posted May 27, 2012 08:06 PM            

The spending binge that never happened.

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — 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.

But it didn’t happen. Although there was a big stimulus bill under Obama, federal spending is rising at the slowest pace since Dwight Eisenhower brought the Korean War to an end in the 1950s.

Even hapless Herbert Hoover managed to increase spending more than Obama has.

Here are the facts, according to the official government statistics:

• In the 2009 fiscal year — the last of George W. Bush’s presidency — federal spending rose by 17.9% from $2.98 trillion to $3.52 trillion. Check the official numbers at the Office of Management and Budget.

• In fiscal 2010 — the first budget under Obama — spending fell 1.8% to $3.46 trillion.

• In fiscal 2011, spending rose 4.3% to $3.60 trillion.

• In fiscal 2012, spending is set to rise 0.7% to $3.63 trillion, according to the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate of the budget that was agreed to last August.

• Finally in fiscal 2013 — the final budget of Obama’s term — spending is scheduled to fall 1.3% to $3.58 trillion. Read the CBO’s latest budget outlook.

Over Obama’s four budget years, federal spending is on track to rise from $3.52 trillion to $3.58 trillion, an annualized increase of just 0.4%.

There has been no huge increase in spending under the current president, despite what you hear.

Why do people think Obama has spent like a drunken sailor? It’s in part because of a fundamental misunderstanding of the federal budget.

What people forget (or never knew) is that the first year of every presidential term starts with a budget approved by the previous administration and Congress. The president only begins to shape the budget in his second year. It takes time to develop a budget and steer it through Congress — especially in these days of congressional gridlock.

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.

By no means did Obama try to reverse that spending. Indeed, his budget proposals called for even more spending in subsequent years. But the Congress (mostly Republicans but many Democrats, too) stopped him. If Obama had been a king who could impose his will, perhaps what the Republicans are saying about an Obama spending binge would be accurate.

Yet the actual record doesn’t show a reckless increase in spending. Far from it.

Before Obama had even lifted a finger, the CBO was already projecting that the federal deficit would rise to $1.2 trillion in fiscal 2009. The government actually spent less money in 2009 than it was projected to, but the deficit expanded to $1.4 trillion because revenue from taxes fell much further than expected, due to the weak economy and the emergency tax cuts that were part of the stimulus bill.

The projected deficit for the 2010-13 period has grown from an expected $1.7 trillion in January 2009 to $4.4 trillion today. Lower-than-forecast revenue accounts for 73% of the $2.7 trillion increase in the expected deficit. That’s assuming that the Bush and Obama tax cuts are repealed completely.

When Obama took the oath of office, the $789 billion bank bailout had already been approved. Federal spending on unemployment benefits, food stamps and Medicare was already surging to meet the dire unemployment crisis that was well underway. See the CBO’s January 2009 budget outlook.

Obama is not responsible for that increase, though he is responsible (along with the Congress) for about $140 billion in extra spending in the 2009 fiscal year from the stimulus bill, from the expansion of the children’s health-care program and from other appropriations bills passed in the spring of 2009.

If we attribute that $140 billion in stimulus to Obama and not to Bush, we find that spending under Obama grew by about $200 billion over four years, amounting to a 1.4% annualized increase.

After adjusting for inflation, spending under Obama is falling at a 1.4% annual pace — the first decline in real spending since the early 1970s, when Richard Nixon was retreating from the quagmire in Vietnam.

In per capita terms, real spending will drop by nearly 5% from $11,450 per person in 2009 to $10,900 in 2013 (measured in 2009 dollars).

posted May 27, 2012 08:38 PM            

By ANN COULTER

ANN COULTER
12655 Beatrice Street
Los Angeles
CA
90066
USA

Posted 05/23/2012 06:30 PM ET

It's been breaking news all over MSNBC, liberal blogs, newspapers and even The Wall Street Journal: "Federal spending under Obama at historic lows ... It's clear that Obama has been the most fiscally moderate president we've had in 60 years."

There's even a chart! I'll pause here to give you a moment to mop up the coffee on your keyboard. Good? OK, moving on ... This shocker led to around-the-clock smirk fests on MSNBC.

As with all bogus social science from the left, liberals hide the numbers and proclaim: It's "science"! This is black and white, inarguable, and why do Republicans refuse to believe facts?

