Obama's Spending Whopper is SOOO Laughable It Won't Fool Anyone But Fools

Over $5 trillion in new debt is NOT George Bush's fault!

One of my favorite quotes from Winston Churchill is "A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on." That's usually the case when the lie gets more attention than the later correction which many people seem to overlook or ignore.

But in this case, the lie is SOOOO absurd that it might as well be a joke for late night television.

At a campaign event in Iowa on Thursday Obama said this:

OBAMA: "Federal spending since I took office has risen at the slowest pace of any President in almost 60 years."

“I don’t know how they've [Republicans] been bamboozling folks into thinking that they are the responsible, fiscally-disciplined party. They run up these wild debts and then when we take over we have to clean it up,” Obama said. “And then they point and say, 'Look how irresponsible they are.' Look at facts, look at the numbers.

Obama's ridiculous claim is based on commentary which magically appeared earlier in the week by a man named Rex Nutting. Nutting (the name should have been a give away) put together a chart which attempts to show Obama as the most fiscally responsible president of modern times.

O.K. now that you've cleaned the coffee off your keyboard and stopped laughing, let's look into the claim.

Wash Post Fact Check: Three Pinocchios


The basis for Nutting's claim is that in Obama's first year in office the spending, which was at a record high, was all due to Bush's budget since the fiscal year 2009 started in October 2008 when Bush was still President. The claim is another variation on the "it's Bush's fault" theme that has been a hallmark of Obama's incompetent administration.

The problem is that most of the spending bills for FY 2009 were not passed by Congress until AFTER Obama took office so that Democrats could load them up like a Christmas tree with their favorite pork barrel projects. Here at Mike's America we sounded the warning bell at the beginning of the Democrat spendfest in February 2009. Bush signed only 3 out of 12 spending appropriations for FY2009. Obama signed the rest. Bush's budget proposed spending of $3.1 trillion for FY 2009. Obama ended up spending $3.5 trillion. A 17.9% increase.

A better way to look at spending is the percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) necessary to support it. Traditionally approximately 20% of all economic activity in the United States has gone to support government. Under Obama the lid was blown off that already high figure. James Pethokoukis points out that most of Obama's spending has been at 24% of GDP.

In giving the White House claim of fiscal restraint 3 Pinocchios the Washington Post Fact Checker said:

In the post-war era, federal spending as a percentage of the U.S. economy has hovered around 20 percent, give or take a couple of percentage points. Under Obama, it has hit highs not seen since the end of World War II — completely the opposite of the point asserted by [White House Spokesman]Carney.

Obama Claim "Whopper of the Year"

Columnist Charles Krauthammer called the Obama claim the "whopper of the year." But this may be the one time the big lie won't get around the world while the truth is still putting it's pants on. Americans who have paid a modicum of attention know that under Obama the debt has increased more than $5 trillion in three and a half years. Bush was long gone and chopping brush at the ranch by then. And perhaps we need to remind the uninformed in 2008 candidate Obama denounced $4 trillion in new debt under President Bush over eight years as "irresponsible...unpatriotic."

This time around the big lie is just soooo laughable that the truth won't even have to put it's pants on!