What The Pushback On Obama’s Spending Claim Ignores

[chessdev.livejournal.com]

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/05/obama-romney-low-spending-debt-deficit.php?ref=fpa

On the campaign trail, President Obama has touted recent data that dispels the notion that he has embarked on a spending binge — and his Republican opponents, citing various fact-checks, are aggressively pushing back.

Part of the pushback, it turns out, inadvertently proves Obama’s larger point.

“

Federal spending since I took office has risen at the slowest pace of any president in almost 60 years,” Obama said last Thursday at a campaign rally in Des Moines, Iowa. Citing a MarketWatch study, White House spokesman Jay Carney called the notion of an Obama spending spree “BS.”

Fact-checkers pounced — including The Associated Press, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal editorial board — issuing rebuttals that conservatives and Republicans have cited as evidence that Obama’s claims are wrong.

“President Obama continues to repeat false and discredited talking points about his prolific spending record to distract from the record debt that he is passing on to future generations,” Ryan Williams, a spokesman for Mitt Romney, told TPM. “As a president who broke his promise to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term, Barack Obama has no credibility when it comes to fiscal responsibility.”

Much of the pushback focuses on the growth of federal spending as a share of the economy under Obama. Under this benchmark, spending appears to have skyrocketed. But the metric is flawed because revenues have fallen during Obama’s tenure due to a huge economic contraction that began before he took office. That standard, in effect, blames him for the downturn.

The fact-checks did find some questionable premises from MarketWatch. For one, it effectively treated the paybacks from President Bush’s one-time bailouts of the financial sector, as well as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as spending cuts under Obama. The outlets also argued that baseline changes in the president’s budget tweak the spending figures in friendly ways.

Tallying that up, the Wall Street Journal editorial board concluded: “To anyone who really knows the numbers, Mr. Obama’s spending has increased by closer to 5% a year,” as opposed to the 1.4 percent in the MarketWatch numbers. The Republican National Committee touted the Journal’s figure in its rebuttal of Obama’s point.

The problem with that is 5 percent is still low by historical standards. That’s especially true of modern Republican presidents: President George W. Bush’s two terms saw spending increases of 7.3 and 8.1 percent, respectively; President George H.W. Bush’s figure was 5.4 percent and President Ronald Reagan’s were 8.7 and 4.9 percent. (Spending increases under President Bill Clinton were under 4 percent.)

RNC spokesman Sean Spicer told TPM, “The overarching point is that almost every outlet disagrees with Carney’s spin on spending.”

Ultimately, Obama may have exaggerated his ostensible frugality, but even according to the figures Republicans cite, his spending is still low by the standards of modern presidents. The firestorm of criticism Obama receives on the debt often papers over that fact.

[chessdev]  What is interesting to me is the amount of revisionism I've been reading in the attacks against Obama:

 Obama was attributed bills  that occured before he was even in office, the GOP has blocked him at every vote and then goes "yeah, look what he HASNT gotten done",  and now even when arguing against his record -- the GOP essentially looks past historic low spending to argue 'out of control spending' instead.

Which fits into a larger theme where concern for the poor is labelled as "Socialists", where arguing for the auto industry's destruction is labelled "supporting it", thinking corporations with record profits should pay taxes is "Destroying job creation"  with laughable misapplications of Laffer thrown in for good measure, and where religious zealots argue America is a Christian Nation with laws that uphold those ideals...so long as those ideals compel behavior of others (Cant marry him/her) but not require behavior of the advocates themselves ("pay an extra $1 to feed the poor?  TYRANNY!!").

Does the real record even matter anymore?  I'm starting to doubt it at this point...

Comments

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

1) Cut please? ;-)

2) Is it necessary to copy the entire article?

[chessdev.livejournal.com]

2. It didnt seem that long.

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

Don't know. A link + some excerpts would've been much niftier (sic?) :-)

Thanks for the cut!

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

Obama has increased spending on the futile campaign to convince the Taliban to discontinue their ambitions to rule Afghanistan. Although he inherited the conflict from Bush, he succumbed to the idea that a surge would prove fruitful. (BTW, there was only one Democratic congressperson in 2001 who opposed a military solution to 9/11.)

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

One of the biggest issues with the claim is that Obama gets credit for TARP payback while Bush gets credit for the entirety of TARP spending. This makes Bush's number look larger in comparison even though it's not representative of his term.

