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Where’s that “Net Spending Cut” Obama Promised?

by

Candidate Barack Obama, October 15, 2008, third presidential debate:

But there is no doubt that we’ve been living beyond our means and we’re going to have to make some adjustments.

Now, what I’ve done throughout this campaign is to propose a net spending cut.

Economist Kevin Hassett, May 19, 2009, Bloomberg News columnist:

Extrapolating out the 2007 CBO forecast, our government plans to spend about $5.6 trillion more between 2009 and 2018 than was projected to be spent when the Democrats took over control of Congress.

To put that number in perspective, at the start of the 2007 budget year, Democrats inherited $4.8 trillion in outstanding government debt. That means that all of the deficits that have been run through all of history, funds that were used to finance the Vietnam War and the Iraq War and everything else in between, would be smaller than the spending increases of Democrats over the next 10 years if they are permitted to stay in power and keep up this pace.

(H/t for Hassett quote:  The Corner.)

Comments

  1. I think the spending cuts BO promised refer to Americans such as myself, not the federal government. I have certainly cut back on spending.

  4. When do the Democrats finally take responsibility for their binge spending? It is not just Obummer who has OCD.

    I disagree with one statement in the article and that is claiming that the “stimulus” was Keynesian. I would say that this is not accurate because Keynes did not advocate spending on pork projects. Rather, he was writing about infrastructure projects and putting people to work in other ways, as well as some welfare to tide people over. You have to take into consideration the poor state of the English welfare system in the Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries to get the point about when welfare is required to tide people over.

    What is not Keynesian is the notion that one has an entitlement to welfare a la Paula who wants to kill people who do not agree with her point of view.

  5. I think what President Unicorn meant is that we’re going to spend less on nets during his misrule, though the bureaucrats at the Federal Department of Nets, Webs and Meshes will all be transferred into the important Agency for Digging Big-Ass Holes to Pour Money Into.

  8. Well yes, the Ogabe administration has made some spending cuts, specifically to the vetting office which does background checks on his appointees.

    Obviously.

  12. Obama, having no principles, will say whatever he thinks is popular. Then do whatever he thinks is popular. The two have no relation other than the winds of public opinion.

  13. Squid,

    President Obama’s invented ‘Quantum Economics’ “it could have been so much worse, but observing what we’ve done changes the result, so stop watching me spend money, so it will work!”

  14. #3 – “Maybe you could talk Obama into shaving his balls.”

    AAUGH!! MIND BLEACH!! WHERE THE FRACK IS THE MIND BLEACH?!!

    TGC, you owe me a lunch that I just lost after reading that comment.

    Regards,
    Peter H.

  15. The “net spending cut” will come next year or the year after (probably next year) when Obama asks TARP people for the money back, and suddenly has a “surplus” that didn’t really exist in the first place.