Who Is The Smallest Government Spender Since Eisenhower? Would You Believe It's...

reply to post by stanguilles7

I hardly read this as an endorsement of obama. More like a refutation of some of the GOP's claims.

That's exactly why I posted this. NOT to endorse Obama, but to refute GOP claims. Three years after driving the country off a fiscal cliff, and then spending the interim time trying to prevent it from being rescued, the GOP are right back in the saddle and poised to reclaim total control of the government.

Damn, people have a short memory in America. After the lies of 9/11, Iraq, Afghanistan, the corruption, and the disastrous fiscal policies of rewarding the wealthy while driving the middle class into the ground (see here for a big list), here we are again. More right-wing then ever. Hell, according to the CBO, over a trillion dollars of our current deficit came from the game of brinkmanship the GOP played that cost us our AAA bond rating. Thank that happened by accident? All part of making Obama look bad so they can get right back into power and rewarding their wealthy
benefactors.

reply to post by Blackmarketeer


Not trying to offend, nor prop up either party.. I am disgusted by both.

To say that a BUDGET has been passed is playing with words.

We need REAL representation in DC..

I don't care what party they are from, as long as they are committed to getting the job done...

Twisting words and figures to play one party against the other is old and increasingly obvious to those who pay attention.

I am not alone, everyday there are more and more folks who tire of this, the clock is ticking for the old school left/right plan, and I will celebrate the day the folks take back what was theirs to begin with.

Originally posted by Blackmarketeer
reply to post by stanguilles7

 

I hardly read this as an endorsement of obama. More like a refutation of some of the GOP's claims.

That's exactly why I posted this. NOT to endorse Obama, but to refute GOP claims. Three years after driving the country off a fiscal cliff, and then spending the interim time trying to prevent it from being rescued, the GOP are right back in the saddle and poised to reclaim total control of the government.

Indeed. Although as a side note, its fun seeing people expose their affiliations by trying to make this a "Obama is teh greatest' thread, when it isnt.

Here's some arithmetic to see.






The 110th Congress (Jan 2007 - Jan 2009)
The 111th Congress (Jan 2009 - Jan 2011)
The 112th Congress (Jan 2011 - present)

The 111th especially, spent every last nickel of revenues plus all they could borrow.

The borrowing was maxed out with Treasury sales.

If Treasury sales were more, they would have spent more.

Not smart when tax revenues were down.

reply to post by Cuervo


The only source I could entertain the thought of trusting would be an independent investigation that doesn't involve any govt officials/ govt $.

You seem too bright to not understand why I have no faith in our govt being honest with us.

reply to post by Blackmarketeer
Since I'm not an economic guru, I will let this article speak fo me.
(apologies if already posted)

The Obama Spending Binge

Peter Suderman|May. 23, 2012 4:45 pm


Liberal bloggers have been passing around a piece by Rex Nutting at Market Watch arguing that although “almost everyone believes that Obama has presided over a massive increase in federal spending,” in fact, “it didn’t happen.”

Except, well, it did.

Nutting’s evidence consists of the a chart showing that the annualized growth of federal spending from 2010-2013 is 1.4 percent, compared with 7.3 percent from 2002-2005 during George Bush’s first term and 8.1 percent from 2006-2009 during Bush’s second term.

Nutting has a half a point: Federal spending did rise considerably during the 2009 fiscal year: Between 2001 and 2008, federal outlays (spending) rose from $1.8 trillion to $2.9 trillion, according to the Congressional Budget Office’s historical spending data. That’s a steep enough rise. But it’s nothing compared to what happened during the next year: In 2009, outlays spiked, rising from the $2.9 trillion spent in 2008 to $3.5 trillion.

But what Obama did in subsequent budgets was stick to that newly inflated level of spending. Outlays in 2010 were just a hair short of $3.5 trillion. In 2011, they rose further, approaching $3.6 trillion.

So even if you absolve Obama of responsibility for the initial growth spike, he still presided over unprecedented spending that was out of line with the existing growth trend. Obama’s average spending is far higher than under Bush or Clinton on both adjusted dollar levels and as a percentage of the economy. James Pethokoukis of The American Enterprise Institute has a handy graphic comparing annual Obama’s spending as a percentage of the economy to George W. Bush’s average spending as a percentage of GDP:

reason.com...

An older thread started by Indigo5 has interesting comments.

The thread date lines up better with the OP Forbes article.