One blogger did the legwork in figuring out where the Presidents would stand when you remove one-time spending like bailouts and deposit insurance, essentially letting their general policies stand on their own. This makes things look a little more sane as well as better reflective of the historical policies of the modern Presidents. Bush 43 is shown to be one of the bigger spenders, and Clinton stays where he belongs. This accounting, it should note, does not include the future spending increases that the health care reforms require, nor does it account for the Medicare double counting (http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Donald-Marron/2012/0509/What-is-medicare-double-counting-and-why-are-budget-experts-fighting-over-it), which would significantly impact Obama's spending in the long term even if we can't count it now - another reason why the claim is so dishonest. I think a lot of the complaints about Obama's spending binge is not so much what he's done in the past (and, granted, the stimulus + bailouts he's responsible for is close to the amount of 1/5th of the deficit he's added thus far) but the institutional spending put in place for the future. As bad as Bush's spending increases were, you could argue that a significant portion of it would be going away. Meanwhile, Obama has his one-time stimulus spending, but spending hasn't lowered from that level, either. Spending has not dropped $400b a year under Obama, it keeps trending upward.

For the heck of it, I'll also show the numbers minus defense:



I share this not so much because I agree with the accounting - I do not, because defense spending is not always one-time spending as implied - but because it highlights the type of spending that is driving Obama's increases. It is also telling - Reagan benefits greatly from this sort of accounting, and it does give a good idea as to where Bush 43's real spending problems lied.

[dexeron.livejournal.com]

I don't think I understand these numbers. How does spending go UP when you remove something like defense? What do those percentages mean? Also, is there one that includes everthing, including the aforementioned projected future spending?

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

It's increases in spending when defense/bailouts are not part of it. i.e., remove those aspects from the budget and track the increases. No President has presided over a decrease in non-defense, non-bailout/rescue spending.

Here's the total spending calculation:

[chessdev.livejournal.com]

Is there a link or cite to these numbers?

Magic percentages without a citation have 0 value...

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

My apologies, I thought I linked it. Blog is here (http://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2012/05/29/which-president-is-the-biggest-spender-part-ii/), citing historical tables here (http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/Historicals/).

[dexeron.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I have to admit I really don't understand this fully and I haven't had time to actually read the linked blog yet. I'll try to do that later tonight.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Maybe people can explain the magic behind how spending by virtue of money being spent is the root of all evil? The USA has grown greatly in population, experienced major shifts in who is and isn't entitled to rule of law (like finally allowing the Constitution's explicit protection of black rights to be enforced and legalizing woman suffrage), and has global responsibilities. It can't repeat the 1880s budgets and have a 10,000 man army anymore.

[dexeron.livejournal.com]

Well, we could say that spending is bad if you don't have the revenue to match it.

Of course, that would imply that we should go ahead and increase revenue, and SOME people are against that. ;)

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

To argue Obama is fiscally conservative is rank dishonesty.

Not to mention, ARRA was passed and set forth in the final Bush budget. But was authored by Democrats and passed under Obama.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I'll believe this when I see the Republicans offer serious cuts on anything military, especially the stuff the Pentagon has repeatedly said it does not want.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

You really expected the conservatives to take responsibility for their own actions when they have all the cards? An ideology that needs to believe in an all-powerful cabal out to get it doesn't have the mental, the emotional, the cultural, or the logical facilities to do such a thing. Conservatives can only function as the targets of a vast left-wing conspiracy that perpetually ensures that anything and everything they fail in or have a minor issue with is the product of some great conspiracy. Unfortunately this is also true to a great extent than it should be of literally everything in politics these days where there's some conspiracy pulling strings in everything. Because heaven forfend people actually look for prosaic, everyday causes to explain events as opposed to inventing either the Vast Commie Elders of Zion conspiracy or the great Corporate NWO conspiracy.

[oportet.livejournal.com]

'I'm spending more, but at a slower rate' doesn't really seem like something worth bragging about - driving off a cliff going 30mph isn't much better than doing it at 60.

[chessdev.livejournal.com]

More like driving downhill rather than off a cliff...

You're losing altitude, but not with quite the bang and impact at the end

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

Except you're driving uphill toward the cliff, and the ground is slowly leveling off, which isn't going to give you much comfort once you hit the lip of the canyon.

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

What if you're driving downhill, but then you drive uphill and then downhill again and then sideways and then vertically?

[existentme.livejournal.com]

Lol, oh you./

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

This is really going in the wrong direction. Obama is trying to appeal to conservatives and independents here, but it's backfiring. His core doesn't care how much is being spent, as long as the revenue picks up to take care of it or it's being done for the right reasons. "Too much spending" based on dollar amount or based on how much previous Presidents spent is just a talking point, and he's buying into it hook line and sinker.

Or too much spending "based on GDP." Always a hilarious talking point. Compare everything to GDP, because it's the only meaningful statistic! (that makes my stats look good)

[mikeyxw.livejournal.com]

Pretty much.

Any article that starts off by dismissing the growth in the deficit from $10 to $15 trillion when talking about government spending is on the wrong track. The deficit and the government's share of GDP are the measures used for a good reason, tehy put things into proportion.

There is certainly a case to be made that the spending was temporary and necessary as a result of the economic downturn... only this might not be a particularly good subject for Obama. Using accounting tricks to come up with meaningless numbers is not going to cut it.