Well, starting off by saying Carter's to blame makes a change from saying it's all Clinton's fault. But, if that's the case, why didn't Reagan and George H.W. Bush fix the problem? And, if Clinton made it worse, why didn't Dubya fix the problem? Especially when he had Congress on his side for the first six of his eight years? I'm not arguing with you, I just don't understand. If the problem became so huge under Clinton that it couldn't be fixed with appropriate legislation in eight years, how many more years would it take any administration, Republican or Democrat, to fix it?

And, if people were aware of the problem way back when, why did it take so many by surprise? After all, up until a few days ago, everyone was maintaining that the economy was strong. I don't understand.

Good question Fat. I can't exactly answer it either, other than to provide some input. I'm sure there are others here more knowledgable than me who can explain better.

My input is, that the President can't fix a problem like this. No President can. A President can try and push an agenda with Congress, but he/she can't literally make it happen. If you look at this link you will see that President Bush did bring this issue before Congress, many, many times. He can rail against them to do something about it, but as I stated before, he can't literally fix it himself. Congress created this policy, and only Congress can fix it. Scary, huh?

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...

To further answer your question, why didn't the Congress fix this problem when the Republicans had the power? I don't know. With the Republicans in power and Bush at the helm, they had every opportunity to fix it. Why they didn't, I don't know. Even though the Republicans had a majority in Congress, it was a very slim majority. Maybe the just didn't have enough votes overall to fix that problem.

As far as the time period when Clinton was involved, as far as the Democrats are concerned, there was no problem. They are the source of this. As recently as a year ago they were staunchly defending their position on this policy which is, there is no problem, this is a wonderful policy. Under Clinton and the Democratic Congress of the time, they expanded this program exponentially.

And as you've probably noticed with the Debate between Obama and McCain, Obama points the finger at Bush and "his failed economic polices" for this fiasco, other than looking in the mirror. Pelosi herself railed against Bush and "his failed economic policies" when she had enough votes in her pocket to get the bailout bill passed. Bad timing to come up with partisan politics. As you saw with the failure of the vote, she should have just kept her mouth shut.

Bush has made plenty of mistakes as President. But people need to understand that not everything wrong in the world is Bush's fault. The cold hard truth is, is that this current crisis was created and perpetrated by the Democrats. Yes, the Republican could have and should have done something about it. But this crisis is not the Republicans doing. For people to blindly listen to Democrats rail against the boogie man Bush, and how all this is his fault shows how simple minded many peolpe are.

As far as the economy goes, my two cents is that all the basics for a strong economy are still in place. But I don't believe that our economy is near as strong as the government states. We have a huge debt which is caused by the huge deficits we run year after year. The number one thing our government needs to do is cut spending; and I'm talking big time. This country makes tons of money. We just need to learn to live within our means. If we could just cut our spending to 90% of what the country truly needs to operate, and then spend the other 10% toward the debt every single year, year after year; in time we would be completely out of debt and you would literally see the strongest economy in the world.

- 67GTO