tooAlive
Silver Member
I see people making this fallacious statement time and time again, so I thought I'd make a thread and hopefully put an end to the misinformation once and for all.
Lets start off with a nice picture illustration:
Political Math » MarketWatch?s Rex Nutting On Obama Spending (Infographic)
Here's an article from Forbes:
President Obama: The Biggest Government Spender In World History - Forbes
That's just a little snippet from page 2 I found interesting.
We also have The Washington Post with 2 excellent articles:
The facts about the growth of spending under Obama - The Washington Post
The facts about the growth of spending under Obama, Part 2 - The Washington Post
Part 1 -
Part 2 -
Their verdict to Obama being the "Smallest Government Spender":
(Four Pinocchios would be the highest false-ness rating)
And finally we have The Heritage Blog.
Setting Obama's "Great Fiscal Restraint Record" Straight
Lets start off with a nice picture illustration:
Political Math » MarketWatch?s Rex Nutting On Obama Spending (Infographic)
Here's an article from Forbes:
President Obama: The Biggest Government Spender In World History - Forbes
In sharp contrast to Reagan, Obamas first major legislative initiative was the so-called stimulus, which increased future federal spending by nearly a trillion dollars, the most expensive legislation in history up till that point. We know now, as thinking people knew at the time, that this record shattering spending bill only stimulated government spending, deficits and debt. Contrary to official Democrat Keynesian witchcraft, you dont promote economic recovery, growth and prosperity by borrowing a trillion dollars out of the economy to spend a trillion dollars back into it.
But this was just a warm up for Obamas Swedish socialism. Obama worked with Pelosis Democratic Congress to pass an additional, $410 billion, supplemental spending bill for fiscal year 2009, which was too much even for big spending President Bush, who had specifically rejected it in 2008. Next in 2009 came a $40 billion expansion in the SCHIP entitlement program, as if we didnt already have way more than too much entitlement spending.
But those were just the preliminaries for the biggest single spending bill in world history, Obamacare, enacted in March, 2010. That legislation is not yet even counted in Obamas spending record so far because it mostly does not go into effect until 2014. But it is now scored by CBO as increasing federal spending by $1.6 trillion in the first 10 years alone, with trillions more to come in future years.
After just one year of the Obama spending binge, federal spending had already rocketed to 25.2% of GDP, the highest in American history except for World War II. That compares to 20.8% in 2008, and an average of 19.6% during Bushs two terms. The average during President Clintons two terms was 19.8%, and during the 60-plus years from World War II until 2008 19.7%. Obamas own fiscal 2013 budget released in February projects the average during the entire 4 years of the Obama Administration to come in at 24.4% in just a few months. That budget shows federal spending increasing from $2.983 trillion in 2008 to an all time record $3.796 trillion in 2012, an increase of 27.3%.
Moreover, before Obama there had never been a deficit anywhere near $1 trillion. The highest previously was $458 billion, or less than half a trillion, in 2008. The federal deficit for the last budget adopted by a Republican controlled Congress was $161 billion for fiscal year 2007. But the budget deficits for Obamas four years were reported in Obamas own 2013 budget as $1.413 trillion for 2009, $1.293 trillion for 2010, $1.3 trillion for 2011, and $1.327 trillion for 2012, four years in a row of deficits of $1.3 trillion or more, the highest in world history.
President Obamas own 2013 budget shows that as a result federal debt held by the public will double during Obamas four years as President. That means in just one term President Obama will have increased the national debt as much as all prior Presidents, from George Washington to George Bush, combined.
That's just a little snippet from page 2 I found interesting.
We also have The Washington Post with 2 excellent articles:
The facts about the growth of spending under Obama - The Washington Post
The facts about the growth of spending under Obama, Part 2 - The Washington Post
Part 1 -
The Facts
First of all, there are a few methodological problems with Nuttings analysis especially the beginning and the end point.
Nutting basically takes much of 2009 out of Obamas column, saying it was the the last [year] of George W. Bushs presidency. Of course, with the recession crashing down, thats when federal spending ramped up. The federal fiscal year starts on Oct. 1, so the 2009 fiscal year accounts for about four months of Bushs presidency and eight of Obamas.
In theory, one could claim that the budget was already locked in when Obama took office, but thats not really the case. Most of the appropriations bills had not been passed, and certainly the stimulus bill was only signed into law after Obama took office.
Bush had rescued Fannie and Freddie Mac and launched the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which depending on how you do the math, was a one-time expense of $250 billion to $400 billion in the final months of his presidency. (The federal government ultimately recouped most of the TARP money.) So if you really want to be fair, perhaps $250 billion of that money should be taken out of the equation on the theory that it would have been spent no matter who was president.
Nutting acknowledges that Obama is responsible for some 2009 spending but only assigns $140 billion for reasons he does not fully explain. (Update: in an email Nutting says he attributed $120 billion to stimulus spending in 2009, $5 billion for an expansion of childrens health care and $16 billion to an increase in appropriations bills over 2008 levels.)
