Forbes: Obama: Biggest Government Spender in the History of the World

[Spaceman Spiff]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterferrara/2012/06/14/president-obama-the-biggest-government-spender-in-world-history/

Interesting. I'd like to see the ES Tailgate political pundits debate over this one.

The U.S. has never before had a President who thinks so little of the American people that he imagines he can win re-election running on the opposite of reality. But that is the reality of President Obama today.

What this shows most importantly is that the recognition is starting to break through to the general public regarding the President’s rhetorical strategy that I’ve have been calling Calculated Deception. The latter is deliberately using a misleading argument to paint a false picture. That has been a central Obama practice not only throughout his entire presidency, but also as the foundation of his 2008 campaign strategy, and actually throughout his whole career.

Rest assured, Ms. Noonan, that the President is not as nuts as he may seem at times. He knows very well that he is not a careful spender. His whole mission is to transform the U.S. not into a Big Government country, but a Huge Government country, because only a country run by a Huge Government can be satisfactorily controlled by superior, all wise and beneficent individuals like himself. That is why he is at minimum a Swedish socialist, if not worse. Notice, though, how far behind the times he and his weak minded supporters are, as even the Swedes have abandoned Swedish socialism as a failure.

The analysis by Internet commentator Rex Nutting on which Obama based his claim begins by telling us “What people forget (or never knew) is that the first year of every presidential term starts with a budget approved by the previous administration and Congress.” Not exactly.

The previous administration, or President, proposes a budget. The previous Congress approves a budget. And what Congress approves can be radically different from what the President proposes.

As Art Laffer and Steve Moore showed in the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, President Bush began a spending spree in his term that erased most of the gains in reduced government spending as a percent of GDP achieved by the Republican Congress in the 1990s led by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, in conjunction with President Clinton. But for fiscal year 2009, President Bush in February, 2008 proposed a budget with just a 3% spending increase over the prior year. Fiscal year 2009 ran from October 1, 2008 until September 30, 2009. President Obama’s term began on January 20, 2009.

Recall, however, that in 2008 Congress was controlled by Democrat majorities, with Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House, and the restless Senator Obama already running for President, just four years removed from his glorious career as a state Senator in the Illinois legislature. As Hans Bader reported on May 26 for the Washington Examiner, the budget approved and implemented by Pelosi, Obama and the rest of the Congressional Democrat majorities provided for a 17.9 percent increase in spending for fiscal 2009!

Actually, President Obama and the Democrats were even more deeply involved in the fiscal 2009 spending explosion than that. As Bader also reports, “The Democrat Congress [in 2008], confident Obama was going to win in 2008, passed only three of fiscal 2009’s 12 appropriations bills (Defense, Military Construction and Veterans Affairs, and Homeland Security). The Democrat Congress passed the rest of them [in 2009], and [President] Obama signed them.” So Obama played a very direct role in the runaway fiscal 2009 spending explosion.

[Tulane Skins Fan]

Sounds like a lunatic with a keyboard.

[Spaceman Spiff]

Sounds like a lunatic with a keyboard.

I'll check the "Attack the writer/source" off the checklist.

Anyone else?

[wshngtn1]

Sounds like a lunatic with a keyboard.

That's better than a lunatic in the White House.

[Bang]

Who knows. Last week we get an article claiming the lowest deficit spending in 50 years, and now we get this.

I think the only truth to come out of any of it is that no one can trust any source for anything anymore.

We are so ****ed.

~Bang

[GoSkins0721]

Who knows. Last week we get an article claiming the lowest deficit spending in 50 years, and now we get this.

I think the only truth to come out of any of it is that no one can trust any source for anything anymore.

We are so ****ed.

~Bang

FTW /thread

[Spaceman Spiff]

Who knows. Last week we get an article claiming the lowest deficit spending in 50 years, and now we get this.

I think the only truth to come out of any of it is that no one can trust any source for anything anymore.

We are so ****ed.

