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Will Obama be a Debt Man Walking in 2012?

By: Daniel Horowitz (Diary)  |  January 1st, 2012 at 11:29 AM  | 

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2011 was a disastrous year for our debt.  Yes, the Republican Congress prevented Obama from passing his budget, which would have added $1.6 trillion in new deficit spending.  Instead, they passed a budget that added an additional $1.3 trillion to the national debt.  Overall, federal outlays in FY 2011 (which ended September 30) were $141 billion more than the previous year.  For FY 2012, thanks to the disastrous omnibus bill, we are on pace to spend at least an additional $55 billion, including $10 billion more in discretionary spending.  With welfare programs skyrocketing out of control, and as unemployment continues to remain abnormally high, those mandatory spending estimates will ineluctably be revised upward.

This president is so pathetic that after just three years in office he has accrued $4.5 trillion in debt, worth 30% of our current GDP.  That’s more debt than Bush’s compassionate conservatism left us with after eight years in office.  By the end of his first (and hopefully, only) term, he will leave the taxpayers with a $5.7-$5.9 trillion bill.  Historically, most major spikes in deficit spending were precipitated by major increases in defense and war spending.  This president will rack up record deficits even as he downsizes the military.  In their chart of the week, the Heritage Foundation compares the average annual deficits of each president as a percentage of GDP.  As you can see, it is no contest:

As this election year begins to mature, we will finally receive an answer to the $15 trillion question: With 47 million people on food stamps, 50 million on Medicaid, and almost 50% not paying taxes, are there enough people who care?

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  • burke

    This isn’t that flattering of a graph for the Republican party to be honest. Only Nixon looks like a serious fiscal conservative.

    If we elect a business-as-usual Republican this graph doesn’t seem to provide much hope that spending levels would decrease significantly.

    What I’m taking from this is that we should be careful which graphs and stats we use to illustrate Obama’s failures. This graph would look better if it started from Clinton, or maybe Reagan.

    • mndasher

      not who is president. All spending originates in the house. The president submits a budget, none of which needs to approved or spent.

      • burke

        n/t

        • NeoKong

          Who was the Speaker during that most minuscule deficit spending under Clinton….?

    • burke

      I was gesturing at the average percentage for Republican presidents v. Democratic presidents in the graph, and noting that the latter percentage is lower than the former.

      As carolina astutely mentions below, the percentages do not take everything into account, so they may be misleading.

      But I was making a comment about what readers might take from the graph, and I overall don’t think it’s a particularly flattering graph for Republican presidents – if we take the premise, as the graph invites us to, that the president is mostly responsible for the debt level during his presidency, and that these stats are pretty accurate. But if we reject that premise, it becomes more difficult to make the point we want to make about Obama’s mismanagement of the country’s fisc using this particular graph.

      Again – I think this graph hammers home the need for a Republican candidate with a proven track record of fiscal conservatism. That’s something that Romney doesn’t have, and this graph suggests that we shouldn’t take the (R) next to his name as a guarantor that he’ll work to reduce the deficit. We need a Congress with plenty of reliable fiscal conservatives for that reassurance, in my opinion.

      • tomatin

        I would love to pile on Obama more but face it much of the debt he owns now was started with GWB. Then the GOP house comes in and still no cuts. They all spend like drunken sailors when they get to Washington.

        • http://908StraightSt.wordpress.com/ mbecker908

          Which is the primary reason we don’t need to be considering another damn “values” conservative with no record of opposing government expansion.

        • Bill S

          If you want to act like the smartest guy in the room, at least learn to spell.

          • trevorb

            the time the election comes, it’s going to be the 16 trillion dollar question.

  • carolina

    Unfortunately, OMB tells a false story. If the SS surplus revenues were removed from all of the budgets (from Johnson on) this chart would look a lot different. Clinton never “balanced the budget”.
    Add in unfunded liabilities if you really want to worry.
    Meanwhile, it suits me just fine that BO can’t hide behind a SS surplus, as NOW there is none.
    But, the SS deficit will likely be even larger for the next president. The jig is up. The game is over. The American people are going to learn that their govt has lied to them for many years.
    Meanwhile, it is a great optic for beating BO.
    However, it is a HUGE problem for the next administration, unless we get significant economic growth.

    • mndasher

      The problem with social security revenue has always been the surplus has been double counted… once to reduce the “official” deficit, and again as a addition to the trust fund. The OMB and all members of government accounting should be by all rights in jail for using fraudulent accounting practices.

    • renl57

      When there’s a major recession, the deficit automatically grows:

      Unemployed people who have no income don’t pay income tax. They automatically qualify for unemployment benefits and food stamps. So each unemployed person adds to the Federal deficit.

