About the idea that Obama’s spending has been tame
You’ve heard of lies, damned lies, and statistics? Well, here’s Exhibit A: a column at MarketWatch by Rex Nutting.
Nutting’s column, titled “Obama spending binge never happened,” has caused a lot of excitement among people who would like to believe it’s true. And the bottom-line numbers — which are as far as Nutting goes in his column — do show that total spending has risen more slowly between fiscal 2009 and fiscal 2013 than you might have otherwise believed. Annual federal spending growth during President Obama’s first term, Nutting’s numbers show, has been 1.4 percent. That would be slower than in any of the seven previous terms, dating to the beginning of the Reagan years. Going out of his way to be even-handed, Nutting even graciously attributes Obama’s “stimulus” spending in FY09 to Obama rather than to George W. Bush, under whom that fiscal year began.
What a guy!
But what Nutting’s surface-level “analysis” fails to acknowledge — aside from the fact that he’s giving Obama full credit for a level of spending that won’t even begin for four more months, making it a completely unknowable quantity — is the vast amount of spending that was supposed to be temporary but instead has been baked into Uncle Sam’s cake. Accounting for the temporary-turned-permanent gives us a truer depiction of the Obama’s (sorry to say it!) spending binge.
Let’s start with the appropriations bills Obama signed for FY09 other than the stimulus. The two major ones were the $105.9 billion supplemental defense bill and the $2.9 billion “cash for clunkers” bill. So that’s $108.8 billion that ought to be put on Obama’s ledger rather than Bush’s.
Now let’s take a deeper look at the stimulus spending Nutting attributes to Obama in FY09. Nutting puts it at $140 billion. The next year’s budget, which included the FY09 spending, instead pegged it at $202 billion with an estimated $30 billion in FY13; subsequent budgets have not broken out the spending specific to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (probably because the ARRA has been so amazingly popular and successful). Nutting doesn’t tell us where he gets that $140 billion figure, and so, to avoid mixing numbers, I’m going to stick with the figures from the FY10 budget. That’s $172 billion in “temporary” spending that, under The Most Fiscally Responsible President Evah, should have disappeared.
That’s not all. Spending in FY09 also included $151 billion for the bank bailout, or TARP, and the FY13 budget puts the figure at $12 billion. That’s another net $139 billion in “temporary” spending that should have gone away. Add that to the $172 billion from the stimulus, and we’re talking about $311 billion.
Now, to be truly fair to Obama, let’s make comparisons without including the costs of Medicare, Social Security and net interest. These are big-ticket items that are growing quickly on automatic pilot, and they couldn’t have been changed without a long national debate. So, here’s what we have:
FY09 spending: $3,518 billion
Less Medicare, Social Security and net interest: $2,218 billion
Less “temporary” TARP and stimulus spending: $1,907 billion
Less Obama’s supplemental spending for defense, clunkers: $1,798 billion
The equivalent figure in Obama’s FY13 budget is $2,418 billion, which would represent an annualized growth rate of 7.7 percent. That’s five and a half times faster than the rate with which Nutting credited Obama. Once we adjust Bush’s record to account for the $108.8 billion in Obama’s supplemental FY09 spending outlined above, it places his spending as the second-fastest out of the last eight presidential terms rather than the slowest, as Nutting claimed. (The rankings are the same even if we adjust for inflation.)
Where did Obama want to stick this extra money? In International Affairs ($22 billion, or 59 percent, higher than FY09), Transportation ($30 billion, or 36 percent), Education ($42.2 billion, or 53 percent), Health (not counting Medicare, $51.5 billion, or 15 percent), Energy ($9.2 billion, or 193 percent), to name a few of the largest examples.
However, Nutting did not use Obama’s FY13 budget as a comparison. Perhaps that’s fair, given that the president’s budget was defeated 99-0 in the Senate recently. In any case, Nutting instead used the Congressional Budget Office’s projected baseline, and this really is the coup de grace for his argument.
The CBO’s projected baseline gives us an equivalent FY13 figure of $1,968 billion, which in turn gives us an annualized growth rate of 2.3 percent, which is actually OK by recent historical standards. But what is the CBO’s projected baseline? It is the agency’s estimate of what revenues and spending will be if current law is kept in place. That is, it tells us what happens if the president and Congress do nothing. For this lack of action, Nutting wants to give Obama credit.