Ed Schultz claimed the chart exposed "the big myth" about Obama's spending: "This chart — the truth — very clearly shows the truth undoubtedly." And the truth was, the "growth in spending under President Obama is the slowest out of the last five presidents."

Note that Schultz also said that the "part of the chart representing President Obama's term includes a stimulus package, too."

As we shall see, that is a big, fat lie. Schultz's guest, Reuters columnist David Cay Johnston confirmed: "And clearly, Obama has been incredibly tight-fisted as a president."

Everybody's keyboard OK?

On her show, Rachel Maddow proclaimed: "Factually speaking, spending has leveled off under President Obama. Spending is not skyrocketing under President Obama. Spending is flattening out under President Obama."

In response, three writers from "The Daily Show" said, "We'll never top that line," and quit.

Inasmuch as this is obviously preposterous, I checked with John Lott, one of the nation's premier economists and author of the magnificent new book with Grover Norquist: "Debacle: Obama's War on Jobs and Growth and What We Can Do Now to Regain Our Future."

It turns out Rex Nutting, author of the phony Marketwatch chart, attributes all spending during Obama's entire first year, up to Oct. 1, to President Bush.That's not a joke.

That means, for example, the $825 billion stimulus bill, proposed, lobbied for, signed and spent by Obama, goes in ... Bush's column. (And if we attribute all of Bush's spending for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and No Child Left Behind to William Howard Taft, Bush didn't spend much either.)

Nutting's "analysis" is so dishonest, even The New York Times has ignored it. He includes only the $140 billion of stimulus money spent after Oct. 1, 2009, as Obama's spending.

posted May 27, 2012 08:56 PM            

This info makes Heads Explode. I feel for you. I am actually going with the experts on this one. None of the info is truly 'new' it is just that the propaganda machine runs constantly. If you are confused, how about the Director of Tax and Budget Policy- Michael Linden:

Here’s the bottom line: there was a large increase in government spending in fiscal year 2009, but most of that that surge wasn’t President Obama’s doing. It would have happened no matter who was President. And since then, for better or for worse, spending growth under President Obama has been incredibly restrained. This doesn’t jibe with the conventional wisdom and it requires a touch more effort to understand than simply pretending President Obama inherited a blank fiscal slate. But it’s the truth.

posted May 27, 2012 09:33 PM            

spending is at it's highest...

there have never been
so many homeless..

and so many on services..

and the fight on everything,
blah, blah, blah

are people really blind
to what is happening
right in front of them???

posted May 28, 2012 06:54 AM            

Now to hear O'Bomber tell the story, he's a tight fisted fiscal conservative with taxpayer money. More tight fisted than Reagan, more tight fisted than Coolidge and much more tight fisted than Bush!

And all across America, his Kool-Aid swilling minions screech..right on bro!

Only one thing wrong. It's utter bullshiiit! O'Bomber knows it's utter bullshiiit. Everyone with 2 braincells knows it's utter bullshiiit?

But, what can you do when you're behind in the polls, an election is fast approaching and most of America has been all over O'Bomber's and his demoscat comrades as$es for overspending taxpayer's money?

You tell "The Big Lie"!

But this is "The Big Lie" that not even the Washington ComPost will let O'Bomber get away with.

They give O'Bomber for this "Big Lie"!

The facts about the growth of spending under Obama
Glenn Kessler
05/25/2012
The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/the-facts-about-the-growth-of-spending-under-obama/2012/05/24/gJQAIJh6nU_blog.html?wprss=rss_fact-checker

http://www.linda-goodman.com/ubb/Forum26/HTML/001215.html

posted May 28, 2012 09:13 PM            

Facts & Figures too!

posted May 31, 2012 11:41 PM            

i don't understand the hysteria about obama, when clearly these people were unable to voice concerns about the national debt while former president bush ran up the biggest budgetary deficit[s] for 8 years?~!

posted June 01, 2012 07:47 AM            

Federal Budgets
2008: $2.98 trillion....Bush
2009: $3.27 trillion....O'Bomber
2010: $3.46 trillion....O'Bomber
2011: $3.60 trillion....O'Bomber
2012: $3.65 trillion....O'Bomber
2013: $3.72 trillion....O'Bomber

Federal Spending as a Percent of GDP
2008: 20.8 percent....Bush
2009: 25.2 percent....O'Bomber
2010: 24.1 percent....O'Bomber
2011: 24.1 percent....O'Bomber
2012: 24.3 percent....O'Bomber
2013: 23.3 percent....O'Bomber

posted June 01, 2012 02:41 PM            

it is growing, and not
going down, and alot of
it is hidden

agenda
Corruption

bought and paid for...

lies. ...

posted June 01, 2012 04:13 PM            

As everyone can see I posted both about Politifact and WaPo, not one over the other.