      And this has been the longest period of high unemployment since the 1930s.

      The problem has been that Obama can’t think of anything for American workers to do that his environmentalist buddies won’t oppose.

      Just about any of the GOP nominees wouldn’t have that problem as President. He or she would put fighting unemployment ahead of environmentalism, as it should be.

      We gotta get back to full employment. We gotta get those workers off of food stamps and back to earning a steady paycheck. And I don’t care what the Natural Resources Defense Council thinks about it.

    • JSobieski

      because there was a SS surplus throughout that time.

      Unfortunately words like cuts, balanced budgets, and surpluses have misleading definitions. We either use them for all, or use them for none.

      If engaged in a compare/contrast, we have to compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges.

      • carolina

        that was still working through the economy – that started under Nixon and Carter (and before). It is almost the luck of the draw as to what kind of economy an administration inheirits due to economic policies of previous administrations and Fed Reserve monetary machinations with our floating fiat $.
        That said, BO has not helped the current economy with his anti-growth policies. Fiscal policy is important.

  • carolina

    Unfortunately, OMB tells a false story. If the SS surplus revenues were removed from all of the budgets (from Johnson on) this chart would look a lot different. Clinton never “balanced the budget”.
    Add in unfunded liabilities if you really want to worry.
    Meanwhile, it suits me just fine that BO can’t hide behind a SS surplus, as NOW there is none.
    But, the SS deficit will likely be even larger for the next president. The jig is up. The game is over. The American people are going to learn that their govt has lied to them for many years.
    Meanwhile, it is a great optic for beating BO.
    However, it is a HUGE problem for the next administration, unless we get significant economic growth.

  • ohiohistorian

    Can we please learn the difference between millions, billions, and trillions on this page? I found out that the US (population 300+ million) has “47 billion people on food stamps, 50 billion on Medicaid”. Is it really hard too critically proofread these things before you hit send? Maybe you believe like Obama we have 57 states? Or, like Nancy Pelosi, we lose 500 million jobs a week? Believe me, these are not flattering comparisons.

    • nuclear139

      The liberal media will be all over misread stats and if we are to educate voters about the debt as well as how dangerous Obama is we can not make the same mistakes liberals make. I believe little mistakes like these can mean the difference between someone having the confidence in the facts we state and the the misinformation liberals make. If a voter confuses facts with false hoods Obama can be reelected and that would be a big mistake.

  • veto

    I know everything’s isn’t as it looks, but Clinton on that graph looks lie a fiscal conservative compared to the rest.

  • far52

    Other than Obama, it looks like the republican presidents are the ones incapable of controlling the budget.

  • geoph

    As has been alluded to in some of the previous comments, this is not an RvD problem. What was it the fiscal responsibility the “historic” elections of 2010 brought us in 2011, 300 billion dollars? WOW!

    Food Stamps, Medicaid, unemployment – all departments growing with borrowed funds. When a cut to projected growth is as close to financial restraint our government (aka “we”) is willing to discuss, and the compassion for those who have less than others becomes the justification for growing debt and wealth redistribution (aka: taxes, now called Govt. Revenues) – things bode poorly for our Nation.

    S&P tried (though the reasons behind their effort is topic for many other posts) to leverage concerns of our finances into actual changes, but their downgrade may actually hinder our recovery. The reaction to the downgrade and all the turmoil in Europe, has been to ignore the reality and plunge ahead. Even poor spending decisions that could/can be halted, are allowed to continue. Not addressing the Constitutional debate over OBoehnerCare, the fiscal feasibility of the program has been shattered. CBC scoring has finally, honestly exposed the gimmickry involved with Medicare/MedAdvantage funds – amongst other Deceptive offsets.
    This tax increase is already law, these cuts have already been passed and signed, this program continues to be funded in full. So in answer to your question posed, no – there are not enough people who care. Otherwise Congress would continue the repeal effort, and voters would still be clamoring for it like never before. Unfortunately, people are generally stupid and greedy, while politicians are self-serving; and it is with this combination that a Republic dies.

  • melbedewy

    Anyone have a chart showing the real figures, without the fake SS surplus.
    Saint Clinton wouldn’t look quite as good.

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  • tomatin

    I’m a bit tired of the hypocrisy.

    http://www.redstate.com/dhorowitz3/2011/11/17/republicans-throw-their-pledge-to-america-under-the-omnibus/

    Oh yeah you wrote that article too.

    Anyone who thinks Romney will cut the budget is dreaming. He already said he will increase military spending when we don’t need it.