But wait, there’s more! Even if we use the CBO projections, it is worth noting the enormous difference between Obama’s first two years, when Democrats had huge majorities in Congress, and his third and fourth years, during which Republicans have controlled the House. The annualized growth rate in the first two years was 7.7 percent; since then it’s minus-2.9 percent.
So, to conclude:
We are supposed to ignore Obama’s budget proposal, which showed his spending rising faster than what’s typical for the past 30 years, and instead give him credit for a) not going beyond the baked-in spending he set in motion early in his term and b) the gridlock that came to Washington after Republicans took over the House?
Seriously?
You will not find conservatives lauding the George W. Bush years as a model of fiscal restraint, because they weren’t. But it is just as laughable for Nutting and his fellow travelers to try to make such a claim for Obama.
– By Kyle Wingfield
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324 comments Add your comment
Finn McCool (The System isn't Broken; It's Fixed)
May 24th, 2012
2:10 pm
You don’t want dialog, honest debate, or a rational discourse.
Correct. When I want any of that I have it with someone face-to-face, not a faceless name on a blog site.
Tiberius - Banned from Bookman's and proud of it!
May 24th, 2012
2:10 pm
Kyle, way to go on handling Becky the way she needed to be handled.
Second, as was pointed out yesterday, while Obama can be credited with not increasing spending at a higher rate, his response to lower revenues should have been one of REDUCTIONS in spending, not just a slowing of the increase.
241 more days
May 24th, 2012
2:10 pm
Becky, You are full of it, Kyle has only told the truth. You are just like the rest of the libs on Jay’s site
You are a Bookman minions, you believe everything that he says.
Kyle has shown you the diference, but you are too ignorant to at least think about these.
Sorta like your argument with Fred the other day
Manny
May 24th, 2012
2:12 pm
a dad, i guess you weren’t paying attention to the fact that those big pay raises you got came at massive deficits. In fact, RR practically invented deficit spending.
So you just woke up when Obama took office. How convenient.
Tiberius - Banned from Bookman's and proud of it!
May 24th, 2012
2:12 pm
Wow. Finn finally admits that his only reason for being here is to fling poo.
That alone should get him banned.
U.S.Male
May 24th, 2012
2:13 pm
Electing Obama again would be like the Titanic backing up to hit the iceberg again.
What a joke for a President.
JP
May 24th, 2012
2:14 pm
Even if Nutting’s numbers were right, what he fails to explain is that while Obama’s percentage growth is lower than Bush’s, he’s actually spending more than Bush was by an annual rate of 1.4%. Spending under Bush reached astronomical level’s largely in part to increasing military spending during two separate wars. Now Obama took over with spending already at astronomical levels and he somehow manages to spend more. Taxing the rich will never manage to keep up with out of control spending.
Manny
May 24th, 2012
2:15 pm
U.S. Male. The Titanic was Bush. Obama was just the guy who had to clean it up. And your lot wants to put the same captain (Romney) back in just as the ship is finally beginning to right itself.
Kyle Wingfield
May 24th, 2012
2:16 pm
Michael @ 1:18: I highlighted some examples in the OP.
JF McNamara
May 24th, 2012
2:19 pm
@Kyle,
You can’t just cherry pick one of the Presidents. That’s completely wrong. You either take the data as presented or you cherry pick them all.
That’s the very basics of statistics. You’re just lying with statistics to make your own point. I’m sure I could go back and make Reagan look worse. It’s frustrating that the editors even let you put this out knowing it was biased. Does the AJC have any credibility?
Finn McCool (The System isn't Broken; It's Fixed)
May 24th, 2012
2:19 pm
Tiberius work on your reading comprehension, son.
I did not admit to any such thing. You can post on these blogs without so called “slingin’ of the poo” without feeling the need to interact with every single person you agree with or disagree with.
See, we libs allow you cons to have your views (as misguided as they may be) and still mingle amongst us. You cons, on the other hand, want to banish anyone who thinks differently than yourselves. Looking over this blog every day, there is a con crying to Kyle to ban some lib.
sad, really.
