Given President Obama’s inference in his recent speech that, if only every other president had been as responsible on deficit spending as he has been, things would be great, it is well worth revisiting Obama’s actual track record versus other recent presidents (detailed more fully here). It’s also worth noting, since Obama’s fallback defense is always that the economy made him do it, that annual deficit spending even during the Great Depression never reached so much as 6 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP). You can see how that compares with Obama’s tallies below:
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However, House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan has proposed a budget that would get deficit spending down to 1.6 percent of GDP by 2021, even before his proposed Medicare reforms — which would transform Medicare into a more choice-based and competition-facilitating premium support program — would begin the following year. (Those who are already enrolled in Medicare by then would get to choose whether they want to switch into the newly reformed program or not.)
