|
Columbus
Dispatch...
Obama
had
help in creating spending mess
June 6, 2012
Here’s a
simple suggestion for Mitt Romney: Admit that the Democrats have a
point.
Right
before theMemorial Day weekend, Washington was consumed by a debate
over how
much Barack Obama has spent as president, and it looks like it’s
picking up
again.
Romney says
thathe’ll “lead us out of this debt-and-spending inferno” ignited by
Obama.
The
president’s defenders say, in effect, “What inferno?” White House Press
Secretary Jay Carney scolded reporters last week not to “buy into the
b.s. that
you hear about spending and fiscal constraint with regard to this
administration. I think doing so is a sign of sloth and laziness.”
To back up
his claim, Carney cited the work of MarketWatch columnist Rex Nutting,
who
wrote that, “There has been no huge increase in spending under the
current
president, despite what you hear.”
Nutting’s
math is, at minimum, debatable. He puts all of the spending of the
first nine
months of 2009 in George W. Bush’s column, despite the fact that Obama
was
president. Even Obama’s massive stimulus program is mostly attributed
to
Bush-era spending. Meanwhile, the Troubled Asset Relief Program that
was
launched by Bush (andsupported by Obama), artificially boosted spending
at the
end of Bush’s term, inflating “base spending.” Obama took what was
supposed to
be a one-time emergency expenditure and made it part of the new normal.
Factor
out TARP and the bailouts, and Obama comes in second to Lyndon Johnson
in terms
of spending, according to the Cato Institute’s Dan Mitchell.
In a more
conventional analysis, the Congressional Budget Office says that total
federal
spending in 2008 was $2.98 trillion and has gone up each year to $3.72
trillion
in Obama’s fiscal 2013 budget.
Another way
to look at it: Until Obama became president, federal spending never
exceeded
23.5 percent of GDP. The average for the Bush years was 20.5 percent.
In 2009,
spending broke 25 percent, and it has stayed above 23.5 percent for
Obama’s
entire presidency.
Also,
what’s not in dispute is that the federal debt has soared under Obama.
As the
editors of The Wall Street Journal recently noted, “Mr. Obama can
fairly blame
$1 trillion or so of the $5 trillion debt increase of the last four
years on Mr.
Bush. But what about the other $4 trillion? Debt held by the public now
stands
at 74.2 percent of the economy, up from 40.5 percent at the end of 2008
— and
rising rapidly.”
But all of
thesenumbers are a sideshow: Republicans in Washington helped create
the
problem, and Romney should concede the point.
Focused on
fighting a war, Bush — never a tightwad to begin with — handed the keys
to the
Treasury to Tom DeLay and Denny Hastert, and they spent enough money to
burn a
wet mule. On Bush’s watch, education spending more than doubled, the
government
enacted the biggest expansion in entitlements since the Great Society
(Medicare
Part D), and we created a vast new government agency (the Department of
HomelandSecurity).
And yet, to
listen to Obama and his allies, the Bush years were a time of “market
fundamentalism” and government inaction. That’s in part because when it
comes
to domestic policy, Democrats will always want to spend more than
Republicans,
so Republicans are always branded as mean-spiritedly frugal by
comparison.
Nearly
every problem with spending and debt associated with the Bush years was
made
far worse under Obama. The man campaigned as an outsider who was going
to
change course before we went over a fiscal cliff. Instead, when he got
behind
the wheel, as it were, he hit the gas instead of the brakes — and yet
has the
temerity to claim that all of the forward momentum is Bush’s fault.
Worse, the
current obsession with “compromise” in Washington boils down to the
argument
that Republicans should revert back to being part of the problem,
enabling
Obama to “invest” even more money in his pet schemes.
Romney is
under no obligation to defend the Republican performance during the
Bush years.
Indeed, if he’s serious about fixing what’s wrong with Washington, he
has an
obligation not to defend it. This is an argument that the tea party —
which
famously dealt Obama’s party a shellacking in 2010 — and independents
alike are
entirely open to. Voters don’t want a president to rein in runaway
Democratic
spending; they want one to rein in runaway Washington spending.
Let Obama
play the partisan blame game. He’s the partisan insider this time. The
role
ofbipartisan outsider is Romney’s for the taking.
