Fair point. Then let's expand our horizon a little and look at the 2 Reagan terms and first Bush term, and then look at the 2 Bush terms and the first Obama term. 3 terms under Reagan/Bush? 19% increase. 3 Terms under Bush/Obama? 16.8% increase. So Obama is clearly not the only President who "started with a high base".
Originally Posted by Doove
Consider the extent to which the FY2009 base was increased by measures initially intended to get us through the 2008 crisis. TARP, for instance, was passed in late 2008 (during FY2009) and was intended to be (and should have been) a burst of one-time spending. (I don't remember exactly, but think something like $300-350 billion from TARP was spent during that fiscal year.) The author notes that Obama should be responsible for about $140 of stimulus spending and a few other things, but doesn't mention that in normal times, a budget is put together before the start of a fiscal year -- and that's it. But there was a "reconciliation bill" Obama signed a couple of months into his term. There were objections that he had allowed congress to pork up the bill unjustifiably, but he was dismissive of those, saying that was "last year's business" and that we should move on. In other words, a number of bailout, stimulus spending, and reconciliation items were included that normally would not have seen the light of day.
Just a few weeks after taking office, Obama signed the ARRA, arguing that it was necessary to sustain a big spending binge in order to mitigate the severity of the recession and propel the economy to a robust recovery (although it obviously did no such thing).
So all in all, I don't think Nutting did a very objective job of painting a picture intended to show how Obama is supposedly not a big spender. The FY2009 surge should have been a one-off rather than part of something with which to form a new baseline.
Parse it however you want; the fact is that in the last 30 years, the closest we've come to anything resembling fiscal sanity has been under Clinton and Obama.
Originally Posted by Doove
I'll agree with that statement if you'll knock off the last two words!
My key point is that a president's fiscal record should not be judged simply on what his rate of spending increase over a certain base year may be. Rather, it should be judged on
how he wants to spend the money, what the current fiscal outlook is, and what the prospects are for establishing a path toward fiscal sustainability.
By those criteria, I don't think Barack Obama deserves a very good grade.