Careful who you compare yourself to

It never ceases to amaze me how President Obama likes to compare himself to presidents of the past. The comparison that makes me laugh the most is when he compared himself to President Reagan during a speech while trying to sell his tax-the-rich idea. He basically states that like himself, Reagan believed everyone should do their fair share. If he really wanted to compare himself to Reagan, he would follow the logic Reagan used and cut taxes.

I would like to make a comparison between the two presidents. When Reagan took office, the national debt was 930 billion and after three years, the debt was up to 1.41 trillion. Reagan increased the debt 480 billion and if you divide that into the 1980 census you come up with the tax burden of $2,123 placed on every American. Plug that into an inflation calculator and the number becomes $4,794 in today’s money.

When Obama took office, the national debt was 10.699 trillion and after three years, the debt was up to 15.125 trillion. Obama increased the debt 4.426 trillion and if you divide that into the 2010 census you come up with a tax burden of $14,464 placed on every American. Reagan took over a country that was in as bad, if not worse, shape than Obama did. Obama did not have out of control inflation; it was .03% when he took office as compared to 11.8% when Reagan took office. By 12/83, Reagan brought inflation down to 3.79% and in comparison, 12/11 saw inflation at 2.96%. The prime interest rate was 3.25% before Obama took office and has remained the same since. When Reagan took office, the prime interest rate was 21% and after three years it was down 10 points to 11%.

Reagan was handed a military that had seen much better days and needed a lot of work. To return our military to the standard it needed to be, Reagan had to greatly increase defense spending which was the main reason for his increased deficit. We may not have been fighting an active war but the cold war was definitely alive and well. Obama was given a much more capable military but is currently in the process of cutting the defense budget, reducing the size and effectiveness of our nation’s military, and yet the deficit is still projected to keep rising.

I’m not going to get into the unemployment figures; I will save that for another post. And, for the record, none of the information in this post came from Fox News, most came from government web sites.