Obama: “I’m Running To Pay Down Our Debt”
Under President Obama the federal budget has grown 31%, from $2.9 trillion in 2009 to $3.82 trillion in 2011. Every year since 2009 we’ve run a budget deficit over $1 trillion, while the last Bush-era budget had a deficit of under $500 billion.
But according to President Obama, all the deficit-spending of his first term was something he inherited from President Bush and if we’d only re-elect him he’ll start paying down the national debt.
At a fundraiser for his re-election campaign in Denver tonight, President Obama set out to upend conventional Republican wisdom that his administration has been defined by excessive government spending.
“I’m running to pay down our debt in a way that’s balanced and responsible. After inheriting a $1 trillion deficit, I signed $2 trillion of spending cuts into law,” he told a crowd of donors at the Hyatt Regency. “My opponent won’t admit it, but it’s starting to appear in places, like real liberal outlets, like the Wall Street Journal: Since I’ve been president, federal spending has risen at the lowest pace in nearly 60 years. Think about that.”
Obama is referring to this article by Rex Nutting of Market Watch, which claims that Obama has presided over the slowest growth in federal spending in 60 years. But that’s not actually accurate.
Even if we assign 2009′s leap in federal spending to President Obama to George W. Bush, there’s no questioning that Obama has kept his foot on the spending accelerator ever since as this chart from Jim Hoft shows:
If 2009′s budget deficit was all Bush’s fault, what about 2010′s deficit? And 2011′s? And our projected trillion dollar surplus in 2012?
Even if one could argue that President Obama hasn’t grown spending as quickly as Bush, that doesn’t change the fact that he’s maintained federal spending at levels which has dramatically inflated the national debt.
Tags: Barack Obama, deficits, national debt
