President Obama has been Directly Detrimental to our Economy and National Security

"Con Will be presenting the case that the administration's actions have provided positive results for the United States."My opponent wants to present his case against Barack Obama's performance, that is fine. He wants to prove this performance to be detrimental, that is fine as well. By creating this debate, my opponent places a burden of proof on himself to convince the adjudicator of his premise. The burden of proof is not shared. A shared burden of proof creates an impractical and messy debate situation in which judging is very difficult. I will present my case anyway.My opponent's biggest claim, that Obama has directly caused the $6,000,000,000,000 in the deficit is false. Let us first look at how this deficit started. In the beginning of 2001, when president Bush took office, our nation was running on a surplus. This surplus was a result of something very important Bush Sr. had done 2 terms ago. Bush Sr. was known for this very popular creed: "Read my lips, no new taxes" and yet he raised taxes. The question is... why? Why would he do such a politically stupid move, go back on his promise and lose the presidency (because there is 0 chance he could win the presidency after making such a contradicting move). Bush Sr. did this because the economy required it. Raising taxes helped increase federal revenue and led the economy in a direction of health and regeneration. This tax increase significantly aided Clinton's presidency as all Clinton had to do was watch the high federal revenue lead the economy from the deficit to a surplus. By the time Bush Jr. took office, we had actually broken deficit. This anecdote shows that economic trends span many years past the presidency of any single president and a specific change (tax increase) does not create any immediate effect. This also helps me to clarify the contrasting policies of George W. Bush and that of the 2 administrations before him. One of the dumbest most notable policy Bush enacted was the horrific tax cut and the war on terrorism simultaneously. Historically, every war we have fought had seen to a notable tax increase to pay for the huge costs of participating in a war. Bush not only decreased the federal revenue, he increased spending so much that we dropped trillions in a matter of years. The scale of this was horrendous. http://4.bp.blogspot.com...; />As you can see, the deficit percentage exploded under Bush's adminstration, especially near the end of Bush's term. When Obama entered into the presidency in 2009, the deficit rate was huge. Although it is still there, the deficit rate has clearly not increased and has, in fact, been dropping under Obama's administration. The slope of the trend is steepening and improving. While this is true, the deficit still exists, so even if the deficit rate is decreasing, the actual deficit is increasing. My opponent looks at the numbers and denounces the actions of the president for causing it. I look at the rate of deficit and say that we are being pulled in the right direction. My opponent's empirical analysis fails to take into account the more subtle but equally prominent features of such data. By proving the overall trend to be positive in this way, I have successfully fulfilled my 'burden of proof' (that I have one is hilarious) that Obama has indeed provided positive results.So we are in a deficit, what happens? Why is it taking so long for the deficit to subside? I will explain. A budget deficit, offset by low taxes and a simultaneous increase in spending in our case, has a wide variety of effects. One of which is the self-increasing nature of the deficit. How is a deficit self-increasing? Obama has taken the presidency at one of the worst conditions that is coming closer to being on par with the Great Depression. The deficit cuts a deep gash in our economy. The government, no matter the conditions, is forced to cut back on spending and raise taxes. Cutting back on spending means less funds for a plethora of prefessions such as teaching our law enforcement. Less funds creates less incentive to work (wouldn't you have less incentive to work if you were payed less?) Less incentive to work means a detrimental decrease in GDP and tax revenues. The effect on these professions also cause a shockwave effect on other jobs. Let us take the most basic example of a teacher and a student. The teacher loses incentive, less pay means lower quality of work (I assume many of these economic/psychological reactions to be obvious, but if my opponent would like me to explain this, I can do so upon request). Lower quality of work means lower quality of education which creates a skill deficiency that, in return, affects economic output. Decreased economic output means decreased tax revenues. This is just one case example, but occurs on a larger scale.Government sell bonds (I will here assume the reader knows what bonds are to save character space) to investors. As the deficit increases, bonds become riskier. To ensure investors will hold on to these bonds, the government must increase bond interest rate. This is a direct increase to the deficit as the government owes even more to individuals. There would also be inadvertently less investors, meaning less funds. This creates a scenario in which the government is forced to make budget cuts to maintain the economic situation.Another must-be-addressed fact is that the baby boomers are nearing retirement. What does this portend for our federal government? There will be trillions in social security that the US is going to have to dole out to nearly eighty million people. The federal government owes debt to social security. Many services the government can no longer fund forces it to print currency (dropping currency value), borrow heavily from outside nations, and/or dig deep into our reserves, further increasing our deficit because our federal revenue, as established earlier, is too low. As less people work, less is being produced, and more are unwilling to buy. The GDP decreases while causing the deficit to increase.Our increasingly risky economic conditions caused by the deficit give rise to a decreased number of entrepreneurs willing to invest to start businesses, meaning less jobs, less revenues, etc. The point is, the deficit would continue increasing numerically no matter who took the presidency. Economic effects span across much larger periods. There is only so much a president can do. Obama spent the 6 billion dollars? That is a ridiculous claim. He has limited power. States also feed the deficit. It is fundamentally the people who control the economy as a whole. http://www.washingtonpost.com...; width="665" height="215" />Our mandatoryy spending totals 2.43 trillion dollars. That is almost the total revenue itself. Discretionary spending is technically mandatory since it doles out payment to jobs such as the FBI, the Coast Guard, housing and education, space exploration, highway construction, defense, and foreign aid. Obama is spending this? Obama has minimal influence in this. It'd be stupid to drop military spending and collapse our defense. It'd be stupid to stop paying for housing, education and social services/security as it would cause massive discord (when the people suffer at a large enough scale, the government becomes endangered as shown by historical revolutionary events).The easiest, most direct solution to the deficit would be to implement an incredibly high tax rate and drastically cut spending. If this happens, we would see violent revolt by millions of angry americans in a short matter of years.http://www.brookings.edu...