Obama spending vs. Republican spending

[Doove]

All you tea-partiers who actually think the Republican Romney will be better than Obama has been, raise your hand so we can all laugh at you.



And gee, i wonder what the economy would look like if Obama increased government spending by 8.7% instead of just 1.4%.

[Doove]

Oops. Link.

[slim deez]

If you think Romney has Tea Party support, that is probably your real picture. He's just another liberal. Congrats on the 20 trillion in debt. You'll be exstatic when the debt gets up to 40 trillion.

[Mini Racer]

First, and I don't know because with numbers it all depends on your presentation. I wonder if Obama's spending percentages look lower because as a percentage of growth the larger the number you start with, the lower the number of growth as a percentage. Maybe this chart factors that in, but I doubt it. Simple math tells me if I owe 4 trillion when I get the presidency, and I pass several stimulus plans of hundreds of million dollars, a trillion dollar health care plan, and god only knows what else, the number of growth would look higher. I suspect this is an example of targeted bull poop. Personally, I don't believe any numbers coming out of anywhere. All politicians suck. They have all contributed to our problems with over spending, and by making half the country dependent on them. None of them should be re-elected.

[Mini Racer]

And no I don't want Romney, I didn't want McCain.... But I want 4 more years with this racist socialist even less.

[CuteOldGuy]

Doofe, you don't even read what you post, do you? Here are some excerpts from the article:

"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."

So, Obama wanted to spend more, but those Wascally Wepublicans stopped him.

"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."


At least he's admitting that the stimulus was a failure.

Final question. If Obama (and Congress) aren't spending, why has the national debt increased by almost 50% since Obama took office? Even if Obama is only spending the same as President Bush, then are we saying that Bush was doing a great job, like some say Obama is? Never mind that Obama promised to cut the deficit in half during his first term. He hasn't decreased it a dime.

This is economic smoke and mirrors. Thanks, Doofe. It's funny when you don't pre-read your citations.

[TheDaliLama]

....down goes frazier.

[Doove]

Originally Posted by CuteOldGuy

"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."[/COLOR]

So, Obama wanted to spend more, but those Wascally Wepublicans stopped him.

And if Reagan and the 2 Bush's were kings who could impose their will, i have no doubt their spending would have been well over the 8.7% etc that it was. So the point stands.

And about the economy? Those wascally webuplicans are on record as stating they want Obama to fail, after all.

[Guest123018-4]

Because Obama and the Democrats have not been able to come up with a budget they have been in a continuing resolution that has capped the spending at the last budget presented and approved. This is why he is shifting money from one area to another to pay for his programs, raiding Medicare and others including the defense. Spending has not decreased under Obama but he has not been able to get to the spending levels he would like because of the inability to come up with a budget.

[Texas Contrarian]

The tag team of Messrs. Bush and Obama have combined to produce a number of the most fiscally reckless acts in our nation's history.

The only reason the rate of spending increases since Obama's inauguration appear so miniscule is that he started with a very high base. FY2009 ended, of course, in Spetember of 2009, so it began with a Bush budget. GWB had already larded up the budget to a frightening degree, and had been doing so for years. In 2008, he even called for -- and got passed -- a ridiculously ineffective $160 billion "stimulus package" that involved sending out checks to just about every low-income household in the country.

But that wasn't enough for Obama, Pelosi, and Reid. They decided to double (Quadruple? Quintuple?) down on failure with an $860 billion political payoffs and vote-buying scheme which had nothing to do with generating sustainable prospects for economic growth.

The funniest part of the article is the last sentence, where the author said this:

"By the way, real government spending rose 12.3% a year in Hoover’s four years. Now there was a guy who knew how to attack a depression by spending government money!"

(That worked great, didn't it?)

For some of you guys it's all about raw partisanship. When the opposing party starts to undertake a fiscal kamikaze mission, it's outrageous and will head the nation toward a calamity. But when your guys do it, it's somehow all OK!

[yaddayadda]

Obama ran Washington D.C. for two years with majorities is both houses.....so if he isn't king now, he was then. All I saw was waste and down right stealing from the American Tax Payer.

I ain't no hater but this President is nothing more than a Chicago Ward boss that is in over his head as no other President before him. Romney is gonna be the third Bush term but maybe American Corporations will expand a little and maybe some jobs might get produced....I dunno both parties are crooks and liars....there needs to be a box on the ballot that allows the voter to just vote against the incumbent. Get rid of all of them and maybe a new start might help.

[Doove]

Originally Posted by CaptainMidnight

The tag team of Messrs. Bush and Obama have combined to produce a number of the most fiscally reckless acts in our nation's history.

The only reason the rate of spending increases since Obama's inauguration appear so miniscule is that he started with a very high base.

Fair point. Then let's expand our horizon a little and look at the 2 Reagan terms and first Bush term, and then look at the 2 Bush terms and the first Obama term. 3 terms under Reagan/Bush? 19% increase. 3 Terms under Bush/Obama? 16.8% increase. So Obama is clearly not the only President who "started with a high base".

Parse it however you want; the fact is that in the last 30 years, the closest we've come to anything resembling fiscal sanity has been under Clinton and Obama.

[Guest123018-4]

If what Bush did was so bad why did Obama not reduce spending and the deficit like he said he would? Oh yeah it was worse than he thought so there was no way he could cut spending knowing thast less revenue would be coming in.

[Texas Contrarian]

Originally Posted by Doove

Fair point. Then let's expand our horizon a little and look at the 2 Reagan terms and first Bush term, and then look at the 2 Bush terms and the first Obama term. 3 terms under Reagan/Bush? 19% increase. 3 Terms under Bush/Obama? 16.8% increase. So Obama is clearly not the only President who "started with a high base".

Consider the extent to which the FY2009 base was increased by measures initially intended to get us through the 2008 crisis. TARP, for instance, was passed in late 2008 (during FY2009) and was intended to be (and should have been) a burst of one-time spending. (I don't remember exactly, but think something like $300-350 billion from TARP was spent during that fiscal year.) The author notes that Obama should be responsible for about $140 of stimulus spending and a few other things, but doesn't mention that in normal times, a budget is put together before the start of a fiscal year -- and that's it. But there was a "reconciliation bill" Obama signed a couple of months into his term. There were objections that he had allowed congress to pork up the bill unjustifiably, but he was dismissive of those, saying that was "last year's business" and that we should move on. In other words, a number of bailout, stimulus spending, and reconciliation items were included that normally would not have seen the light of day.

Just a few weeks after taking office, Obama signed the ARRA, arguing that it was necessary to sustain a big spending binge in order to mitigate the severity of the recession and propel the economy to a robust recovery (although it obviously did no such thing).

So all in all, I don't think Nutting did a very objective job of painting a picture intended to show how Obama is supposedly not a big spender. The FY2009 surge should have been a one-off rather than part of something with which to form a new baseline.

Originally Posted by Doove

Parse it however you want; the fact is that in the last 30 years, the closest we've come to anything resembling fiscal sanity has been under Clinton and Obama.

I'll agree with that statement if you'll knock off the last two words!

My key point is that a president's fiscal record should not be judged simply on what his rate of spending increase over a certain base year may be. Rather, it should be judged on how he wants to spend the money, what the current fiscal outlook is, and what the prospects are for establishing a path toward fiscal sustainability.

By those criteria, I don't think Barack Obama deserves a very good grade.

[rodog44]

Doofus, the pres has subitted three budgets that not even one democrat woud vote for. The all went down 99 to 0.