Obama Spending Binge Never Happened - Wall Street Journal

reply to post by xuenchen


more charts..

but what would you expect if our elected bail out the banks, the automakers, and fund green initiatives (on the hopes that cap and trade would pass)...

Both sides are culpable...

We need to wake up...

In the end, it's our fault for allowing this to happen.

It's time to stop holding up the party flag... excusing your flag's discretion by pointing towards the other flag doesn't work anymore....

It's too easy to recognize.

lay down the flags, and change the face of our elected...

We deserve better, so let's make it happen..

reply to post by JacKatMtn


I agree !!

Too much money spent is for the "Corruptees" and the "Corruptors".

Not much ever goes to the majority of citizens in one shot.

reply to post by xuenchen


And what happened in 2008-9 to cause that increase in unemployment? Anything ring a bell? Maybe a little something called the economic crisis?

2008–2012 global recession

The 2007–2012 global recession, sometimes referred to as the late-2000s recession, Great Recession,[1] the Lesser Depression,[2] or the Long Recession,[3] is a marked global economic decline that began in December 2007 and took a particularly sharp downward turn in September 2008

It cause a massive number of layoffs which led to a huge spike in unemployment claims and food stamp claims. Why do you think the GOP ran away from the 2008 elections? They sure didn't want to be left holding THAT bag. The government still had an obligation to provide social services to the masses of unemployed as a result from that economic collapse. The fact that the crisis didn't mushroom into something much bigger is a miracle. Look at the state Europe is still in. Ask them how "austerity" is going.

Then along with the massive job losses from the recession came the second whammy, the much lower tax receipts. Between Bush tax cuts and Obama's tax cuts (which most aren't even aware of) the deficit had only one place to go, up. Not from "increased spending" but from much lower tax revenue. As pointed out, 1.4 trillion of the deficit came from the lower tax revenue of 2009 alone.

What you're really seeing is how the GOP blamed Obama for things they had themselves done, from the 2009 budget (written by Bush and passed by the 110th congress), their deregulation of banks, even the Glass-Steagall act, which was repealed by the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act Although signed by Clinton, it was written by Republicans (Sen. Phil Gramm (R, Texas), Rep. Jim Leach (R, Iowa), and Rep. Thomas J. Bliley, Jr. (R, Virginia), the co-sponsors of the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act.)

While Dems own their share of the financial mess, the major culprits are the GOP. My biggest beef with Obama is rushing into the ACA. That was the wrong time to pick that fight.

Otherwise, he has also shrunk the public sector, a major reversal of trends by Republican administrations.

1) I seem to recall seeing this exact chart much earlier than Aug 2012, like last fall at the earliest but more than likely around April 2012.

2) I would have a very small growth of spending over the budget as well, since we are still based on a budget passed in 2008.

3) The 2009 stimulus bill pretty much went hand in hand with the ARRA 2009 as it only proceeded it by a week. So it is fair to add it to Obama. Add to it the military actions in Egypt, Libya and Afghanistan as well as some ship movements and patrols here and there and really we have not done much more than the 2008 budget on extra spending. Most of the Afghan actions would be on par with Iraq operations until 2008. The increase budget on the drones however, may be part of that increase. Certainly the multitude of globe trotting vacations that require separate planes and security details for the First Family with the President to arrive with his own at a later date hasn't helped much.

4) Also, another trick of the figures is comparing in three year bursts. W would fail twice due to the sudden expense and reaction to 9/11 and the Iraq war. The stimulus and reactions to the economy crashing in 2007-2008 would also skew the numbers quite a bit.

5) Economic growth itself has been lackluster the past three years as well. And we really still short of 2007-2008 numbers. So while infrastructure spending has been mentioned a million times, very little has been spent on it since the ARRA in 2009. Which really spent about as much on the green signs proclaiming "this pothole filling was due to Obama's 14 pen signature in Feb 2009.

So yeah, sure, I can believe that he has spent a lower increased percentage of the budget of record, which is still 2008. However compared to say 2005's budget, I bet he doesn't fair as well. And certainly would be blown away by 2002's budget.

All this is silly -

I am a simple man how, will one of you economic wizards please explain how one takes a debt increase of 2 trillion over 8 years (Regan) and equate that to less than an increase of 3.9 trillion in under 4 years (Obama) and say that Obama spends less.

