Obama spending binge never happened

[Mom70x7]

By Rex Nutting, MarketWatch

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Of all the falsehoods told about President Barack Obama, the biggest whopper is the one about his reckless spending spree.

As would-be president Mitt Romney tells it: "I will lead us out of this debt and spending inferno."

Almost everyone believes that Obama has presided over a massive increase in federal spending, an "inferno" of spending that threatens our jobs, our businesses and our children's future. Even Democrats seem to think it's true.

Government spending under Obama, including his signature stimulus bill, is rising at a 1.4% annualized pace — slower than at any time in nearly 60 years.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/obama-spending-binge-never-happened-2012-05-22?pagenumber=1

[Warph]

Au contraire, Mom.... I hate to tell you but, Nutting is living up to his last name.  He's a far-left NUT.  I'm surprised that MarketWatch printed his article... but, then again maybe I'm not that all surprised.  According to Lou Dobbs, MarketWatch has had this clown make other erronous claims in the past on MW....  Here's one:
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tom-blumer/2009/06/29/marketwatch-rex-nutting-get-gdp-history-wrong

Yes, the economy contracted heavily in 2008.  The government spent heavily in 2009 (the stimulus).  This would be understandable.  What isn't understandable is why Nutting counts 2009 as "Bush's" year.  Congress was controlled by Democrats since 2006, Bush was president for only one less than one month of 2009, yet 2009 counts as "Republican"?  Ludicrous.

Growth in spending under Obuma only looks small if we count 2009 as under Bush.  But that's absurd. Moreover, it's not like Obuma hasn't WANTED to spend more.  Remember last summer when he went around with his "Jobs Bill" (Stimulus 2.0)?  If it weren't for Republicans in the House, that would have meant hundreds of billions in additional spending.


Other sites:  http://cosmoscon.com/

http://cosmoscon.com/2012/03/20/obama-austere-or-drunken-sailor/

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/fed_spending_2012USrn

[kimpossibly]

i am surprised that anyone even responds or reacts to anything that happens in Washington. I hear, read and watch so much information about what the truth is behind the U.S. Government that with all that is being proven and said, it doesnt make much sense that most would even argue or debate the things that they do back there in the white house. I mean, if you think about it, if both parties are owned and governed by the same people, then what is all that stuff about anyway? it has come to light that all of that jargan is pretty much just being done for show but it doesnt really matter when you see the big picture.
voting....? no point. the people keep asking for the wealthy to pay more in taxes but it doesnt happen. why? because that would be a conflict of interest at the very least. its the wealthiest that are taking your taxes (though as stealth as it is, there is alot of information about it....so it must hold some water, right?)
i dont know for sure what is going on in this country....but i know ive had a long list of 'why' about alot of things that i could clearly see werent on the up and up. maybe if anyone is interested, you might want to see a documentary that was many many years in the making and was put together by a decendant of the Gamble family of Proctor and Gamble.
i actually wasnt that surprised at what i watch with that documentary...its called "Thrive". it can be found on youtube by searching "thrive" full length documentary. i found it extremely interesting. it started off a little slow for me because i have just never been a 'science' buff, but ive watched this movie three times and its an eye opener. im just saying that its worth watching when you take into consideration all the things that seem to be backwards in the USA these days.

[Warph]

                         

Phony Accounting Tricks Aside, the Real Deficit is $5 trillion
Washington does not regard your money as a "legal obligation."
by John Hayward
05/24/20127

This week, America enjoyed the comedy stylings of the brilliant satirist Rex Nutting, who created an entirely fraudulent chart purporting to "prove" that Barack Obama spent less than his predecessors. It was an incredible success, duping countless liberals - including the entire lineup of MSNBC hosts - into making absolute fools of themselves by taking it seriously. They didn't notice Nutting doing things like writing the bulk of Obama's "stimulus" heist off as "Bush spending," or swapping out actual monies spent and replacing them with old projections and estimates.

It was a laugh riot that can only force Sacha Baron Cohen, creator of the "Borat" character, to kneel in admiration of the true master of his comedy art. Borat never managed to punk so many people all at once. For a brilliant deconstruction of this hilarious hoax - demonstrating exactly how Nutting was able to make such a broad swath of the American chattering class forget the patently obvious truth that Barack Obama spent more in three years than Bush did during both of his terms in office - check out the infographic at the Political Math blog.   http://www.politicalmathblog.com/?p=1786 

The Nutting fraud is a comedic exaggeration of the sort of funny accounting Big Government routinely uses to hide its bulk. The truth is that we've been disastrously insolvent for decades. Obama slammed his foot on the gas pedal, but the cliff he's got America speeding towards was there all along.