Anyone that has seen the Politifact coverage can tell you that they posted every good article that disputed them. If they were trying to follow an agenda, they certainly wouldn't be posting other people's work that contradicts theirs.

Politifact also subsequently assimilated the contradictory info into their analysis, and still found the original claim (that spending under Obama has "accelerated at a pace without precedent in recent history") false.

They posted spending versus GDP, too, but we all know that that's kind of a skewed way to look at things since the GDP has been down as a result of the financial catastrophy.

While we have already shared some of the critiques of this fact-check in a previous follow-up story, critics have since noted that two of our fellow fact checkers -- the Washington Post Fact Checker and the Associated Press -- offered more negative rulings on related claims.

The Fact Checker addressed the apparent discrepancy succinctly in a follow-up column, saying "we did not evaluate the same thing."

There’s a widespread misconception that we gave a Mostly True rating to Rex Nutting’s MarketWatch column. After our original fact-check published, White House spokesman Jay Carney tweeted, "PolitiFact backs MarketWatch analysis of federal spending under POTUS & predecessors." Many conservative bloggers read our fact-check the same way, as they attacked us.

The assumption made by both sides is wrong. We examined at a Facebook post that said Mitt Romney is wrong to claim that spending under Obama has "accelerated at a pace without precedent in recent history," because it's actually risen "slower than at any time in nearly 60 years." The Facebook post does rely partly on Nutting’s work, and our item addresses that, but we did not simply give our seal of approval to everything Nutting wrote. In fact, half of the Facebook post stems from something else entirely -- a claim on Mitt Romney’s website.

Using and slightly tweaking Nutting’s methodology, we recalculated spending increases under each president back to Dwight Eisenhower and produced tables ranking the presidents from highest spenders to lowest spenders. By contrast, both the Fact Checker and the AP zeroed in on one narrower (and admittedly crucial) data point -- how to divide the responsibility between George W. Bush and Obama for the spending that occurred in fiscal year 2009, when spending rose fastest.

How you divide the spending between Bush and Obama for fiscal 2009 only makes a difference to our ruling if the shifts move Obama significantly up or down our rankings. Do they?

Nutting attributed spending from the first year of every presidential term to the previous administration, arguing that every new president starts their term four months into a fiscal year begun under their predecessor. Historically, this has not been a particularly controversial approach, and even some of Nutting’s critics we spoke to agreed that it’s not a bad rule of thumb.

But fiscal year 2009 was special because it came amid an economic and financial free fall that drove the nation’s leaders to spend a lot more than they ordinarily would. Nutting did take these factors into account, but not to the extent that some critics think is needed. Nutting shifted $140 billion in fiscal 2009 spending from two of Obama’s signature programs -- the economic stimulus package and an expansion of the Children’s Health Insurance Program -- out of Bush’s column and into Obama’s. He also shifted excess spending beyond what Bush would have spent from the appropriations bills signed by Obama in 2009.

A number of critics also argued that spending for the Troubled Asset Relief Program should be taken into account. This program aided troubled financial institutions and involved a lot of money going out the door in fiscal 2009 and a lot of money coming in the door in subsequent years as the money was paid back to the treasury. The critics note that counting the TARP expenses as Bush’s artificially raises the baseline level of spending Obama inherited, thereby making Obama’s subsequent spending increases seem unrealistically small.

We think reasonable people can disagree on which president should be responsible for TARP spending, but to give the critics their say, we’ll include it in our alternative calculation. So, combining the fiscal 2009 costs for programs that are either clearly or arguably Obama’s -- the stimulus, the CHIP expansion, the incremental increase in appropriations over Bush’s level and TARP -- produces a shift from Bush to Obama of between $307 billion and $456 billion, based on the most reasonable estimates we’ve seen critics offer.

That’s quite a bit larger than Nutting’s $140 billion, but by our calculations, it would only raise Obama’s average annual spending increase from 1.4 percent to somewhere between 3.4 percent and 4.9 percent. That would place Obama either second from the bottom or third from the bottom out of the 10 presidents we rated, rather than last.

