AP FACT CHECK: Obama off on thrifty spending claim

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May 26, 8:35 AM EDT

FACT CHECK: Obama off on thrifty spending claim
By ANDREW TAYLOR Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The White House is aggressively pushing the idea that, contrary to widespread belief, President Barack Obama is tightfisted with taxpayer dollars. To back it up, the administration cites a media report that claims federal spending is rising at the slowest pace since the Eisenhower years.

"Federal spending since I took office has risen at the slowest pace of any president in almost 60 years," Obama said at a campaign rally Thursday in Des Moines, Iowa.
The problem with that rosy claim is that the Wall Street bailout is part of the calculation. The bailout ballooned the 2009 budget just before Obama took office, making Obama's 2010 results look smaller in comparison. And as almost $150 billion of the bailout was paid back during Obama's watch, the analysis counted them as government spending cuts.
It also assumes Obama had less of a role setting the budget for 2009 than he really did.
Obama rests his claim on an analysis by MarketWatch, a financial information and news service owned by Dow Jones & Co. The analysis simply looks at the year-to-year topline spending number for the government but doesn't account for distortions baked into the figures by the Wall Street bailout and government takeover of the mortgage lending giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
The MarketWatch study finds spending growth of only 1.4 percent over 2010-2013, or annual increases averaging 0.4 percent over that period. Those are stunningly low figures considering that Obama rammed through Congress an $831 billion stimulus measure in early 2009 and presided over significant increases in annual spending by domestic agencies at the same time the cost of benefit programs like Social Security, Medicare and the Medicaid were ticking steadily higher.
A fairer calculation would give Obama much of the responsibility for an almost 10 percent budget boost in 2009, then a 13 percent increase over 2010-2013, or average annual growth of spending of just more than 3 percent over that period.
So, how does the administration arrive at its claim?
First, there's the Troubled Assets Relief Program, the official name for the Wall Street bailout. First, companies got a net $151 billion from TARP in 2009, making 2010 spending look smaller. Then, because banks and Wall Street firms repaid a net $110 billion in TARP funds in 2010, Obama is claiming credit for cutting spending by that much.
The combination of TARP lending in one year and much of that money being paid back in the next makes Obama's spending record for 2010 look $261 billion thriftier than it really was. Only by that measure does Obama "cut" spending by 1.8 percent in 2010 as the analysis claims.
The federal takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac also makes Obama's record on spending look better than it was. The government spent $96 billion on the Fannie-Freddie takeovers in 2009 but only $40 billion on them in 2010. By the administration's reckoning, the $56 billion difference was a spending cut by Obama.
Taken together, TARP and the takeover of Fannie and Freddie combine to give Obama an undeserved $317 billion swing in the 2010 figures and the resulting 1.8 percent cut from 2009. A fairer reading is an almost 8 percent increase.
Those two bailouts account for $72 billion more in cuts in 2011. Obama supported the bailouts.
There's also the question of how to treat the 2009 fiscal year, which actually began Oct. 1, 2008, almost four months before Obama took office. Typically, the remaining eight months get counted as part of the prior president's spending since the incoming president usually doesn't change it much until the following October. The MarketWatch analysis assigned 2009 to former President George W. Bush, though it gave Obama responsibility that year for a $140 million chunk of the 2009 stimulus bill.
But Obama's role in 2009 spending was much bigger than that. For starters, he signed nine spending bills funding every Cabinet agency except Defense, Veterans Affairs and Homeland Security. While the numbers don't jibe exactly, Obama bears the chief responsibility for an 11 percent, $59 billion increase in non-defense spending in 2009. Then there's a 9 percent, $109 billion increase in combined defense and non-defense appropriated outlays in 2010, a year for which Obama is wholly responsible.
As other critics have noted, including former Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin, the MarketWatch analysis also incorporates CBO's annual baseline as its estimate for fiscal years 2012 and 2013. That gives Obama credit for three events unlikely to occur:
-$65 billion in 2013 from automatic, across-the-board spending cuts slated to take effect next January.
-Cuts in Medicare payments to physicians.
-The expiration of refundable tax cuts that are "scored" as spending in federal ledgers.
Lawmakers are unlikely to allow the automatic cuts to take full effect, but it's at best a guessing game as to what will really happen in 2013. A better measure is Obama's request for 2013.
"You can only make him look good by ignoring the early years and adopting the hope and not the reality of the years in his budget," said Holtz-Eakin, a GOP economist and president of the American Action Forum, a free market think tank.
So how does Obama measure up?
If one assumes that TARP and the takeover of Fannie and Freddie by the government as one-time budgetary anomalies and remove them from calculations - an approach taken by Holtz-Eakin - you get the following picture:
-A 9.7 percent increase in 2009, much of which is attributable to Obama.
-A 7.8 percent increase in 2010, followed by slower spending growth over 2011-13. Much of the slower growth reflects the influence of Republicans retaking control of the House and their budget and debt deal last summer with Obama. All told, government spending now appears to be growing at an annual rate of roughly 3 percent over the 2010-2013 period, rather than the 0.4 percent claimed by Obama and the MarketWatch analysis.


Somehow Luther forgot to post this today to amend his post from the other day...

It's the fault of Reagan, Bush1 and Bush2, just ask Billy

Luther is quite aware that his post and that 'analysis' are BS...he just doesn't have the balls to admit he was duped. But he should be used to that by now.

Wait, the AP isn't a left wing operative?

Who ran up more debt ? Look at Reagan for irresponsible spending first Then the BUSH administrations with 2 needless wars.

Do your self a favor and look it up yourself.

You don't deserve a response, douche bag, but you buddy Barry had run up more debt in less than 4 years than Bush did in 8. That, is a fact. As for Reagan, he turned our the recession that Jimmy Carter started. Another FACT that you can't deny. Jimmy Carter, record holder for the highest misery index of any POTUS, with Barry coming in a close second. Nice.

