You see increases in Medicaid and Social Security because of the recession as well.. this is all baked into the cake no matter who is in office.
Then you look at receipts, tax receipts dropped tremendously because of both the lower tax receipts caused by fewer employed and lower tax rate (some of the lowest in history) because of the ARRA.
I would love to see anyones projections of how the budget would be different under anyones else administration. The vast majority of this was already baked into the cake before whoever came into office in 2009 was sworn in. Anyone believing any different is just believing political rhetoric instead of looking at the data.
As to the original posters post, I actually see many signs of things getting better (total auto sales, weekly unemployment claims, ISM, and just a guess.. todays NFP report). Not necessarily in the commercial RE space but I can tell more people have jobs (more people in stores both working and buying). Things are by no means rosey but I do not believe things are getting worse by any stretch of the imagination.
