Associated Press: FACT CHECK: Obama thrifty spending claim, and MarketWatch analysis, are way off

[OKNancy]

6. Thanks for the Right wing spew

I went to the source of this graphic
http://www.politicalmathblog.com and read there.

I also notice that the nasty right-wing site, the American Enterprise Institute is saying the same thing.
http://blog.american.com/2012/05/actually-the-obama-spending-binge-really-did-happen/


Then I read this very informative comment by a poster named ptpatil, who can answer this horseshit much better than I.



Reddit response to your horseshit infographic:
Section by section:
Rule 1:
Neglects to mention TARP and the bailouts passed under Bush
No president has ever renegotiated his inaugural-year budget.
Neglects the “who proposed FY 2009 spending”, which was of course Bush.
Bush low-balling the budget doesn’t make him fiscally conservative, just a wishful thinker who knew he wouldn’t have to deal with the outcome
“Obama gets credits for the jobs from FY 2009″ has less to do with the budget and more to do with the stimulus, duhh.
Rule 2:
$20 BILLION THE HORROR the author is literally complaining about 0,06% increase due to this totally dirty secret numbers trick. This got a whole rule to itself, lol.
Rule 3:
All one big extension of the whining about 0,06%
Uses CBO projections from early 2009, when both left, right, and center economists were all underestimating the depth of the recession, and hence government spending (which would rise substantially in response to greater unemployment, even if Obama changed nothing).
Rule 4:
Author is flipping back and forth now between CBO baselines, actual budgets, and proposed budgets, always favoring whichever is highest for Obama
Is he still using the CBO’s projections from 2009? Not clear
Rule 5:
Looks bad for whom? The graph shows spending shrinking under Obama. Maybe he thinks spending rising over time as the economy and population grows is a bad thing? I have no idea what point he was going for.
Bottom line: Author does some half-assed nitpicking, commits a shitload of cherrypicking himself, and never approaches the fundamental claim once, that spending increases under Obama have been less than any Prez since Ike. All he’d have to do to disprove it is pick 1 consistent measurement, chart it, and point out a President under whom spending growth was slower. That’s it, that’s all he had to do was provide 1 counterexample, and he didn’t, instead trying to poke holes to reduce general confidence.
http://www.politicalmathblog.com/?p=1786&cpage=1#comments