An Obama Spending Spree? Hardly

A dominant theme of the national political discourse has been the crushing spending spree the U.S. has ostensibly embarked on during the Obama presidency. That argument, ignited by Republicans and picked up by many elite opinion makers, has infused the national dialogue and shaped the public debate in nearly every major budget battle of the last thee years.

But the numbers tell a different story.

The fact that the national debt has risen from $10.6 trillion to $15.6 trillion under Obama’s watch makes for easy partisan attacks. But the vast bulk of the increase was caused by a combination of revenue losses due to the 2008-09 economic downturn as well as Bush-era tax cuts and automatic increases in safety-net spending that were already written into law.
Obama’s policies, including the much-criticized stimulus package, have caused the slowest increase in federal spending of any president in almost 60 nears, according to data compiled by the financial news service MarketWatch.

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/...g-stimulus-budget-historic-trends.php?ref=fpb

 

Good find.


You get bonus points for that article.

Not only does it mentions Bush 6 thousand times, the article mentions Bush 1. (tear in eye) Makes me proud .....

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Ya know, based on this artcile and if you account for inflation, Obama actually spent less money than any president in history.

(note to self)

He's da man.

 

im betting it doesnt matter to your side. you will just keep repeating the republican meme "obama spent more than any other president". am i right?

 

What does his spending change?

 

Pretty close.

There's probably only 6 or 7 different personalities in the world and Obama is a close match for my former son-in law (aka fuck chops). So yes, (I forgot what I was saying...) (Happens you know when I mention the word Fuck chops or "Niagra Falls".

Peace.....

Keep up the relevant posts..

 

Meyers/Briggs would disagree. More like at least 16.

 

But they keep saying Obama is big spender so it must be true.

 

Meyers forward slash briggs pfftttttttt..

 

Actually, the Obama spending binge really did happen

By James Pethokoukis
May 23, 2012, 10:33 am
A A A
Until Barack Obama took office in 2009, the United States had never spent more than 23.5% of GDP, with the exception of the World War II years of 1942-1946. Here’s the Obama spending record:

– 25.2% of GDP in 2009

– 24.1% of GDP in 2010

– 24.1% of GDP in 2011

– 24.3% (estimates by the White House ) in 2012

What’s more, if Obama wins another term, spending—according to his own budget—would never drop below 22.3% of GDP. If that forecast is right, spending during Obama’s eight years in office would average 23.6% of GDP. That’s higher than any single previous non-war year.

Yet financial columnist Rex Nutting of MarketWatch tries to portray the president as being downright stingy in a piece entitled, stunningly, “Obama spending binge never happened”:

Of all the falsehoods told about President Barack Obama, the biggest whopper is the one about his reckless spending spree. As would-be president Mitt Romney tells it: “I will lead us out of this debt and spending inferno.” Almost everyone believes that Obama has presided over a massive increase in federal spending, an “inferno” of spending that threatens our jobs, our businesses and our children’s future. Even Democrats seem to think it’s true. Government spending under Obama, including his signature stimulus bill, is rising at a 1.4% annualized pace — slower than at any time in nearly 60 years.



As the chart indicates, Nutting arrives at that 1.4% number by assigning 2009—when spending surged nearly 20%—to George W. Bush: “The 2009 fiscal year, which Republicans count as part of Obama’s legacy, began four months before Obama moved into the White House. The major spending decisions in the 2009 fiscal year were made by George W. Bush and the previous Congress. Like a relief pitcher who comes into the game with the bases loaded, Obama came in with a budget in place that called for spending to increase by hundreds of billions of dollars in response to the worst economic and financial calamity in generations.”

Let me complete the metaphor for Nutting: “Then as those runners scored, Obama kept putting more on base.”

Obama chose not to reverse that elevated level of spending; thus he, along with congressional Democrats, are responsible for it. Only by establishing 2009 as the new baseline, something Republican budget hawks like Paul Ryan feared would happen, does Obama come off looking like a tightwad. Obama has turned a one-off surge in spending due to the Great Recession into his permanent New Normal through 2016 and beyond.

It’s as if one of my teenagers crashed our family minivan, and I had to buy a new one. And then, since I liked that new car smell so much, I decided to buy a new van every year for the rest of my life. I would indeed be a reckless spender.

Here is another way Nutting could have framed the spending issue:



The Obama spending record looks a little different now, yes?

 

That is the real deal isn't.

Either his spending is nuts or his policies caused the GDP to contract.

One way or another his economics sucks.