Obama MarketWatch Propagandist Rex Nutting Gets B****-Slapped By James Pethokoukis

The old adage needs an upgrade. There's lies. There's damn lies. And then there's Rex Nutting.

Until Barack Obama took office in 2009, the United States had never spent more than 23.5% of GDP, with the exception of the World War II years of 1942-1946. Here’s the Obama spending record:

• 25.2% of GDP in 2009
• 24.1% of GDP in 2010
• 24.1% of GDP in 2011
• 24.3% (estimates by the White House ) in 2012

What’s more, if Obama wins another term, spending—according to his own budget—would never drop below 22.3% of GDP. If that forecast is right, average spending during Obama’s eight years in office would average 23.6% of GDP. That’s higher than any single previous non-war year.

Yet financial columnist Rex Nutting of MarketWatch tries to portray the president as being downright stingy in a piece entitled, stunningly, “Obama spending binge never happened”:

Of all the falsehoods told about President Barack Obama, the biggest whopper is the one about his reckless spending spree. As would-be president Mitt Romney tells it: “I will lead us out of this debt and spending inferno.” Almost everyone believes that Obama has presided over a massive increase in federal spending, an “inferno” of spending that threatens our jobs, our businesses and our children’s future. Even Democrats seem to think it’s true. Government spending under Obama, including his signature stimulus bill, is rising at a 1.4% annualized pace — slower than at any time in nearly 60 years.

And here’s the chart summarizing Nutting’s argument:

As the chart indicates, Nutting arrives at that 1.4% number by assigning 2009—when spending surged nearly 20%—to
George W. Bush...

What a lying sack of s***.

Gee, last time I checked, Nutter -- if that is your real name -- George W. Bush wasn't the guy who jammed the Stimulus package through Congress, which was tacked onto the 2009 budget.

Here is another way Nutting could have framed the spending issue:

The Obama spending record looks a little different now, yes?

Da-yam, Rex: you gonna put some ice on that?