~Bang

That's kind of what I was getting at here. I'd like to learn more about stuff like this but I don't know what the hell to believe.

So is stuff like this...

Moreover, before Obama there had never been a deficit anywhere near $1 trillion. The highest previously was $458 billion, or less than half a trillion, in 2008. The federal deficit for the last budget adopted by a Republican controlled Congress was $161 billion for fiscal year 2007. But the budget deficits for Obama’s four years were reported in Obama’s own 2013 budget as $1.413 trillion for 2009, $1.293 trillion for 2010, $1.3 trillion for 2011, and $1.327 trillion for 2012, four years in a row of deficits of $1.3 trillion or more, the highest in world history.

...just being made up? Or is that fact? Or is it not telling the entire story?

[Tulane Skins Fan]

I'll check the "Attack the writer/source" off the checklist.

Anyone else?

Fair enough, but as a moderate political thinker, when I read hyperbole like that being spewed in the first two paragraphs I just tune you out.

That's better than a lunatic in the White House.

Exactly. Obama is a lunatic.

---------- Post added June-15th-2012 at 12:00 PM ----------

Who knows. Last week we get an article claiming the lowest deficit spending in 50 years, and now we get this.

I think the only truth to come out of any of it is that no one can trust any source for anything anymore.

We are so ****ed.

~Bang

Better said.

[Dan T.]

I'll check the "Attack the writer/source" off the checklist.

Anyone else?

The author could have been more persuasive without the very first, inflammatory sentence. That sets him up as a partisan hack, so it's easy to dismiss whatever argument that follows.

[Koolblue13]

He won on a campaign that wasn't reality based and he'll do it again.

[Tulane Skins Fan]

That's kind of what I was getting at here. I'd like to learn more about stuff like this but I don't know what the hell to believe.

So is stuff like this...

...just being made up? Or is that fact? Or is it not telling the entire story?

You already know he's not telling the entire story because 1) the fact that we went into the worst recession since the Great Depression in 2008 (before Obama came into office or was elected) increased the debt alone; and 2) its well documented that Bush used what were accepted accounting tricks in his budgets like not counting the Iraq an Afghanistan Wars, which were between 100 and 200 billion dollars a year themselves.

So yea, this is hackish crap.

[Spaceman Spiff]

The author could have been more persuasive without the very first, inflammatory sentence. That sets him up as a partisan hack, so it's easy to dismiss whatever argument that follows.

Well, he is writing for Forbes and he's probably telling his intended audience what they want to hear...and they're nodding their heads. The opposition is just going to give it an eye-roll, of course.

[Tulane Skins Fan]

Well, he is writing for Forbes and he's probably telling his intended audience what they want to hear...and they're nodding their heads. The opposition is just going to give it an eye-roll, of course.

Exactly.

[Henry]

...just being made up? Or is that fact? Or is it not telling the entire story?

Right off the top of my head, Bush never included Iraq and Afghanistan in his budgets, and Obama does ...

EDIT: What Tulane said.

[Spaceman Spiff]

You already know he's not telling the entire story because 1) the fact that we went into the worst recession since the Great Depression in 2008 (before Obama came into office or was elected) increased the debt alone; and 2) its well documented that Bush used what were accepted accounting tricks in his budgets like not counting the Iraq an Afghanistan Wars, which were between 100 and 200 billion dollars a year themselves.

So yea, this is hackish crap.

So the numbers there for Obama's administration aren't true, too?

[Tulane Skins Fan]

So the numbers there for Obama's administration aren't true, too?

No, Obama does count wars. Obama made a much more transparent budget. Now, I'm sure he uses some tricks as well, and I'm not saying he doesn't play politics at all, but Obama "increased" the deficit merely by counting things - BIG THINGS - that Bush just didn't. Obama counts both Iraq and Afghanistan in his budgets.

[sjinhan]

it is an OP/ED piece so you know it is going to one of extremely biased articles...

you really can't use OP/ED as a source... at least Forbes had labeled the article as such on the website...

