Yuri Zhivago
Mayor
that federal spending, taxes and the deficit are all lower than what they were on the day President Obama took office:
Secondly, “the vast bulk of the debt is the result of policies enacted during the Bush administration coupled with automatic increases in federal spending and decreases in tax revenue triggered by the economic downturn.”
Thirdly, President Obama has seen a decrease in nondefense state and local spending since taking office:
However, there are still certain issues that need to be addressed, starting with the 2009 federal budget.
The 2009 Federal Budget
The 2009 federal budget is perhaps one of the most contentious issues when it comes to the myth of Obama as a socialist. Obama, allegedly, tripled the budget deficit, from $450 billion in 2008, to roughly $1.4 trillion in 2009. However, The CBO “released a projection in January 2009 that the deficit would reach $1.2 trillion in 2009, before the costs for any new economic stimulus plans or new legislation were factored in.”. This, of course, was before Obama became President. This is because the Federal fiscal year lasts from October 1 to September 30, and “when Obama was sworn into office, Bush had already submitted his 3.1 trillion dollar 2009 budget almost a year earlier”.
Some Republicans might counter, and ask what about the so-called stimulus, they will ask, with its $787 billion price tag? Or the omnibus fiscal-year 2009 appropriations bill? And how about Cash for Clunkers and Obama’s expansion of the children’s health insurance program? Didn’t these all boost spending in 2009?
The answer, as you would expect, is yes, it did add to the 2009 federal budget. By roughly four percent.
As the Ludwig von Mises Institute rightly points out, how exactly is Obama responsible for deficits that existed on the day he took office?
The 2009 federal budget does not belong to President Obama, he did not triple the deficit and what little he did add was a minuscule four percent.
Comparing Bush with Obama on Spending and the public sector
If we were to agree that President Obama is a stealth socialist, then President Bush was nothing short of an out-and-out Stalinist. If weexamine the growth in federal outlays by various Presidents it is clear that the first year of the Obama administration did not increase spending - the opposite in fact.
Figures for the 2010 - 2013 budgets show that although President Obama has overseen an annual growth in federal spending by 1.4 percent over the course of his four years “no administration has reduced aggregate government spending as a precentage of GDP as much as Obama’s in forty years”.
Secondly, “the vast bulk of the debt is the result of policies enacted during the Bush administration coupled with automatic increases in federal spending and decreases in tax revenue triggered by the economic downturn.”
Thirdly, President Obama has seen a decrease in nondefense state and local spending since taking office:
However, there are still certain issues that need to be addressed, starting with the 2009 federal budget.
The 2009 Federal Budget
The 2009 federal budget is perhaps one of the most contentious issues when it comes to the myth of Obama as a socialist. Obama, allegedly, tripled the budget deficit, from $450 billion in 2008, to roughly $1.4 trillion in 2009. However, The CBO “released a projection in January 2009 that the deficit would reach $1.2 trillion in 2009, before the costs for any new economic stimulus plans or new legislation were factored in.”. This, of course, was before Obama became President. This is because the Federal fiscal year lasts from October 1 to September 30, and “when Obama was sworn into office, Bush had already submitted his 3.1 trillion dollar 2009 budget almost a year earlier”.
Some Republicans might counter, and ask what about the so-called stimulus, they will ask, with its $787 billion price tag? Or the omnibus fiscal-year 2009 appropriations bill? And how about Cash for Clunkers and Obama’s expansion of the children’s health insurance program? Didn’t these all boost spending in 2009?
The answer, as you would expect, is yes, it did add to the 2009 federal budget. By roughly four percent.
As the Ludwig von Mises Institute rightly points out, how exactly is Obama responsible for deficits that existed on the day he took office?
The 2009 federal budget does not belong to President Obama, he did not triple the deficit and what little he did add was a minuscule four percent.
Comparing Bush with Obama on Spending and the public sector
If we were to agree that President Obama is a stealth socialist, then President Bush was nothing short of an out-and-out Stalinist. If weexamine the growth in federal outlays by various Presidents it is clear that the first year of the Obama administration did not increase spending - the opposite in fact.
Figures for the 2010 - 2013 budgets show that although President Obama has overseen an annual growth in federal spending by 1.4 percent over the course of his four years “no administration has reduced aggregate government spending as a precentage of GDP as much as Obama’s in forty years”.