When we encounter a compound claim such as this one, we consider the accuracy of each part separately. During our internal discussions, we give a preliminary rating to each half of a claim, then average them to produce our final, published rating.

Our extensive consultations with budget analysts since our item was published convinces us that there’s no single "correct" way to divvy up fiscal 2009 spending, only a variety of plausible calculations. So the second portion of the Facebook claim -- that Obama’s spending has risen "slower than at any time in nearly 60 years" -- strikes us as Half True.

Meanwhile, we would’ve given a True rating to the Facebook claim that Romney is wrong to say that spending under Obama has "accelerated at a pace without precedent in recent history." Even using the higher of the alternative measurements, at [least] seven presidents had a higher average annual increases in spending. That balances out to our final rating of Mostly True. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/may/23/facebook-posts/viral-facebook-post-says-barack-obama-has-lowest-s/

posted June 01, 2012 04:27 PM            

Get over it!

Further, O'Bomber's spending is so out of control he's spent up to 20% more of the Gross Domestic Product than Bush was spending.

And, if that's not bad enough acoustic, O'Bomber has racked up more national debt in less than 4 years than Bush accumulated in 8 years.

Now acoustic, flush that O'Bomber Kool-Aid down the toilet, pull your head out and go listen to Rush!

posted June 01, 2012 04:35 PM            

When was the last Obama budget passed?

I've already tackled the bogus GDP claim. We all know the GDP is down. Further, Node is right that more spending needs to be done rather than less if we want the economy to recover faster. I've spoken previously of Obama promoting Nixon's revenue sharing. Where did that proposal go? Down the drain with most of the other economy-boosting ideas the President's tried to bring to the table.

Of course debt is way up. Revenue is down (unemployment + Bush tax cuts = less revenue), while spending is up. That creates greater deficits, which drive up the debt. IF you understand this reality, it becomes very difficult to blame Obama for the debt. Obama did try to raise revenues, and was blocked, which means Conservatives are on the hook for this debt, too!

posted June 01, 2012 10:30 PM            

Fact acoustic. You know acoustic, Facts. Those pesky little things leftists never have any of.

And while we're on the subject of budgets acoustic; you should know...but apparently you don't know...the 2009 budget was passed in March 2009...by the demoscat House and demoscat Senate and signed by the demoscat Barack Hussein O'Bomber. You know acoustic, the 2009 budget the kooky nut.."Nutting" wants to lay at the doorstep of George Bush...3 months after Bush left the White House.

posted June 02, 2012 08:03 AM            

You ever sit down and analyze why you always lose these arguments acoustic?

President Obama Has Outspent Last Five Presidents
By Elizabeth Flock

President Obama has shelled out more in federal spending than the five presidents that came before him.

A new chart by the Comeback America Initiative (CAI), a non-partisan group dedicated to promoting fiscal responsibility by policymakers, shows federal spending by president as a percentage of GDP, and it doesn't reflect well on Obama.

"There has been a dramatic increase in spending under the Obama administration," David Walker, Founder and CEO of CAI, told Whispers. "Most of it is attributable to year one of his presidency and the stimulus... but President Obama has continued to take spending to a new level."

Federal spending was close to 20 percent under the Carter administration, dropped to 18 percent under Clinton, and is currently at an incredible 24 percent of GDP. According to the Congressional Budget Office, federal spending may hover around 22 percent for the next decade.

Federal spending is also higher this year than any year since 1949. The last time spending was higher—in 1946, it was 24.8—the country was just coming down from the exorbitant rates of spending during World War II.

posted June 02, 2012 10:35 AM            

May 30, 2012
Spending? What Spending?
By Rich Lowry

Franklin Delano Roosevelt never denied that he created Social Security. Lyndon Baines Johnson didn’t forswear any responsibility for Medicaid. Ronald Reagan never argued that his defense buildup didn’t happen.

The Obama White House, in contrast, wants to wish away the historic federal spending that is one of its signature accomplishments.

White House press secretary Jay Carney, whose job it is to dodge questions and elide facts without betraying any embarrassment, urged reporters the other day to steer clear of “the BS that you hear about spending and fiscal constraint with regard to this administration.” Not one to be outclassed by his press secretary, President Barack Obama kept up the edifying livestock theme by calling Mitt Romney’s attacks on his deficit spending “a cow pie of distortion.”

