Obama: "Since I've been president, federal spending has risen at the lowest pace in nearly 60 years"

[Dave]

With all the money put out by the current administration, the claim that federal spending is at the lowest pace in 60 years is just a bit to hard to believe. Consider that just in the first months of the administration there was nearly a trillion dollars spent on the stimulus bill that was for the most part, a failure.

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - At a fundraiser for his re-election campaign in Denver tonight, President Obama set out to upend conventional Republican wisdom that his administration has been defined by excessive government spending.

"I'm running to pay down our debt in a way that's balanced and responsible. After inheriting a $1 trillion deficit, I signed $2 trillion of spending cuts into law," he told a crowd of donors at the Hyatt Regency. "My opponent won't admit it, but it's starting to appear in places, like real liberal outlets, like the Wall Street Journal: Since I've been president, federal spending has risen at the lowest pace  in nearly 60 years. Think about that."

Obama was referring to an analysis released this week by Rex Nutting, a reporter for CBS MarketWatch who is also affiliated with the Wall Street Journal. Nutting concluded that Obama has presided over the slowest growth in federal spending in decades.

"Government spending under Obama, including his signature stimulus bill, is rising at a 1.4 percent annualized pace - slower than at any time in nearly 60 years," Nutting wrote, citing data from the Congressional Budget Office, Office of Management and Budget and an independent financial firm.

"The big surge in federal spending happened in fiscal 2009, before Obama took office. Since then, spending growth has been relatively flat," he wrote. "Over Obama's four budget years, federal spending is on track to rise from $3.52 trillion to $3.58 trillion, an annualized increase of just 0.4 percent. There has been no huge increase in spending under the current president, despite what you hear."

The Obama campaign circulated Nutting's article by email and posted it on its website Tuesday.  The president picked up on the theme again today to hammer the point home.

"I just point out it always goes up least under Democratic presidents. This other side, I don't know how they've 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've got to clean it up.

"They point and say look how irresponsible they are. Look at the facts, look at the numbers. And now I want to finish the job - in a balanced way," he said, referring to his plan to reduce the deficit through a combination of spending cuts and tax hikes.

The Romney campaign noted that more than $5 trillion has been added to the debt during Obama's first term, though in 2008 Obama called the $4 trillion added under Bush "unpatriotic."

The Republican National Committee pointed out that while growth of spending and debt may have slowed, Obama has overseen the three largest deficits in U.S. history.  (They also pass along fact-checker Politifact's 2011 designation of Obama as the "undisputed debt king" of the last five presidents.)

Obama spoke in Denver following his appearance at the U.S. Air Force Academy commencement ceremony in Colorado Springs earlier in the day.  He then headed to California and Iowa for four more money events.

http://news.yahoo.com/president-obama-denounces-republican-wild-deb...

A related story that finds the claims made that Obama referred to as not being very accurate.

Nancy Pelosi posts questionable chart on debt accumulation by Barack Obama, predecessors

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi posted this chart on her Flickr site, where it was later re-posted by a user on MoveOn.org. But we found major problems with its math and methodology.

A reader recently pointed us to a post on the website of MoveOn.org, a liberal group. The post features a bar graph titled, "Who Increased the Debt?" that offers figures for the past five presidents:

Ronald Reagan: Up 189 percent
George H.W. Bush: Up 55 percent
Bill Clinton: Up 37 percent
George W. Bush: Up 115 percent
Barack Obama: Up 16 percent

We can see why a liberal group would tout such numbers, since -- if accurate -- they offer powerful counterevidence to the claims by conservatives that President Barack Obama has been a spendthrift who’s set the nation on an unsustainable fiscal path.

But the reader who sent it to us was surprised to see the debt increase under Obama was so small. So we decided to check the numbers.

The chart actually comes from a Flickr page belonging to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who posted it on May 5, 2011. Specifically, the chart tracks "percent increase in public debt" for the five presidents during the following time periods -- January 1981 to January 1989 (Reagan), January 1989 to January 1993 (George H.W. Bush), January 1993 to January 2001 (Clinton), January 2001 to January 2009 (George W. Bush), and January 2009 to April 2011 (Obama).

We checked with Pelosi’s office to see what data they used to assemble the chart. They referred us to the U.S. Treasury’s "Debt to the Penny Calculator."

