Wonkbook’s graph of the day…

Posted on January 25, 2013 by bsimon1970

Wonkbook posted their Graph of the Day today, linking to a Mother Jones piece. Their point is that if you think Obama’s a big spender, you need to see two charts.  Here they are:

 

Drum [author of the Mother Jones piece] says, is that “total government spending didn’t go up much during the Clinton era, and it’s actually declined during under President Obama.”

Total Gov Spending Per Capita

 

[S]ome said Drum’s chart was a trick, as it looked at total government spending rather than just federal spending. So on Wednesday, he posted a second chart. This one only included federal spending and it didn’t adjust for population growth. The only thing is adjusts for is inflation.

Total Fed Spending Per Capita

[T]he sharp rise in federal spending begins in late-2009 and is largely over by 2010. It’s ridiculous to attribute all that spending to Obama, who wasn’t in office when it began, rather than to the recession, which is the clear and obvious cause.

Wonkbook Graph of the Day

Food for thought.

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