Setting the Spending Record Straight

The Wall Street Journal today ran an editorial bemoaning the increase in federal spending between FY 2008 and FY 2010.

What it doesn’t factor in, or provide context for, is the chain of events that led to these increases. 

First, a large driver of federal spending was the onset of the economic collapse in late 2008 as automatic aid to people hit hard by the downturn, such as unemployment insurance and food stamps, kicked in. With more people temporarily eligible for these mandatory programs and less revenue coming in, the deficit increased substantially in FY 2009, which began on October 1, 2008.  In fact, on January 7, 2009 -- before President Obama was sworn in -- the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) issued its Economic and Budget Outlook for Fiscal Years 2009-2019. In that document, CBO projected that government spending would rise from 20.9 percent of GDP in FY 2008 to 24.9 percent of GDP in FY 2009.  In reality, government spending in FY 2009 turned out to be roughly what had been predicted a year earlier (24.7 percent). That is to say, this big increase of government spending occurred because of the economic meltdown the Administration inherited and the accompanying automatic increase in programs that assist those most hurt by it -- and this was already fully baked into the fiscal cake when the President took office.
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Thad Cochran Thomas Carper Tim Johnson Tom Coburn Tom DeLay