JDW
May 24th, 2012
2:20 pm
@Kyle…sorry but it is that simple…
“The biggest problem is that, if you simply delete those lines you mentioned, you get incorrect totals because some of the remaining numbers overlap (i.e., “Education, Training, Employment and Social Services” is a subtotal included in, not distinct from, “Human resources”).”
Not true, I left the lines for Education, Training, Employment and Social Services I deleted the subtotals because they include the other line items ie Medicare and SS that were deleted. I added properly
“The next problem is that you deleted “income security.” Why? That refers to things like unemployment compensation and food stamps — programs that Obama has changed since taking office. It should stay in.”
See my later post…it makes Obama look better.
“After that, while you more or less accounted for the TARP and stimulus by deleting “Commerce and Housing Credit,” that heading includes more than those two programs, which means that eliminating that line item altogether skews the results for previous years. It’s better to isolate those two programs, but this budget doc doesn’t do that — which is why I reviewed this doc but didn’t cite it.”
This is not a Budget doc these are the ACTUAL EXPENDITURES…more accurate. As I said look at the line it is immaterial.
“Finally, your method doesn’t account for the $108.8 billion I outlined in supplemental spending Obama approved for FY09 (defense and cash for clunkers). I would hope we can agree that, even in a recent federal budget, that is real money and should be attributed properly.”
Any money that was actually spent is accounted for. Appropriations do not equal expenditures.
“Instead, I recommend using Table 3.2, which is more specific than 3.1, and keeping only the totals for each department (to avoid duplication). Then, eliminate the totals for Medicare, Social Security and Net Interest.”
I will look at it but I think this one is fine.
“Then you have to get a true number for FY09. Start by subtracting $108.8B, to account for Obama’s two supplemental bills. Then you have to deal with the supposedly temporary money in FY09 for stimulus and TARP. I believe TARP should be included for purposes of calculating Bush’s spending growth, but not for purposes of calculating Obama’s (since that money was supposed to disappear, and we are trying to measure his “other” spending growth; I surmise you agree with that notion since you were open to cutting the Commerce Housing Credit line).”
This is where you are making errors just eliminating the Commerce line accounts for actual totals. Until you correct the errors the rest is bogus…you will find Obama second only to Clinton.
That Black guy
May 24th, 2012
2:21 pm
Tiberius – Banned from Bookman’s and proud of it!
May 24th, 2012
2:12 pm
Wow. Finn finally admits that his only reason for being here is to fling poo.
That alone should get him banned.
____________________________________________________________________
Nah, let it stick around to expose to us indies the way the rabid democrat mind works.
He helps push rational people AWAY from the rebid dem side.
JKL2
May 24th, 2012
2:24 pm
cheesy grits- Tell me what you were saying when W was president? They were very very very quiet
Not quiet at all. It’s just you were like obama sitting church; didn’t hear a single word that was said.
Tiberius - Banned from Bookman's and proud of it!
May 24th, 2012
2:25 pm
Focus people!
Play with the numbers all you want. Obama may of may not be increasing spending as much as his predecessors.
Doesn’t matter.
What matters is that he should have CUT spending (not just slowed the increase) given the reduction in revenues, and he didn’t do it.
MadMax
May 24th, 2012
2:27 pm
Manny –
Obama wanted this job
1) Bush is no longer president
2) The tax cuts belong to Obama and the Democrats as they are the one’s that passed the extension
3) Obama passed the payroll tax cut further eroding revenues for a program in deparate need
4) Obama passed the cash for clunkers bill
5) Obama passed the healthcare bill, which if it is constitutional, will cost way more than the projections (when has Washingtom ever been right/truthful about the cost of entitlements)
6) Obama continues to outspend all previous administrations
7) Only takes a few hundred billion here and there and you get a trillion
9) Bush is no longer president
Kyle Wingfield
May 24th, 2012
2:27 pm
xdog: ICYMI: Nutting is one of those dread “columnists,” too; his piece is branded “commentary.” So, by your standard, you shouldn’t believe him, either.
My sources are all marked with hyperlinks. You can peruse the very same documents I did, if you wish.
As for why I didn’t “call Nutting and engage him on his numbers”: Have you been to the Internet before? This is how it works: Person A writes something; People B, C and D respond; Other People E, F and G respond to A through D; and so on.
Finn McCool (The System isn't Broken; It's Fixed)
May 24th, 2012
2:27 pm
“We hates the spending, we do….whaaaaaaaaa….”
