Friday, May 25, 2012

Obama the fiscal miser


This image has been circulating the net as "proof" of Obama not being a big spender. 
Obama is downright stingy

Looking at actual spending numbers (as % of GDP) seems to actually support their case:

2009 - 42.63
2010 - 40.75
2011 - 40.09
2012 - 40.27 (projected)
2013 - 39.22 (projected)

Even looks like a downward trend until you take them in greater context:

2004 - 34.86
2005 - 34.83 (-0.03)
2006 - 35.12 (+0.29)
2007 - 35.09 (-0.03)
2008 - 37.14 (+2.05)
2009 - 42.63 (+5.49)
2010 - 40.75 (-1.88)
2011 - 40.09 (-0.66)
2012 - 40.27 (+0.18) (projected)
2013 - 39.22 (-1.05) (projected)

When you look at it in graph form you can see the misleading nature of this. Yes, they skyrocketed spending in 2008-2009 (Bush and Obama were both involved in that). But then, Obama basically maintains that high level of spending. Add in a slight reduction from the 2009 peak and, statistically, it appears that Obama is downright stingy.

It's interesting that when global warming skeptics were pointing at the % temp change over the last decade to 15 years by starting with 1998, the warming advocates were chastising them for "playing statistics" because 1998 was a spiked record high year. Now that people do basically the same thing with spending growth by starting with that spiked record year of 2009, it's lauded as "proof" of Obama being a responsible steward of taxpayer money.

Even if you look at absolute spending you can see where the spike of 2008-2009 and then the slight reduction after that would statistically make the spending growth seem small even though spending itself matches the 2000-2007 trend almost perfectly. 
BONUS: An even scarier trendline