First, we should note that we interpreted the caption in Pelosi’s chart that reads "percent increase in public debt" to mean public debt, not gross federal debt. Public debt is debt held by the public, whereas gross federal debt includes both publicly held debt and debt held by the government, such as money in the Social Security trust fund.

Despite what the chart’s label suggested, the data we received from Pelosi’s office made clear that they had been using the gross federal debt number. So we’ll start with that figure.

We can quickly dispense with the figures for Reagan and George H.W. Bush. The "Debt to the Penny" calculator doesn’t go back further than 1993, but we were able to estimate the figures for debt under Reagan and the elder Bush by using data from the Office of Management and Budget. OMB’s numbers are calculated somewhat differently than Treasury’s, but the percentage increases were close enough to what the chart said that we’re not going to quibble over them. OMB has debt under Reagan increasing by 186 percent (the chart had said 189 percent) and by 54 percent under George H.W. Bush (compared to the 55 percent in the chart).

Instead, we’ll focus on the numbers for Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama.

From the online calculator, we requested the daily debt totals since 1993 and picked out the ones closest to the inauguration dates of those three presidents, as well as the end of the month of April 2011. Here’s what we came with for gross federal debt:

January 20, 1993 (end of George H.W. Bush and beginning of Clinton): $4.188 trillion
January 19, 2001 (end of Clinton and beginning of George W. Bush): $5.728 trillion
January 20, 2009 (end of George W. Bush and beginning of Obama): $10.627 trillion
April 29, 2011 (closing date of the chart): $14.288 trillion

This allows us to determine how much the debt rose under each president:

Under Clinton: Increase of $1.54 trillion, or 37 percent
Under George W. Bush: Increase of $4.899 trillion, or 86 percent
Under Obama: Increase of $3.661 trillion, or 34 percent

So we can dispense with Clinton -- in the chart, his figure is correct. But the chart is significantly off for both Bush and Obama. We found Bush to have an 86 percent increase, not 115 percent as the chart said. And we found the debt under Obama to be up by 34 percent, more than double the 16 percent cited in the chart.

We quickly discovered the source of the discrepancy: Whoever put the chart together used the date for Jan. 20, 2010 -- which is exactly one year to the day after Obama was sworn in -- rather than his actual inauguration date. We know this because Treasury says the debt for Jan. 20, 2010, was $12.327 trillion, which is the exact number cited on the supporting document that Pelosi’s office gave us.

However this error happened, it effectively took one year of rapidly escalating debt out of Obama’s column and put it into Bush’s, significantly skewing the numbers.

Using the corrected figures does mean that, superficially at least, Democrats have a point. The debt did still increase more, on a percentage basis, under Bush than it did under Obama. But other problems with the chart and its methodology undercut even this conclusion.

• Time ranges: Bush served a full eight-year term, while Obama had served just 27 months by the time the chart was compiled. If the Obama figure were to be scaled out to a full eight-year period, he’d have a debt increase of 121 percent rather than 34 percent, making his increase greater than Bush’s. To be fair, that would be a simplistic exercise -- but no less misleading than the chart.

• Public debt vs. gross debt: Not only did the chart say it was using one statistic and then use another, it also cherry-picked the one that showed the comparison in a more favorable light. According to OMB statistics, public debt rose by 70 percent under Bush, 16 percentage points more slowly than gross federal debt did. And according to the Treasury, the public debt rose by 53 percent under Obama, compared with the 34 percent rise in gross federal debt.

Those numbers would have shown the two presidents much closer in their debt creation records -- and that’s without even adjusting for the vastly different lengths of time in office.

• Debt vs. debt as a percentage of GDP: Some economists will tell you that it’s not the size of the debt per se, but rather the size of the debt relative to the nation’s gross domestic product. This helps minimize the complicating effect of economic cycles and inflation. So how do those numbers stack up? Using OMB statistics, here’s what we came up with, using public debt figures not adjusted for the president’s time in office:

Reagan: Up 14.9 percentage points
George H.W. Bush: Up 7.1 percentage points
Clinton: Down 13.4 percentage points
George W. Bush: Up 5.6 percentage points
Obama: Up 21.9 percentage points (through December 2010 only)

So by this measurement -- potentially a more important one -- Obama is the undisputed debt king of the last five presidents, rather than the guy who added a piddling amount to the debt, as Pelosi’s chart suggested. Of course, all this goes to show that statistics can be used -- and misused -- to bolster almost any argument.

