Too funny
Teresa Tritch is not an economist
She has a B.A. in German from the UCLA and an M.S. in Journalism from Columbia University.
Just a left wing political hack
The entire thing is a big ideologically driven blame President Bush job
The article is Ms. Tritch's opinion and not fact.
Why?
It is in NY Times OpEd section and too many people take writings in OpEd pages and their chart's, as true.
Ms. Tritch never once cites the data sources for her graphs. Not the CBO. Not the Treasury Department etc
No sources of data for the numbers on the two charts.
Her ideological bent that she has...? See her paragraph :
In future decades, when rising health costs with an aging population hit the budget in full force, deficits are projected to be far deeper than they are now. Effective health care reform, and a willingness to pay more taxes, will be the biggest factors in controlling those deficits.
A "willingness to pay more taxes"?
We can see why she is not an economist
Tritch shows the Iraq & Afghanistan wars as contributing $1.469T to the deficit.
According to the CBO, the total cost of the wars (even into 2010 during Papa Obama's time) is $709B. A 107% error is acceptable, no doubt, to a NYT left wing writer
and their readers since they have an agenda to push
Of course, according to CBO, over the same period fo time (2003-2010), the United States spent $2.932T on Medicare alone
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There is a reason posters like you have zero rep points
keep up the "good" work