“Do not buy into the B.S. that you hear about spending and fiscal constraint with regard to this administration,” White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters on Air Force One on Wednesday. Carney went on to cite a MarketWatch column by Rex Nutting, purporting to show that “under Obama, federal spending is rising at the slowest pace since Dwight Eisenhower brought the Korean War to an end in the 1950s.”
“I simply make the point, as an editor might say, to check it out,” Carney finished. We did. Nutting’s article is complete B.S.
His most productive trick is to assign all of fiscal year 2009′s spending to President Bush. Nutting doesn’t start the clock on Obama’s spending until fiscal 2010.
In most cases, that would be fair, because presidents typically sign the next year’s spending bills in the calendar year before they leave office. But not in 2009. The Democratic Congress, confident Obama was going to win in 2008, passed only three of fiscal 2009′s 12 appropriations bills (Defense; Military Construction and Veterans Affairs; and Homeland Security). The Democrat Congress passed the rest of them, and Obama signed them.
So whereas Bush had proposed spending just $3.11 trillion in fiscal 2009, for a 3 percent increase, Obama and the Democrats ended up spending $3.52 trillion, for a 17.9 percent increase in spending — the highest single-year percentage spending increase since the Korean War.
By the end of Obama’s first year in office, spending as a percentage of GDP was 25.2 percent, the highest it has ever been since World War II. As Obama’s stimulus spending has receded, spending as a percentage of GDP has gone down, but only slightly. Under President Bush, spending averaged 19.6 percent of GDP. Under President Clinton, it was 19.8 percent. The historical post-war average is 19.7 percent. In 2012, after four years of Obama’s fiscal leadership, it is expected to be 24.3 percent.
Even The Washington Post isn’t buying Carney and Nutting’s B.S. WaPo Fact checker Glenn Kessler reports this morning: “Carney suggested the media were guilty of “sloth and laziness,” but he might do better next time than cite an article he plucked off the Web, no matter how much it might advance his political interests. The data in the article are flawed, and the analysis lacks context — context that could easily could be found in the budget documents released by the White House.”
Campaign 2012
Obama: Obama continued to attack Romney’s private sector experience Thursday while campaigning at the Iowa State Fair. “There may be value for that type of experience but it’s not in the White House,” the president said, where the goal is “strong and sustainable, broad-based growth.”
Massachusetts Senate: Under questioning from reporters before a fundraiser, Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren told journalists she knows she has Native American ancestry, “because my mother told me so.”
Around the Bigs
The USA Today, Real federal deficit dwarfs official tally: 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. If you include the cost of promised retiree benefits, as all private companies must, 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.
The Wall Street Journal, New Signs of Global Slowdown: On Thursday, the U.S. reported that businesses were slowing their orders of computers, aircraft, machinery and other long-lasting goods. Measures of business sentiment in Europe slipped, and reports from purchasing managers at manufacturers around the globe turned down.
The Los Angeles Times, California gas prices to set record for Memorial Day weekend: California drivers will pay record gasoline prices over the Memorial Day weekend but could get relief in the weeks ahead — unless more unplanned refinery outages occur.
The New York Times, In Spain, Bank Transfers Reflect Broader Fears: Growing transfers of deposits out of troubled Spanish banks reflect a broader fear that the country’s problems could make it hard for Spaniards to get to their money if banks fail and cannot be supported by the government.
The Washington Post, Mexico’s two major crime cartels now at war: The two most important criminal organizations in Mexico are engaged in all-out war, and the most spectacular battles are being fought for the cameras as the combatants pursue a strategy of intimidation and propaganda by dumping ever greater numbers of headless bodies in public view.
Righty Playbook
At The Washington Post, Marc Thiessen shows that Obama’s “public” equity record is far, far worse than Romney’s private equity record.
While Senate Democrats want to force private employers to pay men and women the same, The Washington Free Beacon reports that Senate Democrats themselves already pay their female staff far, far less than their male counterparts.
AEI‘s James Pethokoukis posts a chart showing that the Obama spending binge really did happen.
Lefty Playbook
Talking Points Memo reports that African-American views on gay marriage have shifted since Obama flip-flopped on the issue.
The New Republic’s Jonathan Cohn calls Romney’s health care plan “retro.”
Slate‘s Matt Yglesias attacks Romney’s education plan.
