Left Wing Intellectual Dishonesty - A Case Study

The premise from Mother Jones columnist Kevin Drum:

Government spending is is down under Obama

His argument:

Republicans like to say we have a spending problem, not a taxing problem, but the evidence doesn't back that up. Total government spending didn't go up much during the Clinton era, and it's actually declined during the Obama era. In the last two decades, it's only gone up significantly during the Bush era, the same era in which taxes were cut dramatically.

What we have isn't a spending problem. That's under control. What we have is a problem with Republicans not wanting to pay the bills they themselves were largely responsible for running up.

The Canard:

The above graph is based not merely on federal spending, but also on spending by state and local governments that have to live within their means. And the reason their numbers are low enough to bring down the total is because our economy has been on life support for five years. This is kind of like a kid who gets a failing grade in math trying to excuse his failure by pointing out that the school as a whole posted a B average.

Moreover, whoever built this graph chose to use per capita spending in order to show the lowest possible numbers.

The actual numbers:

Year. . . . . Fed Spending . . . .Increase to Deficit

2007. . . . . 2.781 Trillion . . .0.174 Trillion

2008. . . . . 2.982 Trillion . . .0.487 Trillion

2009. . . . . 3.517 Trillion . . .1.484 Trillion

1010. . . . . 3.456 Trillion . . .1.344 Trillion

2011. . . . . 3.603 Trillion . . .1.322 Trillion

2012. . . . . 3.795 Trillion . . .1.128 Trillion

So we have a federal government that has increased spending by over a trillion dollars since 2007 and that has added over a trillion dollars to the deficit each year under Obama. He is spending us into oblivion, and yet, the left is actually trying to portray Obama as an effective steward of our economy by using numbers that are so deceptive as to amount to a grotesque lie. This is why we can't argue with these bastards. They must be destroyed and driven from the public square.

Sources: (OMB, Heritage Foundation)

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