The word on the street is that President Obama has taxed and spent his way to higher deficits that are going to bankrupt our country and our children will have the burden of deficits on their back for generations.  That’s what they want you to believe…but that is however – not reality.  Taxes are at the lowest rate since the Eisenhower administration.  We have a deficit in large part because the country has high unemployment caused by the Bush economic crisis.  And the largest contributing factor to the deficit are the Bush tax cuts.

On top of the Bush tax cuts – President Obama has passed several more tax cuts specifically targeted to the middle class (1/3 of the stimulus was tax cuts).  President Obama has cut more taxes than any other president in the history of our country; and he has done so to stimulate the economy since Republicans in Congress will not even allow for basic spending on improvements in infrastructure.  So – his only viable option has been Keynesian style tax cuts that are paid for by deficit spending specifically targeting those under the 100k income a year.  But that’s not government spending, and Republicans call that “class warfare” because Obama won’t allow for more tax cuts for billionaires.

Here is the reality:

1. When Obama took over – the deficit was just over $1 trillion.  In the first three months of his presidency – the country lost 2.2 million jobs on top of the 3.6 million jobs the country lost in all of 2008 (source)
2. Reagan increased spending significantly more than President Obama (source)
3. Obama’s policies have helped create more private sector jobs than President Bush did in 8 years (source)
4. The vast majority of the deficit comes from policies left over from the Bush administration (source)
5. The unemployment rate would be near 7% without the cuts to government spending under Obama (source)
6. Real government consumption i.e. government spending is at the lowest point since pre-Bush. (source)
7. These cuts in government spending have cost the country 1.7 million jobs (source)
8. Mitt Romney wants to cut taxes for EVERY American by 20% (source)

Rex Nutting at Marketwatch explains HERE:

Although there was a big stimulus bill under Obama, federal spending is rising at the slowest pace since Dwight Eisenhower brought the Korean War to an end in the 1950s.

Even hapless Herbert Hoover managed to increase spending more than Obama has.

In the 2009 fiscal year — the last of George W. Bush’s presidency — federal spending rose by 17.9% from $2.98 trillion to $3.52 trillion. Check the official numbers at the Office of Management and Budget.

• In fiscal 2010 — the first budget under Obama — spending fell 1.8% to $3.46 trillion.

• In fiscal 2011, spending rose 4.3% to $3.60 trillion.

• In fiscal 2012, spending is set to rise 0.7% to $3.63 trillion, according to the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate of the budget that was agreed to last August.

Jamelle Bouie explains HERE:

It’s for all of the above that conservatives have excoriated Obama for increasing the debt load. Mitt Romney, in particular, has placed debt at the center of his campaign for the presidency. His Web site asserts that we have a “moral responsibility not to spend more than we take in,” and his most recent speech — to a crowd of supporters in Des Moines, Iowa — was a near-jeremiad on the peril of public debt. “A prairie fire of debt is sweeping across Iowa and our nation, and every day we fail to act that fire gets closer to the homes and children we love,” said Romney, who blames the president for the conflagration.

But contrary to conventional wisdom and conservative rhetoric, Obama didn’t start the fire and, in fact, has done more than recent presidents to contain the blaze. I briefly mentioned this in yesterday’s post on the new Crossroads GPS commercial, but the simple fact is that Obama has run a shockingly cost-sensitive administration. Writing for MarketWatch, a project of the Wall Street Journal, Rex Nutting found that government spending has slowed dramatically under the Obama administration. From fiscal year 2010 to the present, government spending — including the stimulus bill — has risen at a 1.4 percent annualized pace, slower than at any time since the 1950s. For those who value fiscal responsibility, Obama is better than any of the past four presidents.

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