There are two branches in Congress. Republican filibusters in the Senate meant that measures passed by the House died with a Senate filibuster. Democrats only had 60 Senate votes between the time Sen. Spector switched parties and Sen. Brown was elected, minus the time Sen. Kennedy was too ill to vote -- in other words about 6-7 months. Republicans can indeed be held accountable for those filibusters. As far as the baseline argument goes, they are simply wrong. The numbers below were gleaned from Table 5.1 in the following link. 2001 is Clinton's last budget, 2009 is Bush's last budget with 2008 and 2009 shown to help reflect the special items. And here we are not talking about a budget but "budget authority", which is appropriations.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/Historicals
2001 2008 2009 2010 % Increase 2001-2010
1.959T 3.326T 4.077T 3.485T 78% Total Budget Authority
2001 2010
217.1B 452.6B 108% Medicare
334.7B 721.3B Defense Department
20.2B 60.6B State Department
47.5B 124.4B Veterans Affairs
______ ______
402.4B 906.3B 125% (Defense related)
(I hope the formatting doesn't get skewed when I hit "post"
.
As you can see, if 2009 was the baseline then 2010 and subsequent years would somewhat mirror 2009 when they actually mirror 2008.
Also, where do you suppose you could find the most cuts -- where current spending is 254.6B or 906.3B -- or for that matter, where cost have gone up 108% or 125%. I will bet that few people realize that defense related spending has been going up even faster than Medicare -- and keep in mind that Medicare contains the prescription drug benefit for seniors in that 108% increase. Check out some of the other Tables as well.
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