Hey Republicans, turns out Obama isn’t guilty of reckless spending (WSJ)

Obama can be accused of being a big spender, but the responsibility for raising the spending belongs to someone else, according to Rex Nutting, a columnist for MarketWatch.com. “People assume that Obama has been this reckless spender, but spending is actually rising very, very slowly since he took over. The big spending increase happened in 2009 with the Tarp bailout and the huge expansion of unemployment benefits and food stamps as we went into recession. Spending rose about 19% that year, and that was the year before Obama really had anything to do with the budget.” Annualized growth over the last four presidential terms: Clinton – 3.9%; G.W. Bush – 7.3% (first term), 8.1% (second term. Stimulus assigned to Obama); Obama – 1.4%.