On Thursday, USA Today released a sobering analysis that shreds one of the oldest accounting tricks used by Big Government acolytes.....:
USA Today: Real Federal Deficit Dwarfs (Obama Government)Official Tally
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/story/2012-05-18/federal-deficit-accounting/55179748/1

.....pretending that mountains of entitlement liability don't really exist. This is sort of like figuring out your household debt by adding up your credit cards, but ignoring your mortgage and car payment.

Using these tricks, we commonly delude ourselves into thinking the federal budget deficit was a mere $1.3 trillion last year. The horrifying truth is that it was more like $5 trillion. Yes, FIVE trillion dollars. USA Today got this number by doing nothing more than applying the standard accounting practices of every business in America to the federal budget:

***Under those accounting practices, the government ran red ink last year equal to $42,054 per household — nearly four times the official number reported under unique rules set by Congress.

***A U.S. household's median income is $49,445, the Census reports.

***The big difference between the official deficit and standard accounting: Congress exempts itself from including the cost of promised retirement benefits. Yet companies, states and local governments must include retirement commitments in financial statements, as required by federal law and private boards that set accounting rules.

***The deficit was $5 trillion last year under those rules. The official number was $1.3 trillion. Liabilities for Social Security, Medicare and other retirement programs rose by $3.7 trillion in 2011, according to government actuaries, but the amount was not registered on the government's books.

In other words, the federal budget is literally beyond the ability of Americans to finance. Fairly divided between all citizens, it would consume virtually the entire household budget of a typical family. The only way Washington can pretend it's running a paltry $1.3 trillion annual deficit is to pretend it's not responsible for paying future entitlement benefits, while simultaneously raiding Social Security funds to pay for other programs. Remember Barack Obama's little "payroll tax cut?" That's coming right out of Social Security, folks. It's not even thinly disguised – it's a straight-up, direct raid on the Social Security funding stream.

How does the government get away with this? USA Today put that very question to liberal:
Jim Horney, a former Senate budget staff expert now at the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, says retirement programs should not count as part of the deficit because, unlike a business, Congress can change what it owes by cutting benefits or lifting taxes.

"It's not easy, but it can be done. Retirement programs are not legal obligations," he says.

You understand what he's saying here, right? None of your sacred "Social Security benefits" belong to you. Not one dollar of that money is your "property," contrary to the lies you've been told for decades. Leftists are becoming increasingly comfortable with admitting it's all the government's money, and you receive your benefits at their pleasure. Remember, when Barack Obama was trying to scare Americans into giving him more money to spend, he openly speculated that Social Security checks might stop coming if Washington was not allowed to plunge further into debt.

You know what would be a "legal obligation?" A retirement fund with a private financial institution. They wouldn't be allowed to alter the terms of the arrangement at their pleasure, cranking up taxes or refusing to pay benefits at the agreed-upon date. They would also be required to account for your money in precisely the way Washington does not, and would go to jail for the kind of bookkeeping that enables the federal government to pretend it's only running a trillion-dollar deficit.

[Warph]

                           

MarketWatch's Rex Nutt(Job)ing On Obama Spending (Infographic)

It's been going around Facebook and the Twitters.

It's been rated "mostly true" by Politifact.

It is the MarketWatch piece on how Obama hasn't really increased spending all that much.

And I'm damn tired of picking it apart 140 characters at a time, so I put together this sarcastic infographic showing exactly how sloppy this piece really is.

(Correction: An earlier version of this infographic incorrectly identified the $3.8 Trillion 2013 as a CBO projection. That is the spending request from President Obama 2013 budget.)





UPDATED (05/24/12, 3PM):

There are three things in this infographic that should be called out more explicitly.

First, much of the debate here centers around who exactly should catch the blame for FY 2009 spending. This is actually a very tricky question and I think compelling cases can be made for both sides of this debate.

My personal position is that it's really complicated. But one thing is for certain: in hindsight the CBO January 2009 estimate is so obviously wrong that using it should be called out and mocked.

The January 2009 CBO estimate might have been a "best estimate of what Obama inherited", but only in January 2009 when spending data was *very* hard to predict. January 2009 marked the worst part of the recession and the uncertainty was very high. Only a few months later, Obama's budget estimated 2009 spending would be $400 billion higher than the CBO estimate.

