A Truthful Perspective...

by: Les Carpenter
Rational Nation USA
Liberty -vs- Tyranny



Putting things in perspective. Certainly something the Democrats and Obama are hoping does not happen before November 2012.

WSJ - President Obama shocked us the other day when he said, "Since I've been president, federal spending has risen at the lowest pace in nearly 60 years." Having heard him champion the "multiplier effects" of deficit-financed stimulus spending, we saw him as an enthusiastic supporter of throwing other people's money at just about any problem.

Thus began our quest to see where we had strayed from the straight and narrow. Here's the picture.

In the chart nearby we've plotted federal government spending on a National Income and Product Accounts (NIPA) basis as a share of total U.S. GDP from 1990 to the present. The NIPA numbers are used here as opposed to appropriations or outlays to capture the actual periods when production occurs. The stories the chart tells are amazing.

The first is how much government spending fell during President Bill Clinton's eight years in office and how low it was when he left office. When he became president in 1992, government spending was 23.5% of GDP, and when he left in 2001 it was 19.5% of GDP. President Clinton, in conjunction with a solid Republican Congress, cut government spending by more than any other president in modern times, and oversaw one of the greatest periods of economic growth and prosperity in U.S. history.

Sadly for fiscal conservatives, the biggest surge in government spending came during the last two years of President George W. Bush's eight years in office (2007-2008). A weakened Republican president dealing with a strident Democratic Congress, led by then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, resulted in an orgy of spending.

Mr. Bush and Republicans in Congress capitulated to and even promoted each and every government bailout and populist redistribution canard put before them. It's a long list, starting with the 2003 trillion-dollar Medicare prescription drug benefit and culminating with the actions taken to stem the 2008 financial meltdown—the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, the bailout of insurance giant AIG and government-sponsored lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the ill-advised 2008 $600-per-person tax rebate, the stimulus add-ons to 2007's housing and farm bills, etc. The script had it that greedy right-wingers were the cause of our collapse, and deficit spending and easy money the answer.

The numbers are mind boggling. From the second quarter of 2007, i.e., the first full quarter of a Pelosi-Reid dominated Congress and a politically weakened President Bush, to the second quarter of 2009 when President Obama assumed office, government spending skyrocketed to 27.3% of GDP from 21.4%. It was the largest peacetime expansion of government spending in U.S. history. {Read More}

Keynesian advocates must have their heads spinning. But they'll continue to keep their "mouths a flappin workin the spin" I'm sure.

Via: Memeoranum

Comments

  1. Les,

    Obama's latest 'walk out on the bill' argument works. You have to admit that. The GOP regulated the nation "classically liberal" for about six years, and they uselessly watched it wreck.

    Sometimes you have to pass and/or enforce laws. It happens. Change happens. We wouldn't want to live in a world of shell games, now, would we?

    JMJ

    ReplyDelete
  2. I don't even know what Jersey is talking about. We live in a progressive state, have been for over 100 years now. There was nothing, absolutely nothing classically liberal about the Bush administration.

    Come blustering back Jersey, throw some F-Bombs, but you are full of it. Give us a count of federal regulations before Bush took office and after. Put up or shut up. You are full of it.

    Also, the WSJ article is an example of how conservatives are more grown-up and connected to reality than the left. Lefties twist themselves in knows absurdly trying to justify the most ridiculous claims, like Obama didn't really blow that much money.

    Conservatives can analyze and criticize even "their own." But blew too much money! That's reality, and liberals are incapable to exercising the same adult analysis of their own side.

    The American Liberal: A very unliberal, doctrinaire and intellectually bankrupt creature.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yeah Silver, still scratching my head on jmj's latest.

      Delete
  3. Obama DOES have chutzpah. He gets bitch-slapped into cutting spending and then tries to take credit for it. Unbelievable.

    ReplyDelete
  4. The Bush administration was leftist and progressive, especially the second term. The destruction and chaos they caused was precisely because of this, something that leftist shills like JMJ will never have the mental capacity to wrap their distorted minds around.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. With one exception, The Patriot Act.

      But then again that has nothing to do with economics really.

      Delete

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