After we presented our research to Pelosi's office, a spokesman acknowledged that the office had erred in assembling and posting the chart and that it was in the process of reposting it. The updated version – which corrects the mathematical error but not what we consider to be the three additional design flaws – can be found here.

That's a step in the right direction, but it doesn't change our rating since it only occurred as a result of our fact-checking. We find so much wrong with this chart that we don’t think it contains any significant approximation of the truth. It made a major calculation error that dramatically skewed the debt increase away from Obama and toward George W. Bush. It glossed over significant variations in time served in office. It cherry-picked the measurement that was favorable to its cause. And it is contradicted by statistics for GDP-adjusted debt, which show Obama to be the most, rather than the least, debt-creating president of the last five. None of this suggests that Obama can’t turn things around as the economy improves (and Democrats can also take some solace in the fact that Bill Clinton did remarkably well in all of our measurements). But in communicating which administrations contributed the most to growth of the debt, this chart is a failure. We rate it Pants on Fire.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/may/19/nanc...

[XLFD]

The genius behind Obamacare is that it doesn't show up as major government spending until after this election is over, nor does its major effects kick in until later.  It is up to the Republican challenger(and any Supreme Court decision) to bring it to the political forefront. 

[masonco]

I'm thinking in regards to Obamacare there will be an uproar both ways once the supreme court makes their decision public. He did order the supreme court to let the bill stand as is.

[masonco]

And while I was working today, Fox recorded him say that those who "served" in Vietnam went because they wanted to go in order to serve our country.

Hmmm weren't they drafted?

[Guidothesemipsuedocaptitalistpig]

A lot were Masonco... but there actually were some blue bloods who chose to be there and in fact voluntarily went back for more than one tour. I think you would find out many of the war hero types fit into that description.

As far as the debt presided by ( a far more accurate description of the debt in relationship to a president). Many things not discussed in the shear numbers, are the hows and whys of some of the debt being attributed to each of those individuals.

     No one could tell me President Obama would not have had a huge outlay on the recovery from 911 that then President Bush had. Even if he had not chose the same path Bush did by going into Iraq ( The Bad war by the words of the Dems would he not have gone into the now Afghanistan war and again found out just how badly they still don't want us there? Just a thought all...

[Guidothesemipsuedocaptitalistpig]

Thanks for posting the Politifact site here Dave... I wonder how many Dems would see it as nonpartisan however!!!??

[Dave]

You'd be surprised... when I was checking out something over there on another occasion, most of the fact checking didn't exactly look good for republicans. I did have a issue or 2 with the website as one of the 'lies' was in response to republican claims that Obamacare would cost jobs.. the website said that was a lie.. of course being that the law hasn't really went into effect yet, its impossible to say if that was a lie or not. For the most part though they seem to make good points more often then not and seem to be fair for the most part.

[Willy]

If I've learned anything in this life it's that you can't realistically deal with liars. They lie to others, they lie to themselves. They even believe their own lies so they can have an excuse to continue their deceit. In my line of work I have seen liars from sainted mothers to preachers. The preacher was the most shocking because I didn't expect it and he isn't the only religious leader who uses lies to convince and influence others. Since the world is full of liars it's up to each person to dig into the available information and discover the truth.

[easymoney]

 You have to take into account how easily people are led.

Critical thinking hasn't been used in public schools for years, and there is a reason for that. Who wants people around who can think for themselves?

[Guidothesemipsuedocaptitalistpig]

I think I remember getting into that argument about critical thinking and ( common sense) with Zanny back in the Ludington talks days.. I was completely flabbergasted that a school teacher could defend the in most case obvious dumbing down of the educational system by a school teacher. But I attributed it to her very liberal slant on the truth.

It is very obvious when speaking to college age students in recent years and history showing any thing other than disdain for previous ( Sins) and nothing to do with American exceptional ism and absolutely nothing about how capitalism (as a system) is for superior to any Socialist or highly regulated capitalist system with the government funneling off any of the benefits of risk taken to create jobs.

Henry Ford could not have started a modern Assembly under current Government Regulation.

[masonco]

And that is one reason LT was shut down. What happened to her site soup or whatever? 

[Guidothesemipsuedocaptitalistpig]

No clue... It either changed to a different forum board or facebook maybe or shut down I guess. On a little different note.. it is hard to have a discussion forum where everyone is of same mind most of the time... Its kind of like preaching to the Choir I'd guess?

[masonco]

yep