Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Government spending in the time of the 44th president

If there has been one constant ridiculous refrain conservatives love it's Reagan was a nuke loving, tax cutting, immigrant kicking kind of guy. But that really has nothing to do with this post. Rather this post deals with the refrain from conservatives that Obama is a big time spender, and he has been an unprecedented  inflater of budgets. Is this based on facts? How much do conservatives rely on those?

Market Watch noted that the annual growth in spending under Obama has been at 1.4%. So yes. Spending is up under Obama. Under GW Bush (or as Mitt Romney calls him The Predecessor.) growth increased until it was at 8.1%. In his first term, Reagan beat this, reaching 8.7%. Call me crazy, but it looks like spending has been quite controlled, as no one in the last 30 years has had spending growth as low as Obama has had.

Of course some of this comes from Republican's shutting down much of the government trying to humiliate the president. But the president also has been interested in trying to control spending. As he has said many times, he has sought deficient neutrality on many projects. For persons like me, I would rather more spending was made on the nation's infrastructure. But to say he has been throwing our tax dollars around haphazardly is just bull shit. It's time for conservatives to acknowledge it.


If there is one fun aspect (and by fun, I mean sad) to seeing these facts be reported on, it's seeing conservative responses. These responses center on the fact that Obama is a communist, a druggie, a villain, and so is anyone that has anything good to say of him. You know, the cream of conservative thinking. It would be nice if these people are so concerned for the country, if they would join us in a real conversation.


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