This answer contributed to Susan G. Komen for the Cure® What's this?
My answers support Susan G. Komen for the Cure® What's this?
Popular Searches
Partner Sites:
Insider Pages
-
MerchantCircle
-
Urbanspoon
-
Ask Kids
-
Life123
-
Reference
-
Sendori
-
Thesaurus
"Firstly, remember that CONGRESS spends the money, not the Presidents. That is, Congress appropriates (spends) Federal money - it decides the particular details as to where money is to be allocated. While any President has some persuasive effect on this spending, the truth of the matter is that Congress (not just this congress, but Congress as an institution over the last several decades) is to blame for the current debt situation of the country. Also, when accounting debt and budgets, one must look at Fiscal Years (FY), which run October to October, so a new President (who starts in January) doesn't actually get to propose a budget until over 9 months into his term.
Secondly, even if we ignored this fact (spending = Congress), the aggregate size of ALL federal spending over President Obama's term (FY2010 to FY2012 - the current FY) is roughly 11 trillion dollars. Given that, even in absolute dollar amounts (i.e non-inflation adjusted dollars), the size of the US budget had been increasing about $100 billion (5%) per year for about 20 years now. [EXCLUDING the war costs in FY 2003-2009, which were "left off" (hidden from) the budget accounting.]
Accordingly, for instance, the size of the federal budget in 2000 was about $1.8 Trillion, and about $2.4 Trillion in 2005, one can see that the aggregate amount of money spent during Barack Obama's Presidency is, while notably more than predecessors, is not outlandishly so. Roughly speaking, President Obama's 3 FY budgets are about equal to the last 4 FY budgets under his predecessor, G.W. Bush, assuming one does not include the "emergency" war appropriations. If one includes the war appropriations, then Obama's first three years spent about 10% more than Bush's last three years.
Read more: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Did_President_Obama_spend_more_money_than_all_the_former_presidents_of_the_US_combined#";