I hate folks who try to use numbers on me, particularly during election season. Honey, we've got ourselves a bumper crop of pontificators on the subject of the U.S. debt, deficit, budget and spending.  Good Lord.  Now, I believe in numbers, mind you, but more often than not folks who talk numbers to me during election season are either dumb or crookeder than a dog's hind leg.  Since smart people like you don't dispute the fact that 2+2=4, any half-wit can get away with paralyzing you with a fog of incomprehensible data.  He'll tool on down the road while you sit there like a tom cat blinking at the moon.  Let me tell you something right now:  when my sacred vote is at stake, I don't put up with jackasses who think nobody is going to check their numbers.  Honey, I have the internet and I know how to use it.

Now, I'm writing this blog entry because I have been plagued with hysterical viral emails wailing about the financial apocalypse that Barack Obama has unleashed upon us all.  They say Obama's capricious spending habits are a threat to human civilization!  To prepare for the imminent cataclysm I stopped calling the exterminator because I figured when the food chain collapses rats and cockroaches might be pretty good eating.  The thing is, as many times as I looked at the numbers reported in the frantic emails I kept receiving, I just couldn't see where they had any basis in fact and I started resenting my rodent infested bunker.  I'm not an expert on our budget, deficit, or debt but honey I can Google like it's nobody's business.  I spent so many hours reviewing old budget documents, OMB reports, CBO reports, historical tables, news articles, etc. that Gramps threw a fit and threatened to cut me off from LiePie.com if I didn't tone it down a little.  Now that I've poked around some, I'm almost hopeful that I might not be a witness to the demise of mankind after all.

My point is not to debate the merits of George W. Bush and Barack Obama--they both faced unique challenges early in their presidencies, both men dealt with those challenges as best they could for good or for ill, and you can go have that argument with someone who has more energy than me.  I'd just like to put Barack Obama's stewardship of the economy into proper perspective so you can crawl out of your barricade, take a hot bath, and enjoy a double ration of biscuits and stale water.

I think it would be helpful to have some idea of what our fiscal condition would be right now had we hustled Barack Obama into a suspended animation chamber on his inauguration day and none of his disastrous policies were ever enacted into law.  Aren't you convinced that if we had only remained on the course George W. Bush laid out for us, we'd be better off?  Where would we be right now were it not for Barack Obama?  Well, George W. Bush gave us that very information back on February 4, 2008.  On that day, Bush submitted his budget for fiscal year 2009 (a "fiscal year" is what folks like me call "October 1 through September 30."), and he was nice enough to extrapolate his vision all the way out to 2013!

Let's look at Bush's own spending forecast for fiscal years 2009-2013 and compare those numbers to Obama's horrendous performance for those same fiscal years.  If all the viral emails are correct, the difference in those figures is a vast, nightmarish expanse outside our human comprehension! Bush's spending for fiscal years 2009-2013 is in ORANGE below.  Obama's spending for fiscal years 2009-2013 is in GREEN.  The figure in BLUE is from an update submitted by the CBO (Congressional Budget Office) on January 8th, 2009 just before that fateful day when Obama was sworn into office:

• Bush's spending outlays above are from Table 1.1 on page 22 of Bush's FY09 budget here.  Obama's spending outlays above are from Table 1.1 on pages 22-23 of Obama's FY12 budget here.
• I got the figures for the war costs from this CRS report right here.
• I confirmed that the CBO's FY09 spending figure update above did not include the cost of the AMT patch and included only $68 billion for war funding. If you want to see for yourself, read about the AMT patch on page 12 and the war funding on page 21 here.  The CRS says we spent $155 billion on the war in FY09, so I included the additional $87 billion in the FY09 war cost column.

The difference between our remaining on the gentle 5-year course laid out for us by George W. Bush and careening down the 5-year runaway truck ramp with Barack Obama is about $890 billion. Barack Obama is costing us an extra $178 billion a year. GOOD LORD ALMIGHTY-----THAT'S IT??????? I've been taste testing rat jerky recipes and storing praline cockroaches in tins for three years, honey, and I most certainly didn't go to all that effort over the anticlimactic prospect of an additional $178 billion a year in spending!

