On Tuesday, GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney railed against President Obama for what the vulture capitalist called a “prairie fire of debt,” insisting that the president has “spent more and borrowed more” instead of putting out the fire. Romney accuses Obama of increasing the budget deficit while overseeing a “melancholy” economic recovery.
Once again, Mittens lies through his million dollar pearly whites.
As ThinkProgress points out:
Federal spending is lower now than it was when President Obama took office. I’ll pause to let you absorb the news.
In January 2009, before President Obama had even taken the oath of office, annual spending was set to total 24.9 percent of gross domestic product. Total spending this year, fiscal year 2012, is expected to top out at 23.4 percent of GDP.
Here’s another interesting fact. Taxes today are lower than they were on inauguration day 2009. Back in January 2009, the CBO projected that total federal tax revenue that year would amount to 16.5 percent of GDP. This year? 15.8 percent.
One last nugget. The deficit this year is going to be lower than what it was on the day President Obama took office. Back then, the CBO said the 2009 deficit would be 8.3 percent of GDP. This year’s deficit is expected to come in at 7.6 percent.
I thought Mittens was supposed to be one of those rare conservatives who can actually grasp math.
The truth is (and this is one that the right-wing detests) that the majority of our current national debt is the direct result of three Bush-era actions:
- Unfunded war in Afghanistan
- Unfunded war in Iraq
- Tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans
Our current debt numbers have also increased on paper for one tiny reason: the Bush administration kept the debt from both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars off the books during his presidency. In a move of transparency, President Obama had those numbers reflected in the budget to show their real costs.
About Stew Steve
awesome!
What do those graphs look like if you use actual dollar figures instead of percentage of GDP?
The chart from CATO institute uses the actual spending dollars, and gives an estimate of 5% increase compounded each year, for a 5-year total of 28% GDP. The study did not include TARP, but included military spending in Iraq and Afghanistan. Also note, that GW kept war spending off the books, a line item that President Obama added. Did you adjust for that when you were running your actual dollars?
Discussing this with a person on Facebook and did some research. It looks like two of the trends are misleading when graphed as percentage GDP instead of actual dollars. I have pasted my Facebook comment below:
http://www.downsizinggovernment.org/president-obamas-spending shows Obama’s estimated expenditures for 2012 and proposed budget for 2013 as holding relatively stable when expressed in dollars.
This CBO link (the second from the article you linked) http://cbo.gov/publication/43119 leads to a PDF at http://cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/March2012Baseline.pdf that shows the annual deficit dropping about half next year and to roughly a quarter of the current level (200-300 billion dollars), so that graph trend is correct.
That same PDF also shows annual revenues increasing year-over-year, not declining as the graph shows when expressed in percentage GDP.
Sum result, two of the three graphs are misleading due to the way the data is expressed.
This graph came from Think Progress; I’ll run the numbers, exclude TARP, and include military spending for both Presidents Bush and Obama. When I’m done, I’ll post a new chart with only the spending $$.
The numbers CATO used look very familiar – the numbers for FY Sept 2003 – FY Sept 2009 do not reflect costs for Iraq and Afghanistan because Bush kept those numbers off the books. So, the CATO chart poses its own distortions. It’s always good to offer multiple perspectives that paint a complete picture, so I do appreciate your input. Be sure to check back with us next week for an updated chart.