Neither answered that question, and I found that annoying, and both missed an opportunity to be straightforward. I mentioned that in the debate thread too. Obama should just come out & say his healthcare plan is on the backburner & in planning mode for the first two years, at least.

Anyway, I have a feeling this country is going to go into a BADDD recession for the next 12-18 months. 2009 is going to be a terrible year eeconomically & I bet alot of layoffs will occur between now & the end of the calendar year as companies forecast & prepare.

Don't bother. It's well known Obama has been on the campaign trail for a year now, probably has missed alot of votes in that time period. However, here is how the voting went down on those bills, was his vote really needed, or did he know these would pass:

Yes   No
60 -33
79 -12
70 -22
79 -14
81 -16
91  -3
93 -10
92 -3

Randall give it up. Check your partisan bias at the door in this thread of all threads. Like John McCain "economy" is not your strong suit. At least James remains mostly impartial and blames Repubs & Dems, Clinton and Bush, you're one way blame game is getting tired.

The whole system is fucked. Republicans fared no better than Dems in this. Are you aware John McCains senior economic advisor is Phil Gramm, author of the Gramm Leach Biley Act, which DEREGULATED the banking industry in 2001?? And it goes without saying that McCain voted 'Yes' on the bill. And if is so blatantly obvious the dems ruined the economy why didn't the Republicans make the neccisary changes from 2001-2007 while they had a Reupblican President AND a majority in the Senate?!  Sure Obama & Dems fucked us also on many bills, but it's not the time to say "It's the lefts fault" that's fucking weak, and this Iraq War sank us $500 BILLION into the toilet. John McCain voted for it, Barack Obama didn't (I'm not making a case about this, just using Randalls biased logic to prove a point). To quote you, "It's only going to get worse" John McCains going to continue to start wars, with no responsibility or forsight, just more wars, more money spent. You talk about Dems being fiscally irresponsible?? The US balanced the budget under Clinton.

http://www.newslinker.net/news.php?viewStory=919

So you can keep on beleiving your 3 second sound bites, about "fically responsible" and "family values" that you love to hear, and Obama's gonna "raise taxes" & all... and while that's been going on, you can ignore the sight of our nations economy going into turmoil & any of us needed loans for college or a mortgage, or with money invested in the stock market. and are paying 3x's what we paid for gas than in 2000, and costs of eggs, milk & bread (my chicken wings at a local bar on Monday nights just went up from $.25 cents to $.35) getting higher while our paychecks aren't. And when you ask yourself "Why are people suddenly voting for Obama/Biden??" You can think really hard for that answer.

And you keep bringing up welfare & the dirt poor. Do you think people on welfare are buying $800k houses in Vegas or Miami?? Poor people rent Einstein... it's the middle class who buy McMansions & overspend, although I know for a fact mortgage lenders embraced risky loans to cash in at the moment. I spoke with a lender who left her company, she was told years ago to "push" loans onto people, they had quota's to do so to push their quarterly profits that's all corporations look at. Part of it was give them this loan now, with thousands of dollars in closing costs, then in 5 years they refinance, with thousands of dollars in closing costs. Only eventually the housing prices depreciated, so the house was worth much less than what they paid. Why bother refinancing & just not walk away. Do you know most old-money CEO's are Republicans?? Why, the tax breaks they give them. And for every Democratic inner-city welfare recepient that is overspending there's probably some republican, gun-toting Jerry Springer trailer park living recepient with Direct TV saying "Yeehaw I just got me a damn new HDTV at Walmart!!". I'm willing to bet that the poor make up a VERY small percent of our nations GDP. I'd guess less than 5%, the US could take that hit.

We're all fucked, each & every one of us. Sure we get nice little colored pamplets from work about how if we start investing at 22 just 6% of our salary into our 401k by the time we're 55 at 8% interest we'll be a millionaire.. It's all bullshit!!  The market won't yield an 8% return EVERY year for 30-40 years, it will go up, then down, then up. Yesterday the Dow closed LOWER than when Bush took office. Almost 8 years later. So, on average, if you put nothing new into your investment, you wouldn't have much more than in 2000. Maybe less!! Most of us don't have pensions anymore, a move which coincided with the gross oversalaries of Republican CEO's (Hello Carly Fiorino) Where do you think working class' pension money went to??, by the time we reach 65 Social Security will be all dried up from the baby boomers, so we'll have like $100,000 of 401k money if we're lucky to retire on.

We're fucked.

I don't know EXACTLY what this chart indicates, but the fact that it's on CIA.gov makes me believe it's legit. I think we operate on borrowed money, and are fast becoming just another country economically.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publication … 7rank.html