Obama: "We Don't Have A Spending Problem"

According to an interview between the Wall Street Journal’s Stephen Moore and Speaker of the House John Boehner, in behind the scenes negotiations President Obama insisted that “we don’t have a spending problem.”

Which is an odd admission for a President who says that we need a “balanced approach” to deficit reduction in public.

In an interview with Stephen Moore of the Wall Street Journal, newly re-elected House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) opened up about President Obama’s utter unwillingness to cut a single dollar from federal spending. In a stunning admission, Obama reportedly told Boehner, “We don’t have a spending problem.”

Boehner added that President Obama continues to maintain that America’s federal deficit is caused not by governmental overspending but by “a health-care problem.” Said Boehner, “They blame all of the fiscal woes on our health-care system.” Boehner told Obama, “Clearly we have a health-care problem, which is about to get worse with Obamacare. But, Mr. President, we have a very serious spending problem.” Obama eventually replied, “I’m getting tired of hearing you say that.”

Perhaps the President should review this chart, and get back to us on that lack of a spending problem:

Also, since 2009, federal tax revenues are actually increasing. We took a big hit thanks to the 2008-2009 economic collapse, but revenues are back nearly to the record-setting levels of the post-Bush tax cut era:

The problem we have is that federal spending has never really stopped growing, even when revenues plunged during the economic collapse:

This is the very definition of a spending problem.