The White House has a deeply conflicted relationship to its own record. It is saddled with a bad case of spender’s denial, a rare psychological disorder afflicting committed Keynesians facing reelection at a time of record debt.

On the one hand, spending is the lifeblood of “Forward.” It saved us from another Great Depression. It is forging a glorious new future of green energy. It is the only thing standing between the American public and the untold devastation of the Paul Ryan budget. How do we know? Because President Obama says so.On the other hand, the deficits and the debt that come with all this spending are alarming and unpopular. So Obama calls himself the most fiscally conservative president in more than half a century. When the president isn’t extolling his transformative expenditures, he has a Walter Mitty life as the second coming of Dwight Eisenhower. He needs to consult an accountant and a therapist, and not necessarily in that order.

If you torture the numbers just the right way — the Office of Management and Budget meets the Spanish Inquisition — you can come up with a 0.4 percent rate of spending growth during the Obama administration. To get there, you have to ignore part of the stimulus (on grounds that Obama didn’t have complete control of the budget in 2009) and play games with the bailouts (crediting Obama with spending cuts when they are paid back). Even fact-checkers with mainstream-media outfits have merrily stomped all over the statistical legerdemain.

Andrew Taylor of the Associated Press writes that “Obama bears the chief responsibility for an 11 percent, $59 billion increase in non-defense spending in 2009. Then there’s a 9 percent, $109 billion increase in combined defense and non-defense appropriated outlays in 2010, a year for which Obama is wholly responsible.” Spending growth slowed after that, under the influence of the very same congressional Republicans that President Obama excoriates for not allowing him to spend more.

There’s no doubt that the president inherited a fiscal nightmare. Spending spiked as the economy tanked. His response has been to spend yet more every single year. Spending was $2.98 trillion in 2008, and the president’s budget calls for it to hit $3.72 trillion in 2013. As a percentage of GDP, spending has been at post–World War II highs throughout his term. If fiscal probity is truly his aim, President Obama is a miserable failure of a skinflint.

The laughable claim to fiscal restraint is meant to recapture some of Obama’s former ideological indistinctness. Back in 2008, he could say — with no direct evidence to contradict him — that he wanted a net cut in federal spending, in his guise as a post-partisan pragmatist. That was several $1 trillion deficits ago. Now, the president can say whatever he wants, but his budgets are a matter of public record.

He should embrace those budgets in all their Keynesian majesty. They are one of his most consequential contributions to our national life, and a true expression of his philosophical core and that of his party. In his tawdry denials, the president almost acts as if $5.5 trillion in new debt were something to be ashamed of.

posted June 02, 2012 11:47 AM            

No response to Politifact's measured analysis, huh? That's what I thought.

2009 budget? What about it?

We think reasonable people can disagree on which president should be responsible for TARP spending, but to give the critics their say, we’ll include it in our alternative calculation. So, combining the fiscal 2009 costs for programs that are either clearly or arguably Obama’s -- the stimulus, the CHIP expansion, the incremental increase in appropriations over Bush’s level and TARP -- produces a shift from Bush to Obama of between $307 billion and $456 billion, based on the most reasonable estimates we’ve seen critics offer.

That’s quite a bit larger than Nutting’s $140 billion, but by our calculations, it would only raise Obama’s average annual spending increase from 1.4 percent to somewhere between 3.4 percent and 4.9 percent. That would place Obama either second from the bottom or third from the bottom out of the 10 presidents we rated, rather than last.

Average percentage increase per year
Carter 1977 1981 16.4
Nixon 1969 1975 13.5
Johnson 1964 1969 11.0
George W. Bush 2001 2009 10.2
Reagan 1981 1989 8.6
Kennedy 1961 1964 7.1
G. H.W. Bush 1989 1993 5.8
Clinton 1993 2001 4.0
Eisenhower 1953 1961 3.6
Obama 2009 2013 1.4

You forgot the bottom part of that US News article, didn't you?

Update, 5:19 p.m.:

Some readers have pointed out that although Obama passed the stimulus plan, federal spending under his administration has risen at a very slow pace -- the slowest pace, in fact, "since Dwight Eisenhower brought the Korean War to an end in the 1950's," Marketwatch reported last month. http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2012/06/01/president-obama-has-outspent-last-five-presidents