Obama spending...

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Added By: Scott

Added on: 05/29/2012 @ 12:20:47 PM

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...has slowed. Spending has risen slower under Obama's watch than at any time in nearly 60 years. The statement was rated "mostly true" because it left out that Repbulicans do indeed deserve some credit. But "Obama the spender" is not an accurate moniker for the current commander-in-chief.

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	Matt - Washington Bureau Chief 05/29/2012 @ 12:56:32 PM
Meanwhile, other "fact checkers" disagree: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/the-facts-about-the-growth-of-spending-under-obama/2012/05/24/gJQAIJh6nU_blog.html?wprss=rss_fact-checker http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/fact-check-obama-claim-of-thrifty-spending-falls-short-of-reality-bailout-skewers-numbers/2012/05/26/gJQA8fgzrU_story.html		Rate this comment Yours: Rated 0 times.

	Matt - 3941 Posts 05/29/2012 @ 01:02:56 PM
This is also interesting: http://www.forbes.com/sites/danielmitchell/2012/05/24/mirror-mirror-on-the-wall-which-president-is-the-biggest-spender-of-all/		Rate this comment Yours: Rated 0 times.

	Scott - Ma'am, can you make sure your computer is turned on? 05/30/2012 @ 07:49:05 AM
Interesting, politifact article I linked uses as it's basis an article that the first washington post article claims to debunk. Which one is the right one? Obviously the one that ~~supports my ideology~~ is more accurate.		Rate this comment Yours: Rated 0 times.

	Scott - 6225 Posts 05/30/2012 @ 07:55:10 AM
Matt Wrote - Yesterday @ 01:02:56 PM This is also interesting: http://www.forbes.com/sites/danielmitchell/2012/05/24/mirror-mirror-on-the-wall-which-president-is-the-biggest-spender-of-all/ to paraphrase part of this article "the Iraq war (you know, the war Bush chose to undertake voluntarily) makes Bush look like a big spender, so we'll just ignore that spending because it makes him look bad". Furthermore, the Forbes article seems to be suggesting that spending isn't really a problem a problem at all. If you spend on wars, defense, and bailing out banks it's good. If you spend it on the less fortunate, poor, and sick, it's bad. The author basically cherry picked everything out until he came to a number that put Obama in a bad place, then claimed to have a good reason to do so. The only point that seems to make sense is not counting debt interest against the sitting president.		Rate this comment Yours: Rated 0 times.
Scott perfected this 2 times, last at 05/30/2012 7:59:49 am

	Matt - 3941 Posts 05/30/2012 @ 04:10:51 PM
If the author wanted to make GWB look good, he sure did a bad job of it. He probably regrets not taking out the whole paragraph in the beginning where he blames Bush for spending too much money. The point I thought the article was trying to make was that before you start comparing presidents, you have to neutralize their starting positions somewhat (kind of like how, in baseball, you can adjust the stats to cancel out park effects, level of opposition, etc. when trying to compare players). This is not an exact science and what gets counted and what doesn't is up for debate (and he says as much in the article), but what he was trying to get at was to compare the Presidents on the spending that was in their control, not the stuff that they were "forced" to do. There is certainly an argument to be made for what percent of the Iraq War spending should be counted for Bush and what percent should be counted as inevitable post-911 defense spending, but even with all that taken away, Bush still doesn't look all that great. The bigger, and more pertinent, point is that the writer of the article claiming Obama as a fiscal conservative ignored how TARP skewed the numbers. The TARP spending ballooned the numbers for Bush's last year, and therefore set a high starting point for Obama's first year. Just by not having to bailout the banks, Obama's spending would have shown a decrease, everything else being equal. Obama also got another boost by the fact that when the banks started to pay some of this money back to the government, it was counted as negative spending to Obama. If Obama was truly a "non-spender" the decrease shown would have been much bigger that it was.		Rate this comment Yours: Rated 0 times.
Matt screwed with this 2 times, last at 05/30/2012 4:20:20 pm

	Jeremy - 9543 Posts 05/30/2012 @ 04:21:49 PM
Without reading the 7 articles of crap that can probably be spun either way, is it important to whatever "cause" that it be proven Obama is actually fiscally "conservative" to argue against the notion that Obama gives $1 billion dollars to everyone that wanders near the White House? They can both be not true as far as I see it.		Rate this comment Yours: Rated 0 times.
Jeremy screwed with this at 05/30/2012 4:22:09 pm

	Matt - Washington Bureau Chief 05/30/2012 @ 04:27:25 PM
To be fair, he doesn't hand out $1 billion to everyone who passes by, just those who donated to his campaign. Hiyoooo!		Rate this comment Yours: Rated 0 times.