“What? Republicans are back in control? break out the check book!”
JKL, we called you folks out on that quietness way back in the W years. Many of us libs actually admired the work Bob Barr was doing. But Barr was, by far, the exception to the rule. 99% of cons didn’t utter a sound about W and Repubs spending like drunken sailors in port.
md
May 24th, 2012
2:32 pm
“Obama’s biggest initiative was adding a few hundred billion to Bush’s stimulus package.”
This is one of those tight rope walking acts……if Obama is going to allocate the bulk of the stimulus to Bush, he can not take the credit for ending the recession or any credit from those that claim the stimulus worked……..
And correct me if I am wrong Kyle, but I do not believe Nutting’s numbers include the 410B omnibus bill signed by Obama in 2009…….
Once all the real numbers come out, I think the admin may live to regret yet another knee jerk reaction……….
George P. Burdell
May 24th, 2012
2:33 pm
Michael:
First, I do enjoy a good debate and I appreciate your civility. That is something that is too often missing on these blogs. I’ve often reconsidered or modified an opinion due to the thoughts provided by someone on the opposite side of my thinking.
My figures were done on current dollars for both spending and GDP so whatever impact inflation has, it is present in both sets of numbers. Also, at least in the short term, government spending can have a direct impact on GDP so it becomes somewhat recursive in nature. I don’t mean it as a perfect metric, it just highlights the fact that there was a huge increase in spending to deal with the economic turndown and that has now been baked in. It makes for an easy comparison period and I don’t think that should be the basis for bragging rights. The bottom line is that if you compare 2011 to 2007, spending has increased at an annualized rate of 7.19% compared to GDP growth of only 1.82%. So even if we are taking a step forward, I would argue it is nowhere near a big enough step.
Your point on when appropriations are approved is also well taken but makes it nearly possible to have any kind of debate. We can hardly have one with the numbers taken at face value let alone making what could be arbitrary adjustments. I don’t think it is fair to saddle Obama with the Prescription D spending anymore than I think it is fair to saddle future presidents with ACA spending if they cannot modify it. However, it is also would not be fair to saddle FDR and Johnson with all SS and Medicare expenditures when our current crop of politicians recognize the issue but refuse to deal with it. I’m not so sure Obama, or any president for that matter, would actually spend less money if they didn’t have some baggage from prior administrations to deal with.
That Black guy
May 24th, 2012
2:35 pm
OOPS “rabid”
md
May 24th, 2012
2:38 pm
And I do believe Nutting also omitted several hundred billion that Obama requested from Bush for tarp prior to Obama’s inauguration……….
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aXTl_q8nIqk8
Kyle Wingfield
May 24th, 2012
2:39 pm
JDW: If you left the total for Education, etc. then you have a wrong total — that money is a subtotal included in the heading above it. Use Table 3.2 — it’s much more specific and more straight-forward.
And you’re wrong, that is a budget document: You are using the Historical Tables from the President’s FY13 budget. You may have noticed the word “budget” in the URL, and the fact that it is identified as a budget document on the page to which you linked. The numbers through 2011 are actual totals; from 2012 onward they are estimates or projections. In any case, as I wrote: It does not get specific enough for us to see what’s TARP, stimulus, or something else.
Of course the money spent “is accounted for,” in that it’s in the bottom line. But if you simply use the FY09 total without adjusting it, then you make Bush’s increase look (even) larger than it was, and Obama’s smaller than it actually was. I get the feeling you’re not getting my point in this whole exercise, which is to attribute responsibility for spending properly.
Now, about the Commerce line: When you look at Table 3.2, you see that it includes other things, such as the post office and deposit insurance. 2009 is not the only year when those line items were relevant: For instance, deposit insurance cost $66B in 1991 and minus-$28B in 1993. Don’t you think those numbers are relevant? If you simply delete that entire total, including those other items, you are skewing the results pre-2009.
md
May 24th, 2012
2:41 pm
“I don’t think it is fair to saddle Obama with the Prescription D spending anymore than I think it is fair to saddle future presidents with ACA spending if they cannot modify it. However, it is also would not be fair to saddle FDR and Johnson with all SS and Medicare expenditures when our current crop of politicians recognize the issue but refuse to deal with it. ”
That doesn’t make sense….it is contradictory.
