, Z". I don't think McCain would have spent nearly as much as Bush did or Obama is doing.
I also think that McCain would have spent less money on the stimulus, which I think would have been beneficial to the economy in 2010 and 2011 (probably not as much as 2009).
I notice that you don't argue that Obama campaigned on a different message or that he's putting our generation in a mess that we will likely never recover from. Only that you don't think McCain would have done any better, which is a valid opinion. But that doesn't excuse Obama.
I mean, why do you think that? McCain never met a spending bill he didn't like. He voted for ALL of them under Bush. In his campaign, he campaigned on getting rid of earmarks - which amounts to about 16 billion dollars of the budget, big whoop. I think he would have done exactly what all modern Republicans do - spend a ton of time in his campaign talking about saving money, and then spend it profligately when he gets in office.
I think Obama, for 80% of his campaign, faced a certain economic situation; and then the market crashed hard in September 2008, and what is the guy supposed to do? Continue to focus on debt reduction during a recession? That makes no economic sense whatsoever and you'd be hard pressed to find an economist who doesn't think the Stim bill helped.
Other then the Stim bill, Obama's spending record ain't too shabby.
Cycloptichorn
