Democratic RI Senator: We Need to Keep Spending Because of There Was a "Republican Debt Orgy" Under Bush or Something

There are a few points that Whitehouse made that deserves comment. The most obvious is claim that is hypocritical for Republicans to complain about deficit spending because of their “spending orgy” during the Bush years. Apparently, the fact that the Democrats controlled Congress for the past 4 years and Obama has increased the “spending orgy” by leaps and bounds over whatever Bush spent over the past year and a half is completely lost on the Democratic Senator from Rhode Island:

At $13 trillion, that figure has risen by $2.4 trillion in about 500 days since President Obama took office, or an average of $4.9 billion a day. That's almost three times the daily average of $1.7 billion under the previous administration, and led Republicans on Wednesday to place blame squarely at the feet of Mr. Obama and his fellow Democrats.

Spending three times as much as the previous administration did isn’t called cleaning up the mess. It is grabbing a shovel and digging us into a deeper ditch.

Of course, he used the same straw boogeymen of Bush and that every liberal uses to demonize the right. Bush hadn’t been around for the past 18 months and is a cheap hit. Second, Wall Street had little to do with the reason why the recession happened. The housing bubble bursting because of the Democrats’ deregulation of Fannie and Freddie is. That’s all I have to say about that. Really, that argument is old. 

Another hole in his argument that is completely eluding the Senator is when he argues that a $25 increase of benefits isn’t that big of a deal, and it isn’t that much money. He’s missing the forest for the trees here. Granted, an extra $25 for one family isn’t that much money. However, when you multiply that by how many people that would receive that extra $25, it is an exorbitant amount. For example, let’s just take his state of Rhode Island. By his own admission he has about 71.000 people unemployed in his state. If all 71,000 people received an extra $25, that would lead to an increase in spending of $1.775 million. Sorry senator that is not chump change. Now, let’s look at that extra money from the perspective of the recipient. Twenty-five dollar increase really won’t really mean much to them. Unless there’s a hole in the bottom of their shoes, a new pair of shoes is not necessary. Plus, $25 won’t buy them but a few extra groceries. It definitely won’t be the difference between starving to death and a adequate diet.

PS.

Should he really be emphasizing the 12% unemployment rate in his state, a state that is completely controlled by Democrats for decades? That is close to 3% higher than the national average. Does that the fact that their rate might be higher than the national average because of the policies of his own party more than the policies of the party that he is leveling his tirade against? Hmm!