Brosephus™
May 24th, 2012
2:41 pm
Enter your comments here
AmVet
May 24th, 2012
2:44 pm
You will not find conservatives lauding the George W. Bush years as a model of fiscal restraint, because they weren’t.
Perhaps, though virtually NONE of them said boo while he and his unindicted co-conspirators in congress were spending the nation’s money like spoiled brats with daddy’s credit card at the mall.
Want proof?
In January 2009 when he left office (in disgrace) his approval rating among Republicans was a jawdropping 75%!
???
How is that even possible???
Arguably the worst president in modern American history and his “base” still adored him.
The bottom line is that for years and years on end you could not find any of these so-called conservatives denouncing any of the innumerable and deadly debacles that he unleashed for eight straight years.
And only now, many years later is there even the most tepid of complaints.
So to hold these supposedly conservative Republicans up as either a) men of moral courage or b) paragons of fiscal responsibility is ludicrous with a capital L…
Brosephus™
May 24th, 2012
2:45 pm
Kyle
Not trying to debate pro or con for your posting, but you do have at least one thing factually incorrect in your analysis.
That’s not all. Spending in FY09 also included $151 billion for the bank bailout, or TARP
TARP was passed as one financial package totaling $700 Billion that was signed into law in October 2008. If you’re counting spending that Obama signed, the TARP would not count as he did not pass any legislation in regards to TARP. The 2nd phase was allocation of more of the funding that was passed in 2008. That’s something I caught off the top of my head.
Thulsa Doom
May 24th, 2012
2:45 pm
Good God. Nutting’s misleading and dishonest article just got vaporized, obliterated, eviscerated, and utterly annihilated.
Tiberius - Banned from Bookman's and proud of it!
May 24th, 2012
2:45 pm
And let’s all remember that Obama made a point to promise to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term.
Whether he has or has not increased spending more than other Presidents, he didn’t do what he promised.
Brosephus™
May 24th, 2012
2:46 pm
Oops, meant to say Obama didn’t **sign** any legislation in regards to TARP.
I Report (-: You Whine )-: mmm, mmmm, mmmmm! Just sayin...
May 24th, 2012
2:46 pm
Uh oh, looks like obozo was for government spending before he was against it, just sayin…
Tiberius - Banned from Bookman's and proud of it!
May 24th, 2012
2:46 pm
Hiya, Thula and Brosephus!
md
May 24th, 2012
2:49 pm
soco…..look at my link….Obama requested funds for tarp through Bush…..one can hardly allocate that to Bush.
Brosephus™
May 24th, 2012
2:51 pm
Tiberius
Wassup!!!!
md
Where did you post that link? I don’t recall exactly how TARP was done, but I thought it was all one package that was done in two parts.
Kyle Wingfield
May 24th, 2012
2:54 pm
Brosephus: The authorization was for $700B; actual money out the door was less. In any case, my only reason for point out that total is that it was a temporary measure that sharply inflated spending in FY09. If Obama had truly kept government spending as flat as Nutting claims, then we should have seen a sharp decrease as TARP and the stimulus faded away. That’s not the case, because he raised spending a great deal elsewhere — just as some of us at the time warned would happen.
a dad
May 24th, 2012
2:55 pm
Manny – my first raise (the rest were pretty standard) were to make up for Carter raping the military. I take it you’ve never served, otherwise you wouldn’t begrudge the military sufficient raises for placing life and limb in harms’s way, something I sort of get the feeling you look down upon. I’ll go back to may initial standard of can’t spend more than you earn. Unless of course you’re on the gov’t entitlement dole (and manny, if say serving in the military is the same as an entitlement, you will have lost any atom of credibility or intelligence hence forward).
ragnar danneskjold
May 24th, 2012
2:56 pm
Good essay, well done. Frankly I cannot believe even the most-crazed Kool-aid-sipping leftist believed the thesis of the Nutting article, even if one assumes that the average leftist has significantly less common sense than the average ninth grader.
Brosephus™
May 24th, 2012
2:56 pm
md
Found it. I see what you’re saying, but wasn’t that $350 B just the second half of the $700 Billion that was already allocated? If you’re crediting Obama simply with spending, then I’d agree with you. If you’re talking about spending that he signed into law, I’d have to disagree with that one. The other things Kyle had appear pretty accurate.
