While giving the Republican Response to the State of the Union, Mitch Daniels repeated the lie about how government spending grew under Obama:
"In three short years, an unprecedented explosion of spending, with borrowed money, has added trillions to an already unaffordable national debt."
Well, that is a blatant lie. Here is how the spending really increased:
As anyone can see in the chart above, the government spending grew under Obama at the same rate they were growing under Bush's 8 years. There was an uptick in 2009 (that was the stimulus package), but since then there was no increase at all.
It is true, that the budget deficit exploded ten-fold around the time when Obama moved to the White House. But the reason for that were falling tax revenues as the economy tanked in the end of 2008 -- not an increase in the spending.
So why respected Republican leaders -- and not just Tea Party nuts -- keep repeating such an obvious lies? That is a good question, but it speaks a lot about the state of US democracy.