Obama: 'Since I’ve Been President, Federal Spending Has Risen at Lowest Pace in Nearly 60 Years’... this is one of the BIGGEST lies to come out of the mouth of our president.
The Pinocchio Test
Carney suggested the media were guilty of “sloth and laziness,” but he might do better next time than cite an article he plucked off the Web, no matter how much it might advance his political interests. The data in the article are flawed, and the analysis lacks context — context that could easily could be found in the budget documents released by the White House.
The White House might have a case that some of the rhetoric concerning Obama’s spending patterns has been overblown, but the spokesman should do a better job of checking his facts before accusing reporters of failing to do so. The picture is not as rosy as he portrayed it when accurate numbers, taken in context, are used.
WASHINGTON (AP) - FACT CHECK: Obama off on thrifty spending claim
"You can only make him look good by ignoring the early years and adopting the hope and not the reality of the years in his budget," said Holtz-Eakin, a GOP economist and president of the American Action Forum, a free market think tank.
So how does Obama measure up?
If one assumes that TARP and the takeover of Fannie and Freddie by the government as one-time budgetary anomalies and remove them from calculations — an approach taken by Holtz-Eakin — you get the following picture:
—A 9.7 percent increase in 2009, much of which is attributable to Obama.
—A 7.8 percent increase in 2010, followed by slower spending growth over 2011-13.
—Much of the slower growth reflects the influence of Republicans retaking control of the House and their budget and debt deal last summer with Obama.
—All told, government spending now appears to be growing at an annual rate of roughly 3 percent over the 2010-2013 period, rather than the 0.4 percent claimed by Obama and the MarketWatch analysis.
The argument was always absurd on its face. The last fully Republican budget was FY2007, which came in at $2.77 trillion. The last Bush/Democrat budget was FY2008, which was $2.982 trillion. The FY2009 budget, which Obama signed into law and which was passed by a Democrat-controlled Congress, was $3.517 trillion with a $1.4 trillion deficit. That’s a year-on-year increase of nearly 18%, and those numbers come straight from the White House website. If you prefer the figures in percentage of GDP, as Kessler noted yesterday, we went from 20.8% of GDP in FY2008 to 25.2% in FY2009, which is an increase of 22% year on year.
Nor does it get any better. Using FY2008 as the baseline comparison, FY2010′s budget was $3.456 trillion, an increase of 15.88% over the last Bush/Democrat budget. FY2011′s $3.603 trillion budget was a 20.8% increase, and FY2012′s projected $3.795 trillion (the White House projection, mind you) is an increase of 27.26% over the last Bush budget — in just four budget years. An argument that this is a demonstration of fiscal discipline would have to come straight out of the pages of George Orwell’s 1984.
"The chocolate ration went up to 25 grams per week" The chocolate ration in 1983 was 30 grams per week. (For comparison, a standard Hershey's Chocolate Bar is 43 grams) In the year 1984, the chocolate ration went up to 25 grams per week. Winston himself is charged with the task of re-writing history to make this little feat possible...
Long live Big Brother. More bullshit from the liar in chief.
It just goes to show you how stupid the Obama administration thinks this country is. Maybe the Obamatrons, but not anyone with at least a few active brain cells.
The left is angry because they are now being judged by the content of their character and not by the color of their skin.
One needs to look at individual budget categories and compare all fiscal years, and not include any TARP funds that were paid back. Also consider the stimulus spending that creates a new higher budget baseline for some items.
The real story here is the main stream media creating and running with it and not much critical analysis. Ho Hum.
If you want to be, press one. If you want not to be, press 2
Republicans are red, democrats are blue, neither of them, gives a flip about you.
