Obama Administration Spending: The Opposite of What Repugs Say It Is

Bless those repugs' hearts. Even after being called out time and time again on how they are wrong about everything, they're not discouraged. They keep on proving themselves even yet more wrong than ever before.

Determined little motherfuckers.

Blue Texan at Crooks and Liars:

Jonah Goldberg went on Piers Morgan Monday night to promote his latest "nanny-boo-boo liberals!" book, and belched up a favorite right-wing canard.

SNIP

But Jonah is, of course, totally, hilariously, absolutely wrong about this supposed spending binge under Obama.

First, as of 2011, Bush's policies had cost the country over $5T, compared to Obama's $1T.

You want to look at growth in government spending? Obama's lower than George W. Bush and Reagan.

What about government purchases of goods and services? Yep, they've collapsed under Obama.

Government employees? A record decline under Obama.

"Obama's record spending spree is bankrupting the nation" is yet another Big Lie right-wingers like Goldberg -- who incidentally was a cheerleader for Bush/Cheney while they were turning record surpluses into record deficits -- are telling about Obama. It's a lie Mitt Romney will tell during the campaign.

And it's a lie that the media will probably them get away with.

It's actually even wronger than that.

Adam Peck at ThinkProgress:

Republicans have continually decried the Obama Administration’s “runaway spending” since he took office, blaming him for growing deficits and a mounting national debt. But a quick glance at the facts show that, compared to George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan, Obama is actually embracing fiscal conservatism more than any other president in recent history, with the exception of fellow Democrat Bill Clinton.

The Atlantic crunches the numbers:

For all the talk you hear about Obama’s historic spree, government spending actually hasn’t increased so dramatically under this president. The stimulus was big, but it’s over. It’s been replaced by, if not austerity (which has struck our states and cities) then a hard correction to the center.

Evidence of the cost-cutting measures employed by Obama can be found in the last several jobs reports. While the overall number of jobs created has steadily increased for the last several months, those advances have all come entirely in the private sector. Public sector jobs have actually been on the decline for much of the last year as government spending on some agencies and programs have been cut.

Economics Professor Mark Thoma provides a helpful chart on his blog that puts President Obama’s per capita spending into context, comparing it with the spending of every president in the last 40 years.



That’s likely a hard pill to swallow for Obama’s critics, who have spent years hammering his administration for record spending and fiscal irresponsibility. The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson put it best: “Going by federal expenditures…it would seem that if Obama’s a socialist, Ronald Reagan is Karl Marx with an ICBM.”

The irony, of course, is that our economy is still stuck in a depression because President Obama has not spent trillions of dollars on massive infrastructure projects that put Americans back to work.

If the president is going to campaign on his low spending, he'd be better off pitching it as a catastrophe for which the repugs are to blame.