What's wrong with all these folks who are telling us that Barack Obama has spent trillions of dollars these last 3 1/2 years?  Mercy me. Honey, anybody who tries to tell you that Barack Obama has spent us into oblivion is either dumber than a tree, a nut, lying to himself, or lying to you--take your pick.  There just ain't any other explanation.  $178 billion is certainly nothing to sneeze at, but that's a little over 1/3 the cost of 1-year's worth of the Bush tax cuts, $480 billion.  I don't remember hearing about any pitchfork mob descending on George W. Bush back on February 4, 2008 when he released the exact numbers you are looking at above, and I seem to recall how incensed folks were that Barack Obama wanted the Bush tax cuts to expire.  You just can't let folks have it both ways, honey.  Either $178 billion is a lot of money or it isn't. If wasn't a lot of money when George W. Bush was president, then it isn't a lot of money now that Barack Obama is president.

And don't any of you whiny piss-ants start picking at my methodology.  I told you, my only goal was to put Barack Obama's stewardship of the economy into proper perspective, and the way I did so was very simple and fair. The numbers above are exceedingly generous to George W. Bush--his February 4, 2008 spending projections didn't include any extra costs for the 4.4 million jobs the Bureau of Labor Statistics says were lost between February 2008 and the end of January 2009 when Barack Obama was inaugurated.  The CBO gave us a new number for FY09, but anyone who doesn't think there would have been any additional spending on recovery measures, unemployment extensions, Medicaid, and food stamps in fiscal years 2010-2013 is a loon.  Good Lord, George Bush signed the Unemployment Extension Act of 2008 while he was packing up to leave the White House!  And if you don't think I should have added the AMT patch and the war costs to George Bush's spending, then either you aren't very bright or you are dishonest.

Once again, you are better off riding in a baboon-chauffeured limousine than trusting viral emails for guidance. The TV and radio talkers aren't any better, let me tell you. I don't know about you, but I'm going to be careful who I listen to over the course of this election season, and anyone who gets on the TV or radio or sends me a viral email saying that Barack Obama's spending has plummeted the country into financial ruin isn't getting one second more of my time. I'm sorry you spent the last three years hoarding toilet paper and matches like I did, but it's all behind us now and hopefully we've learned our lesson. In the future, we won't put so much stock in hysterical folks lobbing incoherent numbers at us, will we honey? Come here and give me a squeeze. You know I love you no matter what.

P.S.  If you'd like to read more about how Bush's FY2009 budget stacks up against Obama's FY2013 budget (coming out any day), there is plenty more to read.  If you intend to argue with anyone who isn't a half-wit, you might need a little more background information.  When you compare apples to oranges, you don't often get useful information, so my methodology above is somewhat flawed in that regard.  Obama's people would be justified in sending me hate mail if they laid eyes on this blog post.  Check out these OMBWatch links if you want to flesh out your understanding a little better:

OMBWatch on Bush's FY2009 Budget.  OMBWatch was not impressed with Bush's FY09 budget to say the least, and they weren't alone.  Presidents in recent history (Bill Clinton included, Democrats) have been criticized for employing trickery to make their budget numbers look better.  For example, dishonesty about the AMT patch, Medicare doc fix, etc.  As I said, I was exceedingly generous with George W. Bush in this blog post, and you'll understand why if you read what OMBWatch has to say.

OMBWatch on its expectations for Obama's FY2013 Budget. Keep your eye out for Obama's FY13 Budget, it's coming out any day!  We'll see how OMBWatch likes it.  Say what you want about Obama, I give him credit for banning four of the budget gimmicks utilized by recent presidents.  We'll see if he sticks to his guns.

Honey, get to googling if you want to want to understand what is really going on, spot lying sociopaths, and ignore folks who are dumber than a tree.