The Obama Report

In his budget message to Congress released yesterday, President Barack Obama repeatedly compared the economic situation he “inherited” to the Great Depression of the 1930s when Franklin Roosevelt was president. But the new budget data release by his own Office of Management and Budget reveals that in one way Obama is making the current era distinctly different from the Great Depression: He is spending vastly more money than Roosevelt did.

Between 1934, the first fiscal year in which Roosevelt and a Democrat congressional majority had full control of the federal budget, and 1941, the year the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, FDR never spent more than 12.0 percent of the GDP. In 1938, FDR spent as little as 7.7 percent of GDP. According to the budget tables released by the White House Monday, Obama will spend 25.4 percent, 25.1 percent and 23.2 percent in the three years remaining in his term. If he is reelected, he has the government on track to spend 22.8 percent in 2013, 22.9 percent in 2014 and 22.9 percent in 2015.

Obama is making FDR look frugal.

President Franklin Roosevelt

1934 - 10.7
1935 - 9.2
1936 - 10.5
1937 - 8.6
1938 - 7.7
1939 - 10.3
1940 - 9.8
1941 - 12.0

President Barack Obama

2010 - 25.4
2011 - 25.1
2012 - 23.2
2013 - 22.8
2014 - 22.9
2015 - 22.9