On the other end of his calculations, Nutting says that Obama plans to spend $3.58 trillion in 2013, citing the Congressional Budget Office budget outlook. But this figure is CBOs baseline budget, which assumes no laws are changed, so this figure gives Obama credit for automatic spending cuts that he wants to halt.
The correct figure to use is the CBOs analysis of the presidents 2013 budget, which clocks in at $3.72 trillion.
So this is what we end up with:
2008: $2.98 trillion
2009: $3.27 trillion
2010: $3.46 trillion
2011: $3.60 trillion
2012: $3.65 trillion
2013: $3.72 trillion
Under these figures, and using this calculator, with 2008 as the base year and ending with 2012, the compound annual growth rate for Obamas spending starting in 2009 is 5.2 percent. Starting in 2010 Nuttings first year and ending with 2013, the annual growth rate is 3.3 percent. (Nutting had calculated the result as 1.4 percent.)
Of course, it takes two to tangle a president and a Congress. Obamas numbers get even higher if you look at what he proposed to spend, using CBOs estimates of his budgets:
2012: $3.71 trillion (versus $3.65 trillion enacted)
2011: $3.80 trillion (versus $3.60 trillion enacted)
2010: $3.67 trillion (versus $3.46 trillion enacted)
So in every case, the president wanted to spend more money than he ended up getting. Nutting suggests that federal spending flattened under Obama, but another way to look at it is that it flattened at a much higher, post-emergency level thanks in part to the efforts of lawmakers, not Obama.
Another problem with Nuttings analysis is that the figures are viewed in isolation. Even 5.5 percent growth would put Obama between Bill Clinton and George W. Bush in terms of spending growth, but that does not take into account either inflation or the relative size of the U.S. economy. At 5.2 percent growth, Obamas increase in spending would be nearly three times the rate of inflation. Meanwhile, Nutting pegs Ronald Reagan with 8.7 percent growth in his first term we get 12.5 percent CAGR but inflation then was running at 6.5 percent.
One common way to measure federal spending is to compare it to the size of the overall U.S. economy. That at least puts the level into context, helping account for population growth, inflation and other factors that affect spending. Heres what the White Houses own budget documents show about spending as a percentage of the U.S. economy (gross domestic product):
2008: 20.8 percent
2009: 25.2 percent
2010: 24.1 percent
2011: 24.1 percent
2012: 24.3 percent
2013: 23.3 percent
In the post-war era, federal spending as a percentage of the U.S. economy has hovered around 20 percent, give or take a couple of percentage points. Under Obama, it has hit highs not seen since the end of World War II completely the opposite of the point asserted by Carney. Part of this, of course, is a consequence of the recession, but it is also the result of a sustained higher level of spending.
We sent our analysis to Carney but did not get a response. (For another take, Daniel Mitchell of the Cato Institute has an interesting tour through the numbers, isolating various spending categories. For instance, he says debt payments should be excluded from the analysis because that is the result of earlier spending decisions by other presidents.)
UPDATE: The Associated Press also dug into the numbers and came to the same conclusion as we did. The problem with that rosy claim is that the Wall Street bailout is part of the calculation. The bailout ballooned the 2009 budget just before Obama took office, making Obamas 2010 results look smaller in comparison. And as almost $150 billion of the bailout was paid back during Obamas watch, the [Nutting] analysis counted them as government spending cuts, the AP said. It also assumes Obama had less of a role setting the budget for 2009 than he really did.
Part 2 -
The Facts
When looking at Obamas spending, the key issue is what to do about the 2009 fiscal year. Since the federal governments fiscal year begins on Oct. 1, about four months took place in Bushs presidency and those were dramatic months of fiscal crisis and emergency spending.
Obama supported and voted for Bush-started programs such as the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). Moreover, many key appropriations bills were held back by Democrats until Obama became president, and then he pushed through an $830 billion stimulus bill (which consisted of mostly spending). In ordinary times, one could argue that 2009 should be counted as Bushs year, but in fact many of the key spending decisions were actually made by Obama.
As the AP documented, programs such as TARP also mess up the figures in the later years. The straight-line CBO accounts of outlays that MarketWatch and PolitiFact used are distorted by the fact that repayments of TARP funds by banks and Wall Street firms in 2010 make the actual spending seem much smaller.
By the APs calculation, repayments to TARP and reduced spending on Fannie Mae-Freddie Mac bailouts shrink the official 2010 spending figure by $317 billion and the 2011 spending figure by $72 billion. In other words, the raw numbers give a distorted picture.
We agree that those adjustments should be made, which really changes the picture of Obamas spending, at least in the early years of his presidency. Bernstein, by contrast, argues that MWs using official budget numbers and by those numbers, the Obama administration legitimately gets credit for effective management of the TARP.
The Republican takeover of the House of Representatives put the brakes on Obamas spending ambitions, though whether that is a good or a bad thing depends on your perspective. (Bernstein views it as an opportunity lost.)
Their verdict to Obama being the "Smallest Government Spender":
Three Pinocchios
(Four Pinocchios would be the highest false-ness rating)
And finally we have The Heritage Blog.
Setting Obama's "Great Fiscal Restraint Record" Straight
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