The Biggest Lie?

Well, it's hard to order the lies when you have Kenyan Nazi Socialist terrorist Muslim America-hater, and there are surely more coming. But the one about Obama's spending spree is right up there. So says The Wall Street Journal (not exactly a source of liberal apologia):

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — 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.

But it didn’t happen. Although there was a big stimulus bill under Obama, federal spending is rising at the slowest pace since Dwight Eisenhower brought the Korean War to an end in the 1950s...

Now, I suppose you could claim that there's a certain amount of mathematical shenanigans here, but it's also reality. If it's the case that Obama has maintained spending at the rate extant when he took office, it's NOT the case that he increased it:

Why do people think Obama has spent like a drunken sailor? It’s in part because of a fundamental misunderstanding of the federal budget. What people forget (or never knew) is that the first year of every presidential term starts with a budget approved by the previous administration and Congress. The president only begins to shape the budget in his second year...

The 2009 fiscal year, which Republicans count as part of Obama’s legacy, began four months before Obama moved into the White House. The major spending decisions in the 2009 fiscal year were made by George W. Bush and the previous Congress.

Like a relief pitcher who comes into the game with the bases loaded, Obama came in with a budget in place that called for spending to increase by hundreds of billions of dollars in response to the worst economic and financial calamity in generations.

It's safe to say The Rominee wouldn't stop claiming otherwise if the truth were carved on disappearing stones and someone gave him magic glasses to read them. But it's more evidence that Rs know if they were to make the campaign about what President Obama actually has and hasn't done, versus what they actually propose to do instead (which, you'd think, is exactly what campaigns ought to be about), they'd lose like the Washington Generals.