But now we can look at the data, not the estimates. And we should. The spending data ended up $20 billion lower than the CBO estimate... and that included the stimulus spending (which Nutting says was $140 billion, but I'm still trying to track that number down). If that is the case, the high-end estimate for Bush's fiscal year is  $3.38 trillion. If we compare that to Obama's 2013 budget proposal ($3.80 trillion), that's an increase of 12.5% (3.1% annualized). Which isn't that high, but it's also using a baseline that is still filled with a lot of what were supposed to be 1 time expenses (TARP, Cash for Clunkers, the auto bailout, the housing credit, etc).

Second, Nutting uses the CBO baseline in place of Obama's spending. This is easily verified and I can't think of a serious economic pundit who would say this is OK. I can think of two reasons for doing this: Either a) Nutting is a monstrously biased ass who (rightly) figured no one in the liberal world would fact check him so he could use whatever the hell number he wanted to use or b) Nutting had no idea that the CBO baseline isn't a budget proposal. I'm actually leaning toward the second explanation. Nutting uses so many disparate sources it seems clear he doesn't know his way around federal finance.

Congrats, Mr. Nutting. I don't think you're a huge jerk, only that you're hilariously unqualified for your job.

Finally, my biggest goal here was to point out the inconsistencies in the analysis. Nutting wants to use the 2009 CBO estimates, but only one column (only for attacking Bush on spending). He wants to compare estimates from one year to actual spending from other years to the CBO baseline from this year. And, as if he is a magical cherry-picking elf, he manages to pick just the right numbers to give him just the right data. This could be an accident. Stranger things have happened. But it seems more likely that he intended to squash a talking point by any means necessary and he went looking for the best data to do that.

I will be accused of massaging the data by people who don't understand what I'm doing here. I'm pointing out the data massaging on Nutting's side and calling him on it. I'm saying "If you're going to use the CBO estimate, use the CBO estimate!" Don't use just the part you want and then pretend like the rest of it doesn't exist. Commit yourself to the data you're using and follow it, even if it doesn't go where you want it to go.

OK... references:

Bush requested $3.107 trillion, but the final budget of $3.52 trillion was passed by the Democratic Congress and signed by President Obama on March 12, 2009:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_United_States_federal_budget

For actual spending, I used the monthly Treasury Reports, which have spending and revenue for every month since 1981 in an Excel file:  http://www.fms.treas.gov/mts/index.html


For the CBO fiscal year 2009 estimates.
http://www.cbo.gov/publication/41753

The CBO baseline (which was referenced by Nutting for the $3.58 trillion number) is found here.
http://www.cbo.gov/publication/41753

President Obama's actual 2013 budget:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/budget/fy2013/assets/budget.pdf

And just for kicks, here is the CBO analysis of the President's Budget which pegs Obama's 2013 spending at $3.717 trillion:
http://www.cbo.gov/publication/43083

[Warph]

Surprise! Last Year's Deficit Actually $5 Trillion
By Katie Pavlich
5/24/2012

Since 2009, and since Senate Democrats last passed a budget, the Congressional Budget Office has calculated $1 trillion deficits each year with 2012 being no exception. 
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-13/budget-deficit-to-total-1-2-trillion-this-year-cbo-says.html

But now, a new USA Today study shows that last year's budget deficit wasn't $1 trillion....it was actually $5 trillion.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/story/2012-05-18/federal-deficit-accounting/55179748/1

The deficit was $5 trillion last year under those rules. The official number was $1.3 trillion. Liabilities for Social Security...
http://content.usatoday.com/topics/topic/Legislation+and+Acts/U.S.+Government/Social+Security

....Medicare and other retirement programs rose by $3.7 trillion in 2011, according to government actuaries, but the amount was not registered on the government's books.

It is well known by now that even if the government confiscated 100% of the wealth held by millionaires and billionaires in America, we still couldn't pay off the $15 trillion+ national debt. But the latest $5 trillion deficit number doesn't only impact millionaires and billionaires.

The typical American household would have paid nearly all of its income in taxes last year to balance the budget if the government used standard accounting rules to compute the deficit, a USA TODAY analysis finds.

Under those accounting practices, the government ran red ink last year equal to $42,054 per household — nearly four times the official number reported under unique rules set by Congress.

A U.S. household's median income is $49,445, the Census reports.

So how is it that the CBO was off by $4 trillion?

The big difference between the official deficit and standard accounting: Congress exempts itself from including the cost of promised retirement benefits. Yet companies, states and local governments must include retirement commitments in financial statements, as required by federal law and private boards that set accounting rules.

Math is hard when you're not adding all the numbers.....over to you Paul Ryan.

Path To Prosperity #1:

Path To Prosperity #2 - Medicare:

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