All You Need To Know...

...about the stimulus, you could probably learn from this chart, right here:


Based on my reading of that chart, I get:

Reagan - more-or-less budget neutral: 0% change
H.W. Bush - same as Reagan: 0%/-0.5% change
Clinton - slightly budget positive: +4% change
W. Bush - slightly budget negative: -4% change
Obama without stimulus - slightly budget negative: -5% change
Obama with stimulus: significantly budget negative: -10% change

Either with or without the stimulus, President Obama has already negatively affected the budget deficit, as it relates to GDP (what Democrats bragged about during the Clinton years), to a greater degree than any of the last 5 Presidents.

To be fair, of course, President Obama hasn't had a full term yet, and both Reagan and H.W. Bush started out increasing these deficits but finished by decreasing them. However, in their worst years, Reagan and Bush, Sr. increased the budget deficit by 2% and 1%, respectively; Barack is not only working on between 5% and 10%, but is well on his way to creating the biggest one-year increase in the budget deficit over the last 30 years.

These new heights of deficit spending come, naturally, at the same time that the long term deficit is also reaching new heights (depths, really...), and the future costs of programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are beginning to increase exponentially.

Now, I'm no economist, but I am a young, budding taxpayer - and I'm pretty sure all this means that I'm about to get screwed.