Where do you get your facts from ? Play Dough boxes ?

Wait,wait...he lied AGAIN?...IMPOSSIBLE!

This thread is a bunch of bullshit since you guys were against TARP in the first place.

Growth in the National Debt
The one inescapable drag on the economy and every American taxpayer or government dependant is the interest obligation paid on the national debt. Indebtedness is nothing new to this country, but the inability to service the public debt stretches over the last half century. This trend is so disturbing that politicians spend every waking hour avoiding the consequences of the ultimate outcome, the demise of the currency. The reserve currency status that has allowed for effortless deficit spending has a day of reckoning. The final collapse of the global empire and superpower will smell more of financial evaporation than of a military defeat.
A brief review of The National Debt: How Did We Get Here?, provides a valuable background.

"Historically, the debt generally increased because of wars and economic depressions. The debt was then reduced after the war or during more prosperous times. This trend was broken beginning about 1918, and definitely so by the end of WW2. The last time the debt was actually reduced was in 1957 when it declined by 0.82%."

What power on earth can reverse this ominous pattern of refusal to balance the books of federal spending? Do not look to the voodoo economics propagated by the free traders over at Redstates. "If the government stops accumulating debt today and dedicates oil from shale to paying off that existing debt, and if we produce just 8% of that oil and sell it on the global market, we can completely pay off our national debt with the proceeds." Stop and evaluate such hooey.
Putting the federal government into the oil fracking business and selling domestic resources on the world market is an obscene economic model. Also, the notion that Congress would go cold turkey and ban any budget that is not in balance is about as probable as closing all foreign military bases because of funding shortfalls. However, the rudimentary reason that the growth in federal debt continues to rise is directed by who owns the obligations.
In Who Owns the U.S. National Debt?, an outline of entities that provide the money that finances the debt is informative.

The largest part (40%) of the Debt Held by the Public is owed to foreign governments and investors. The next largest part (20%) is not really the public, but other government entities, like the Federal Reserve and state and local governments. Another $2.6 trillion (20%) is held by the public through mutual funds, private pension funds, savings bonds or individual Treasury notes. A wee bit is held by businesses, like banks and insurance companies. Here's the breakout:

Foreign - $4.5 trillion

Federal Reserve - $1.4 trillion

State and Local Government, including their Pension Funds - $708 billion

Mutual Funds - $636 billion

Private Pension Funds - $616 billion

Banks - $316 billion

Insurance Companies - $253 billion

Savings Bonds - $188 billion

Other - $1.2 trillion. (As of December 2010. Source: Treasury Bulletin, Ownership of Federal Securities, Table OFS-2)

Even under near zero interest rate returns, the trillions needed to satisfy the hungry appetite of spending continue to flow, even if the Federal Reserve needs to be a buyer of last resort. In a prosperous "main street" domestic economy, tax revenues would increase because the velocity on money expands. Yet taxation alone can never retire the national debt as long as the debt created money of central banking exists.
When the Federal Reserve buys T-bill securities with phony money of their own creation, the monetization function of that purchase, swells the liability. Each succeeding presidential administration expounds upon the previous expenditures. Push back for fiscal responsibility from Tea Party proponents, meets with hostility by the elite political class, and illustrates the resistance for eliminating the freewheeling spending practices.
The growth in the national debt is just the most obvious tally that gets attention. Even the CBO's 2011 Long-Term Budget Outlook promotes the tax more and spend less con game that is a focal point in the current election cycle.

Higher levels of debt imply higher interest payments on that debt, which would eventually require either higher taxes or a reduction in government benefits and services.

Rising debt would increasingly restrict policymakers' ability to use tax and spending policies to respond to unexpected challenges, such as economic downturns or financial crises. As a result, the effects of such developments on the economy and people's well-being could be worse.

Growing debt also would increase the probability of a sudden fiscal crisis, during which investors would lose confidence in the government's ability to manage its budget and the government would thereby lose its ability to borrow at affordable rates. Such a crisis would confront policymakers with extremely difficult choices. To restore investors' confidence, policymakers would probably need to enact spending cuts or tax increases more drastic and painful than those that would have been necessary had the adjustments come sooner.

In the article, Just who will pay the debt?, provides a stark analysis.

"In an era where governmental debt on all levels rises continually and out strips growth in population, the percentage of each citizen’s accrued share to sustain that debt, inevitably must increase. With the incurable appetite of ‘public servants’ to invent new programs, entitlements and agencies, the concept of limited government has long passed into memory. The aftereffect of unfair international trade has shackled the economy with permanent balance of payment shortfalls. The expansion of state and federal bureaucracies of all kinds, coupled with additions to local municipalities, has produced the only growth occupations, virtually immune to layoffs. Contrary to public myth and distortions, inflation in essential necessities has not departed, as the purchasing power of your money buys less."

The only way to resolve the bogus national debt, based upon the central banking counterfeit currency swindle, is to renounce the debt as illegitimate. Nothing else will stop or even slow down the rapid expansion and growth of the national debt clock from collapsing the economy and destroying the currency.
James Hall – May 30, 2012
　

Afghanistan was a needless war?

The Obama numbers definitely look worse if you don't consider the 2008-2009 bailouts to be government spending.

Yes.

Its fine to consider them government spending....just not normal spending that would occur every year.... ie..a very inflated baseline to make Obama's horrid numbers look better. (and somewhat disingenuous anyway, since Obama asked for the second half of the tarp to be released, which he used for the auto bailouts.....but somehow that was counted as Bush spending...go figure)

100% this

We had it in the bag with the whole world behind us when Bush decided that Iraq was more important. It became a war when we had to go back because the job wasn't dome right the first time !