How come every obstacle Obama faces is Bush's Fault yet?

Well, in fairness, nearly every problem currently present was present while Bush was President and Obama inherited it.

On the other hand, nearly every good thing that occurred while Clinton was President was not present when Bush Sr. was President. Clinton inherited a recession, so did Obama. Neither Bush inherited one.

However, I do believe you are at least partially right about Bush Sr. I actually believe that he did a major action that helped Clinton greatly in re-establishing the economy. I believe that if Bush Sr. had not done this action, we would have had a recession similar to the one we have now, instead of the relatively light one we had at the end of his term.

However, most Republicans don't agree with me when I point out what I think that action is. I think the action that Bush Sr. did that helped so much was to raise taxes. It cost him his second term, since he could not get enough Republicans to back him for doing that; but it was a central part of the recovery.

The problem that Bush Sr. had is the same one that Bush Jr. had. They spent too much fighting in Iraq. They didn't have taxes high enough to pay for their respective wars, and that forced them to have to borrow money from other countries, at very high and exponentially growing interest rates. That massacred the National Debt.

The difference is that Bush Sr. realized it, and raised taxes to pay for his war after the fact. His war was also quite a bit shorter, so he didn't have to pay back as much. His war was also significantly less destructive, so we didn't have to pay for reconstruction.

By raising taxes, Bush Sr. was able to begin paying back what he borrowed, and Clinton finished paying it back during his term. That kept the value of the dollar way up, and so the economy recovered and went on to pretty awesome growth.

Bush Jr. did not raise taxes, so he could not pay his costs back. That sent the National Debt through the roof. When Bush Jr. got to office, he inherited a National Debt of $4 trillion. When he left office, he left us with a nearly $11 trillion National Debt. That means that Bush managed to spend nearly $3 trillion MORE THAN DOUBLE what ALL 42 of his predecessors needed 224 years to amass. Such a huge rise in the National Debt destroyed the value of the dollar, which dropped to its 16 year low.

Bush Sr. does deserve some of the credit for the good of the Clinton years; just not for the reason Republicans like to admit to. Bush Jr. deserves all of the "credit" for our current situation.

Obama supporters will only offer him credit when/if things are going well. Otherwise, everything will be because it was an inherited mess. It's funny to me that so many posted here that there hasn't been enough time when the stock market was still plummeting, but that Obama is responsible for its recent gains. Those people have no idea how Wall Street, or the economy for that matter, operate and are pretty much speaking out of ignorance. I think a few are beginning to wake up, but it's still early in his administration yet. If the economy still sucks and there isn't universal health care or more social programs within a year or two I believe the tides will begin to turn.

Hmm.....well, the simple truth is this: When Clinton took office, it was from Bush Sr, who's administration was still suffering from the trauma of trickle down economics that were popular during Reagan's Administration. Bush Sr, was clearly and surely a great President who simply didn't have the time to recover from some of Reagan's policies (not all were bad.)

Clinton and his republican congress really had to start at the bottom and they had the benefit of the .com explosion which the previous administration didn't enjoy, nor did the one that followed Clinton.

For his part, Bush's Presidency would have probably been quite uneventful but for 9/11 and the chain of events that followed. Surely, you must understand that the previous 8 years were wrought with problems that are still lasting and still must be dealt with. Unfortunately, the previous president did not have the time to wrap up his own problems, i.e. Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, N. Korea, Iran, economic troubles, etc. These problems, some of which only popped up in the last days of the Bush Administration are the property of the Bush Administration and must be solved by the current administration.

Obama has only been in office for 5 months yet I read here on Y/A Republicans accusing Obama of the economic situation that he only had one vote on as a senator . If not Bush then who ? It was certainly under The watch of the Bush administration that the economic situation started to decline .

Bush was in his ninth month of his Presidency, yet Republicans blame Clinton for 911. The economy was inherited by Obama. The pirate crises and the swine flu were handled very well by a proactive President. 911, Katrina, and the resession were major crises because of a reactive President.

When police investigators come across a house that has been destroyed by arson and the go about the task of caring for the disenfranchised, finding culpability for the blaze, and finding solutions to prevent future arson- does the burned house now become the fault of the investigators? Or is it still the fault of the arsonists?

Unless he’s being removed from office for illegal or immoral acts, you will seldom see a politician acknowledge his own shortcomings and apologize for them. It’s much easier to simply blame someone else.

Our economy is something like a large ship with tremendous momentum. It cannot be stopped on a dime or be turned on a dime. Today’s problems have their origins in the past.

It irks me to hear Obama constantly use the word “inherited,” but, in truth, he has no problems that he didn’t inherit from the Bush Administration. But it’s also true that the Bush Administration inherited some of those problems from the Clinton Administration. The sub-prime mortgage crisis is one of them. Janet Reno, Clinton’s attorney general, assigned CRA-based quotas to banks and other mortgage lenders to make sure those lenders were responsive to the needs of their communities. Politicians like Barney Frank, a long-time member and now chairman of the House Banking Committee, then pushed lenders to make “sweetheart” loans to lower income borrowers. These loans were Option Arms that required no down payments and many had negative amortization provisions. They offered low introductory teaser rates that could spike up dramatically after two or three years.

The sub-prime mortgage business seemed to work well enough when home prices were fairly stable and the market for homes was strong. But then we got into a housing bubble and prices skyrocketed. A lot of lower-income homeowners began to feel rich as their homes’ equity shot up. But then the bubble burst (as all bubbles inevitably do) and many of these borrowers quickly found themselves under water on their houses as the “values” of their homes dropped and their payments increased.

Where were our vaunted regulators and overseers? Only a fool offers a zero-down mortgage loan during a housing bubble. But we did it. Both George Bush and John McCain called for increase oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but their calls were blocked by Barney Frank and others who didn’t want it to be more difficult for their lower-income constituents to obtain home loans.

If someone, anyone, had screamed “Stop!” in, say, 2003 and zero-down, negative amortization loans were withdrawn from the market and replaced with tradition, fixed rate loans with a 10 to 20 percent down payment requirement, we wouldn’t be in the trouble we’re in today.

There’s no doubt that Republicans were complicit in this fiasco, but lower-income voters are all but a captive audience for Democrats. So they can talk all they want to about the mortgage crisis arriving towards the end of the Bush years, but its roots go back for many years and they don’t want to talk about that.

Social Security is a good example of a problem with very long roots. It was established in 1935 under Franklin D. Roosevelt. It was a mandatory retirement program. Within two years, the Supreme Court ruled that congress did not have the authority to create a mandatory retirement program. So the rules were changed and SS became a de facto tax and welfare plan. Congress can raise your taxes or lower your benefits any time. But it wasn’t until just a few years ago that any politician spoke openly about the possibility that future SS benefits might need to be reduced and/or the retirement age increased. They also didn’t mention that THERE IS NO SS TRUST FUND.

It would be easy enough to look back and blame FDR for the debacle that is Social Security and recognize that it is nothing but a tax and welfare scheme. But blaming FDR or anyone else is not going to solve the problem. As in the case of our current crisis, we need to get people together to fix the problem rather than trying to affix the blame. There will be plenty of time to assign blame later.

Every challenge Obama faces is Bush's fault. Fact is, Obama wouldn't be in office now if not for the mismanagement of the Republicans.

It may seem that way to you, but the truth is the truth, and the Democrats were not left with a very robust America by the Con leadership for 12 years and their obstructionism for the last 2.....thoughts?

Some one said that the Democrats don't look back 20 or 30 years in the past and they are right. That is why they keep making the same mistakes over and over again