|
|
|
Truth is the first victim of a political campaign, and these days the political campaigns never stop. So the Republicans and conservative media have been screaming for years about the huge, monstrous, unprecedented “spending inferno” that is the Obama presidency.
Except that it isn’t true. As Rex Nutting reports for the Wall Street Journal’s Market Watch, real federal spending under Obama has grown more slowly than under any president in 60 years. Nutting gives you the links so you can double-check his math, but the bottom line is that while deficits have remained high, the problem — despite the cries of Republicans to the contrary — is on the revenue side, not the spending side. Unsustainable tax cuts and recession-slowed tax receipts have cut revenues, but spending is down too, thanks largely to resistance in Congress to Obama’s impulse to spend more.
(Credit WSJ Market Watch for chart above)