As an aside, I’ve asked countless people what Obama signed into law that added to the debt so much when the point is raised about him adding $5T to the debt. Kyle’s list is the most comprehensive I’ve seen anywhere. Funny that nobody could list anything beyond the stimulus before. Kyle may have just killed two birds with one stone.
Thulsa Doom
May 24th, 2012
2:56 pm
Great job Kyle. You just completely laid waste to another liberal lie.
Pizzaman
May 24th, 2012
2:57 pm
Ah! Let’s Face it. Both party’s suck and their members, duly elected by us, the uninformed, lie to get our vote then do the bidding of the highest bidder. All they care about is raising enough money to get reelected. But I have faith no matter who wins the Country will survive. The only question is in what form. Guess I’ll have to vote for Pat Paulson again and hope for the best.
Kyle Wingfield
May 24th, 2012
2:59 pm
All right, I have to go write Sunday’s column now. Will be back later.
Now with Ten Percent Fewer Calories
May 24th, 2012
2:59 pm
To summarize, per the cited column, Republican presidents since Reagan have had higher annualized fed spending growth rates than Democrat presidents. Thanks for clearing that up for us, Kyle.
Do tell us, Kyle, about those Republican plans to slash that spending growth and please be specific. Don’t leave out a single detail especially when it comes to how much taxes will be slashed and for whom and how much military spending will be increased and how much medicare and medicaid and unemployment benefits and children’s healthcare, etc., will be slashed and how much the debt ceiling will be raised still under those Republican plans. Oh please, tell us the details. Give us a comparison of each proposal and don’t leave out a thing, Kyle. Oh Please! If you don’t do it for us, do it for your children!
Brosephus™
May 24th, 2012
3:00 pm
Kyle
Gotcha. The way I see it, both arguments are correct. WIthout going into specifics, Nutting is correct in saying that he’s kept spending pretty flat. Your point, and others as well, is also correct when you look at the one time spending versus what would have been “normal” spending, if normal is a good term for it. I think Nutting’s simply playing with semantics in order to be correct, but in doing so, he has a thread of truth to cling to. I won’t say he’s right or wrong, but by avoiding specifics, he gives himself an out. He’d probably make a great politician too.
Gordon
May 24th, 2012
3:02 pm
Kyle,
There was a big fight about this on the Bookman blog yesterday, and I pointed out to Jay exactly what you wrote here. I even suggested that you and he had a bet that Jay could convince his readers that Obama was actually a frugal president, and that based on their responses you owed him a lunch.
I respect Jay, and know he is NOT a stupid person. You guys much get a good laugh together from time to time.
md
May 24th, 2012
3:14 pm
“If you’re crediting Obama simply with spending, then I’d agree with you. If you’re talking about spending that he signed into law, I’d have to disagree with that one.”
I see them as one and the same if Nutting is comparing spending. If my spouse spends on my behalf, I can’t turn around and blame it on her.
IT"S ALL BUSHS"S FAULT
May 24th, 2012
3:15 pm
IT”S ALL BUSHS”S FAULT..
Tiberius - Banned from Bookman's and proud of it!
May 24th, 2012
3:19 pm
“Do tell us, Kyle, about those Republican plans to slash that spending growth and please be specific.”
Ten Percent, I suggest you peruse this site:
http://www.roadmap.republicans.budget.house.gov/
Google is your friend.
Now with Ten Percent Fewer Calories
May 24th, 2012
3:19 pm
Major Contributors to Deficit Spending. If you wish to remove the word “deficit” from that statement, the solution is simple–pay for wars and tax cuts and prescription benefits etc., rather than borrow money to cover the costs.
AmVet
May 24th, 2012
3:22 pm
IT”S ALL BUSHS”S FAULT.
Nope, not in light of the irrefutable fact that I posted earlier:
In January 2009 when he left office (in disgrace) his approval rating among Republicans was a jawdropping 75%!
It is actually more correct to write that for Republicans, NOTHING IS BUSH’S FAULT.
Now with Ten Percent Fewer Calories
May 24th, 2012
3:23 pm
TB,
I could alternatively consider this googled source. Give it try. It actually compares the different plans.