Documentary Analysis: Ten Trillion And Counting

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One thing that I have learned about college is that you have to sometimes talk about things that make you uncomfortable or scared in order to learn. I do not think I am alone in saying that the United States’ current debt situation is terrifying. Ten trillion dollars alone is an expansive and unimaginable amount of money, and since PBS produced Ten Trillion and Counting in 2009, the national debt has grown to twenty-one trillion. As stated, the documentary was produced during the first months of former President Barack Obama’s first term and focused on former President George W. Bush’s relationship with national debt during his eight year tenure. Ten Trillion and Counting explains some of the questionable decisions that former President Bush made, especially regarding fiscal policy. …show more content…

Bush came into office in 2001, he inherited a surplus from former President Clinton and left a recession for former President Obama when he left in 2009. In President Bush’s defense, recessions are a part of the business cycle, but certain decisions that he made also did not help our financial and debt situations. According to fiscal policy, our country in 2001 was thriving and Bush should have used an contractionary policy to stabilize the economy. Bush should have increased taxes and decreased government spending; he did the exact opposite. By 2003, Bush had expanded Medicare to include prescription drugs, committed US troops to two separate wars, and introduced two tax cuts. Of course, Bush had little to no control over our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the terrorist attacks of 9/11 affected all aspects of the US economy due to a general fear. However, when a horrible event destabilizes the economy of a country and forces the country into two separate conflicts, the country should not spend even more and take burden off of the people that supposed to be paying for

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