So about that “Obama spending binge”

To say conservatives have attacked President Barack Obama as a “big spender” when it comes to the federal budget would be an epic understatement.

However, despite the meme that President Obama is a “big spender,” the fact is spending under President Obama hasn’t actually ballooned as much as some want us to believe.

If we attribute that $140 billion in stimulus to Obama and not to Bush, we find that spending under Obama grew by about $200 billion over four years, amounting to a 1.4% annualized increase.

After adjusting for inflation, spending under Obama is falling at a 1.4% annual pace — the first decline in real spending since the early 1970s, when Richard Nixon was retreating from the quagmire in Vietnam.

In per capita terms, real spending will drop by nearly 5% from $11,450 per person in 2009 to $10,900 in 2013 (measured in 2009 dollars).

I know what you conservatives are probably thinking. “But wait, that can’t be right! President Obama is a socialist-communist-marxist-fascist who’s spending us into oblivion!”

If that’s what you were thinking, you’d be wrong, as the folks at PolitiFact have noted.

So, using inflation-adjusted dollars, Obama had the second-lowest increase — in fact, he actually presided over a decrease once inflation is taken into account.

Bottom line: The Facebook post’s claim that government spending under Obama is “slower than at any time in nearly 60 years” is very close to accurate.

What’s always been curious to me about those who would criticize President Obama as a “big spender” is that many of those some folks didn’t express the same concerns about former President George W. Bush, who turned the budget surplus he inherited into a yawning budget deficit.