Obama tries to sell himself as a deficit cutter?: Is this serious?

I didn't think that I could be so stunned by Obama's claim in Colorado.  At the US Air Force Academy Obama today claims: "After inheriting a $1 trillion deficit, I signed $2 trillion of spending cuts into law. My opponent won't admit it, but it's been starting to appear in places -- real liberal outlets like the Wall Street Journal."  What Obama is referring to is the absurd claim that government spending has grown less under Obama than any other president since the 1950s.  I had a post up on this yesterday available here.  The problem with the Rex Nutting WSJ article is that it assumed that Bush was responsible for all the spending increases up until October 1, 2009.


Just remember that Obama is the candidate in 2008 who kept promising a "net spending cut."  For example, in the third presidential debate he claimed: "Now, what I've done throughout this campaign is to propose a net spending cut."  Obama was accurate in saying that he made this promise through out the campaign.  After all, Obama argued that Bush's big spending increases during the last decade caused the big deficits that Obama said caused the 2008 financial crisis.  If Obama had really cut spending from 2008 levels to say those in 2007, we wouldn't have a deficit today.


Who can forget that in last year's budget Obama claimed that he was cutting the deficit over 10 years by $1.1 trillion when the CBO claimed that he was actually increasing it by $2.3 trillion.  Or this year's budget where he claimed that he was cutting the deficit over 10 years by $3.2 trillion when CBO found that he was increasing it by $3.5 trillion.


Additional note: Krauthammer says that Obama's claim of fiscal discipline is "Whopper Of The Year" 

"So what he is talking about really is a false impression. There was no intention ever by any administration of repeating the bailouts that you have to have in September, October, and November of 2008 and then the beginning of 2009. And if you count it in it's deliberately distorting the facts. And I'm not sure if there is anybody who believes it because it's so obvious, If an administration starts with the largest stimulus spending bill in galactic history, it obviously is not cost-cutting administration."