Read this
and other articles at the Columbus Dispatch
Columbus
Dispatch...
Obama had
help in creating spending mess
Here’s a
simple suggestion for Mitt Romney: Admit that the Democrats have a
point.
Right
before theMemorial Day weekend, Washington was consumed by a debate
over how
much Barack Obama has spent as president, and it looks like it’s
picking up
again.
Romney says
thathe’ll “lead us out of this debt-and-spending inferno” ignited by
Obama.
The
president’s defenders say, in effect, “What inferno?” White House Press
Secretary Jay Carney scolded reporters last week not to “buy into the
b.s. that
you hear about spending and fiscal constraint with regard to this
administration. I think doing so is a sign of sloth and laziness.”
To back up
his claim, Carney cited the work of MarketWatch columnist Rex Nutting,
who
wrote that, “There has been no huge increase in spending under the
current
president, despite what you hear.”
Nutting’s
math is, at minimum, debatable. He puts all of the spending of the
first nine
months of 2009 in George W. Bush’s column, despite the fact that Obama
was
president. Even Obama’s massive stimulus program is mostly attributed
to
Bush-era spending. Meanwhile, the Troubled Asset Relief Program that
was
launched by Bush (andsupported by Obama), artificially boosted spending
at the
end of Bush’s term, inflating “base spending.” Obama took what was
supposed to
be a one-time emergency expenditure and made it part of the new normal.
Factor
out TARP and the bailouts, and Obama comes in second to Lyndon Johnson
in terms
of spending, according to the Cato Institute’s Dan Mitchell.
In a more
conventional analysis, the Congressional Budget Office says that total
federal
spending in 2008 was $2.98 trillion and has gone up each year to $3.72
trillion
in Obama’s fiscal 2013 budget.
Another way
to look at it: Until Obama became president, federal spending never
exceeded
23.5 percent of GDP. The average for the Bush years was 20.5 percent.
In 2009,
spending broke 25 percent, and it has stayed above 23.5 percent for
Obama’s
entire presidency.
Also,
what’s not in dispute is that the federal debt has soared under Obama.
As the
editors of The Wall Street Journal recently noted, “Mr. Obama can
fairly blame
$1 trillion or so of the $5 trillion debt increase of the last four
years on Mr.
Bush. But what about the other $4 trillion? Debt held by the public now
stands
at 74.2 percent of the economy, up from 40.5 percent at the end of 2008
— and
rising rapidly.”
But all of
thesenumbers are a sideshow: Republicans in Washington helped create
the
problem, and Romney should concede the point.
Focused on
fighting a war, Bush — never a tightwad to begin with — handed the keys
to the
Treasury to Tom DeLay and Denny Hastert, and they spent enough money to
burn a
wet mule. On Bush’s watch, education spending more than doubled, the
government
enacted the biggest expansion in entitlements since the Great Society
(Medicare
Part D), and we created a vast new government agency (the Department of
HomelandSecurity).
And yet, to
listen to Obama and his allies, the Bush years were a time of “market
fundamentalism” and government inaction. That’s in part because when it
comes
to domestic policy, Democrats will always want to spend more than
Republicans,
so Republicans are always branded as mean-spiritedly frugal by
comparison.
Nearly
every problem with spending and debt associated with the Bush years was
made
far worse under Obama. The man campaigned as an outsider who was going
to
change course before we went over a fiscal cliff. Instead, when he got
behind
the wheel, as it were, he hit the gas instead of the brakes — and yet
has the
temerity to claim that all of the forward momentum is Bush’s fault.
Worse, the
current obsession with “compromise” in Washington boils down to the
argument
that Republicans should revert back to being part of the problem,
enabling
Obama to “invest” even more money in his pet schemes.
Romney is
under no obligation to defend the Republican performance during the
Bush years.
Indeed, if he’s serious about fixing what’s wrong with Washington, he
has an
obligation not to defend it. This is an argument that the tea party —
which
famously dealt Obama’s party a shellacking in 2010 — and independents
alike are
entirely open to. Voters don’t want a president to rein in runaway
Democratic
spending; they want one to rein in runaway Washington spending.
Let Obama
play the partisan blame game. He’s the partisan insider this time. The
role
ofbipartisan outsider is Romney’s for the taking.
Read this
and other articles at the Columbus Dispatch
|
