We’ve all seen or heard about the Market Watch piece by Rex Nutting:
Almost everyone believes that Obama has presided over a massive increase in federal spending, an “inferno” of spending that threatens our jobs, our businesses and our children’s future. Even Democrats seem to think it’s true.
But it didn’t happen. Although there was a big stimulus bill under Obama, federal spending is rising at the slowest pace since Dwight Eisenhower brought the Korean War to an end in the 1950s.
And the graphs that follow made it through Facebook like a wildfire:
Pretty startling. If true, and Politifact says it mostly is, it paints a significantly different picture than most people have come to accept. And to be sure, there have been some herculean efforts to point out that Nutting, Obama and Politifact may not be explaining the whole reality. For example, the stimulus is charged to Bush but the repayment of that stimulus is credited to Obama. At the very least, the two actions should be charged to the same guy, either one seems fair. Then there’s the fiscal activities that took place during Bush’s fiscal year but that Obama passed. Those should not be given to Bush but rather to Obama.
However, there’s been something gnawing at me during this whole debate and until I read a piece this morning by Dan Mitchell.
He makes a great case that while Obama IS a big government big spender, it’s not as if the Republicans are innocent.