There has been no jump in government spending. Period.

The deficit is up because LESS MONEY IS COMING IN because THE ECONOMY BLEW UP.

The increase in federal spending has been almost all relief related transfer payments——when 10% of the country is unemployed the cost of unemployment benefits goes up. And medicare goes up as more people become eligible because they have BECOME POOR.

The rate-of-increase of federal spending is the same the last two years as it was under Bush. ( http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/17/why-have-deficits-exploded/ )

State and local governments have cut so that the total of national government spending is DOWN.

The private sector stopped borrowing so national indebtedness is way DOWN.

Taxes are obviously way down. We were taking in 5,000 billion/year as of the beginning of 2008. It is currently about 3,900 billion.

Yes, our tragically over-taxed populace is ponying up 1.1 TRILLION FEWER total federal tax dollars than they were during the last year of Bush.


Almost everything about the federal budget during the Obama administration that is "known" by everyone is delusional crap.

exploded under obama. she cited the bank bailouts and the auto bailouts. markos and john legend attempted to explain to her that those were loans and have been paid back and the government actually made money. but she persisted. but when asked she only mentioned cutting 'entitlements' but no specifics of course. she said we couldn't possibly cut defense spending because the government is supposed to protect us!

i would argue that bush by separating the war spending from the budget kept the true deficit artificially low and when obama corrected this and added the spending to the budget it of course increased the number because it had been cooked by the bush administration. people who claim that they want to cut spending are full of it. when republicans say they want to cut spending they are full of it. they want to put it on the credit card and leave us with the tab. they want the rich to keep their money and make the rest of us pay for everything they want to spend on.

It's Republican presidents who spend out of control and don't seem to give a flying fuck about paying for the spending....and tea party people are repubs shich makes no sense....they are fake!