[DjTj]

So the numbers there for Obama's administration aren't true, too?

I think it's probably true that Obama has run the largest deficits (in non-inflation adjusted dollars) in world history. Prior to that, George W. Bush had the record. Before that, George H.W. Bush had the record. And Reagan before that. Probably Carter before that. Clinton is probably the only one of our recent Presidents who didn't get that title (and he probably just got lucky). If Romney is elected, there's a good chance he will become the new record holder.

Budget deficits don't seem to favor either political party.

[Spaceman Spiff]

I think it's probably true that Obama has run the largest deficits (in non-inflation adjusted dollars) in world history. Prior to that, George W. Bush had the record. Before that, George H.W. Bush had the record. And Reagan before that. Probably Carter before that. Clinton is probably the only one of our recent Presidents who didn't get that title (and he probably just got lucky). If Romney is elected, there's a good chance he will become the new record holder.

Budget deficits don't seem to favor either political party.

Good points.

[thebluefood]

Who knows. Last week we get an article claiming the lowest deficit spending in 50 years, and now we get this.

I think the only truth to come out of any of it is that no one can trust any source for anything anymore.

We are so ****ed.

~Bang

Yup. Seems like you can always skew the numbers to make your guy look good or the other guy look bad. A very select few seem to know the real truth, if there is a "real" truth to be found in all of this.

[PeterMP]

I think the biggest thing is that this is looking at uninflation and un-GDP adjusted dollars.

Also in terms of Sweden, during the banking crisis, the Swedish goverment actually took a share of the banks:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/23/business/worldbusiness/23krona.html

Now, I've seen here that Obama did similar things with GM as evidence that he's socialists.

And healthcare in Sewden is mostly goverment funded:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Sweden

If the Swedes can take over banks and run government funded healthcare and not be socialists, then why is Obama for doing similar and even less (w/ respect to healthcare)?

[JMS]

By this logic who was the biggest spender prior to Obama?

George Bush Jr...

And before Georgie...

Bill Clinton...

And before Bill

Ronald Reagan...

anybody getting the pattern here?

If you look at spending as a percentage of GDP... I think FDR is going to win all the beauty contests.

[Tulane Skins Fan]

I think the biggest thing is that this is looking at uninflation and un-GDP adjusted dollars.

Also in terms of Sweden, during the banking crisis, the Swedish goverment actually took a share of the banks:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/23/business/worldbusiness/23krona.html

Now, I've seen here that Obama did similar things with GM as evidence that he's socialists.

And healthcare in Sewden is mostly goverment funded:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Sweden

If the Swedes can take over banks and run government funded healthcare and not be socialists, then why is Obama for doing similar and even less (w/ respect to healthcare)?

I hear you, but I think Sweden qualifies as a socialist country.

[elkabong82]

I also think the "this is the highest debt, money spent, deficit, etc. in history" arguments are flawed. They are meant to sound damning, but they never consider the natural rise as time passes. Wages are the highest they have been in history, on the surface with no inspection anyway.

The article doesn't consider the state inherited by Obama, and even quotes the phony number put forth by Bush's administration. Yeah, Obama doubled spending from near half a trillion to a full trillion. Ok.

Yes we need to reduce spending, but that takes a cooperative effort, which isn't happening right now. A focus on that would be much more helpful than the continued inflammatory garbage such as this article. How am I supposed to take the article seriously when the writer pulls an old trick with false numbers from Bush that have been known to be false?

[Rocky21]

The thing to look at is National debt to GDP. (The classic debt to income calculation) This takes out the who is the biggest spender in whole dollars question (what the last few posts have pointed out about each subsequent President being the biggest spender) and accounts for inflation.

It's true Obama has passed Bush Jr. as the President with the highest national debt to GDP ratio. But the biggest reason for this is the huge tax cuts that the prior administartion passed. The second biggest factor is growing social security / unemployment benefits.

http://zfacts.com/node/450