As the debate on the debt ceiling continues, there are a few things to keep in mind.  I personally have considered playing BINGO during Democrat press conferences using the words shared sacrifice, tax cuts for millionaires, two unfunded wars, taking benefits from seniors in order to give tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans, etc.  These seem to be the talking points of the moment.  Notice that none of these talking points deal with spending.

Anyway, there are some people on the internet who have done the research and come up with some interesting numbers.

Newsbusters.org posted an article on Friday about the claim made in the New York Times that the debt ceiling problem was caused by the Bush tax cuts and the Republican refusal to raise revenues (that’s Democrat-speak for increase taxes).  The article points out that there has been a 41 percent increase in spending since the Democrats took over Congress in January 2007.  The article further points out that the last Republican-created budget signed by President Bush in 2007 was for $2.73 trillion.  Expected tax receipts were $2.57 trillion.  Those numbers seem like science fiction compared to today’s spending.

The article points out some of the creative math used in the New York Times article:

“In the Gray Lady’s strange world, eliminating the Bush tax cuts – which might raise $379 billion a year – completely wipes out a $1.5 trillion deficit.”

Wow,  Can I do that with my checkbook? 

On July 1, 2011, the Washington Post‘s Fact Checker Blog posted some of its findings about how the current Democrat talking points compare to facts regarding the deficit.  Glenn Kessler, who writes the blog reported:

“Clinton, in essence, was lucky to become president just as a revolution in computer and information technologies was unleashed.

“From 1992 to 1997, CBO estimated, revenue increased at an annual average of 7.7 percent in nominal terms, or about 2.4 percentage points faster than the growth of the gross domestic product, the broadest measure of the economy. CBO Deputy Director James L. Blum in 1998 attributed only 1 percentage point of that extra tax revenue to the 1993 budget deal. The rest, he said, came from capital gains.

“Between 1994 and 1999, realized capital gains nearly quadrupled, the CBO concluded , with taxes on those gains accounting for about 30 percent of the increased growth of individual income tax liabilities relative to the growth of GDP. (Linden says: “I can’t really answer the question about how much Clinton had to do with the economy. He presided over it.”)”

Don;t look for any of these inconvenient facts in the Democrat talking points.