Who would a thunk it?

I must be the last guy in the world to have seen this. I posted it yesterday and my wife said it was on Facebook months ago. Well, darling, I don't do Facebook...No telling what I have missed out on. No sooner had I posted this yesterday than JS sent me a letter that Rex Nutting was the son of the devil himself and had no credibility. Actually the post he sent me is titled, Is Rex Nutting a leftist nut job and you can find it here. And boy did his article piss some people off. Ezra Klein doesn't think that it is so far off. Liars figure and figures lie. This is the ugly season and numbers are bound to get juggled to show whatever best fits our current narrative so here you have it. We merely report, you decide:

Interesting article at Marketwatch by Rex Nutting. Apparently Barack Obama has been the most thrifty president since Dwight D. Eisenhower. A measly 1.4% increase in annualized spending growth. I hope that my Republican friends don't allow this little factoid to mess with your narrative. By the way, take a look at this chart and tell me who the real big spenders are...

Some other figures in the analysis that you might find interesting:


• In fiscal 2010 — the first budget under Obama — spending fell 1.8% to $3.46 trillion.

• In fiscal 2011, spending rose 4.3% to $3.60 trillion.

• In fiscal 2012, spending is set to rise 0.7% to $3.63 trillion, according to the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate of the budget that was agreed to last August.

• Finally in fiscal 2013 — the final budget of Obama’s term — spending is scheduled to fall 1.3% to $3.58 trillion. Read the CBO’s latest budget outlook.

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%.


"After adjusting for inflation, spending under Obama is falling at a 1.4% annual pace — the first decline in real spending since the early 1970s, when Richard Nixon was retreating from the quagmire in Vietnam.

In per capita terms, real spending will drop by nearly 5% from $11,450 per person in 2009 to $10,900 in 2013 (measured in 2009 dollars)."

From the Pulitzer Prize winning Politifact:

We found that Obama has indeed presided over the slowest growth in spending of any president using raw dollars, and the growth on his watch was the second-slowest if you adjust for inflation. The math simultaneously backs up Nutting’s calculations and demolishes Romney’s contention. The only significant shortcoming of the graphic was that it failed to note that some of the restraint in spending was fueled by demands from congressional Republicans. On balance, we rated the claim Mostly True.