Seems to me like spending 2 trillion more than you make over 8 years is way less egregious than spending 3.9 or so more than you make over 4? Perhaps I am too stupid to get this - or does federal budget math use different rules than regular math?

Same with Bush - Obama has raised the debt by 1 trillion more than Bush did in both of his terms and Obama did it all in under a 4 year period. Please how is this less spending?

Hell, Obama has raised the debt in 4 years by a greater amount than the US spent to fight WWII in its entirety for 4 years on 2 contenents - which is adjusted dollars is about 3.5 trillion. (Including the debt interest payments.)

What do we have to show for it? High unemplyment and growth that is abysmal. At least we got something out of our 3.5 trillion for WWII.

Or is this one of those things like the budget according to Harry Reid that the average American is just unable to understand the nuances of and is best left to the experts in government. Is this again something we are supposed to trust our betters to figure out?

Please help me see how Obama spends less?

It's smoke and mirror bull#. The fact we are even discussing which of the last 8 presidents spent us the least trillions into debt is absurd.......

I think there's one other point to be made which I haven't noticed. The Nutting chart makes the assumption that all of the spending in FY '09 should be credited to Bush, even though he was only in office for four months of it. There were very large expenditures made in FY '09 based on Obama's stimulus, etc. That spending drove the spending way up, and from that massive spending figure, the spending hasn't gone rapidly higher, but still higher every year.

The chart is, to put it politely, misleading. And certainly the OP's headline is false.

reply to post by charles1952


The chart clearly states the 2009 stimulus spending (Obama's) were attributed to him (look at the asterisk). The 2009 budget was written by GW Bush and passed by the 110th congress, 4 months before Obama came into office.

Again, the facts:
2009 United States federal budget

Submitted by:
- George W. Bush
Submitted to:
- 110th Congress
Total revenue:
- $2.7 trillion (requested)
- $2.105 trillion (enacted)
Total expenditures:
- $3.107 trillion (requested)
- $3.518 trillion (enacted)
Deficit:
- $407 billion (requested)
- $1.413 trillion (enacted)
Debt:
- $12.867455 trillion (requested)
Website: US Government Printing Office

Here is a revenue / spending comparison.

Bush43 / Obama ...... in perspective.

reply to post by xuenchen


Again, 2009 belongs to GW Bush. Just as 2001 belongs to Clinton.

When a new president comes into office they are not the ones who pass that years budget. The 2009 budget came from Bush and the 110th congress. Whoever wins the 2012 election will have the 2013 budget already passed and in effect for 4 months before they even get into office in January of that year.

reply to post by xuenchen


The reality:

reply to post by Blackmarketeer


Even so, for 7 year, bush spent 2,134,000 into the hole

in 3 obama spent 4,040,000 into the hole

Thats almost double, in half the time.


I still cannot believe I am talking about pissing trillions of dollars into the hole like this is normal......

reply to post by Blackmarketeer

Dear Blackmarketeer,

Thank you for that 2009 budget information, I think that proves part of my point.

Total revenue:
- $2.7 trillion (requested)
- $2.105 trillion (enacted)
Total expenditures:
- $3.107 trillion (requested)
- $3.518 trillion (enacted)
Deficit:
- $407 billion (requested)
- $1.413 trillion (enacted)

This tells us that Bush requested more revenue, less spending, and a smaller deficit than that passed by the totally Democratic Congress and signed by Obama. This shows the start of Obama's spending and the cause of more than $1 trillion dollars in deficits more than Bush asked for.

Nutting’s “and not to Bush” line is just a sleight of hand. He’s hoping you won’t notice that he said “$140 billion” and not “$825 billion,” and will be fooled into thinking that he’s counting the entire stimulus bill as Obama’s spending.
. . .
Obama also spent the second half of the Troubled Asset Relief Fund (TARP). These were discretionary funds meant to prevent a market meltdown after Lehman Brothers collapsed. By the end of 2008, it was clear the panic had passed, and Bush announced that he wouldn’t need to spend the second half of the TARP money.

But on Jan. 12, 2009, Obama asked Bush to release the remaining TARP funds for Obama to spend as soon as he took office. By Oct. 1, Obama had spent another $200 billion in TARP money. That, too, gets credited to Bush, according to the creative accounting of Rex Nutting.

Frugal-Cafe

There may be some discussion on the issue, but I think it's a little much to praise Obama for not spending money.

With respect,
Charles1952