Broken Promises: Campaigning To Cut Spending

It's so easy to forget, but:

As a candidate, Obama claimed that one cause of the economic crisis was the large deficits the country was running, and he promised that he would fix things by cutting government spending. During the third presidential debate, just over two weeks before the election, Obama promised to rein in the budget deficit.

When debate moderator Bob Schieffer asked Obama what he was going to do about the deficit, Obama promised to cut it: “But there is no doubt that we’ve been living beyond our means and we’re going to have to make some adjustments. Now, what I’ve done throughout this campaign is to propose a net spending cut.”

Or take Obama’s promise in the second presidential debate: “Actually, I’m cutting more than I’m spending so that it will be a net spending cut.” Obama ran to the right of McCain, who Obama claimed was the candidate who was going to increase spending.

So what did we get? Obama racked up the largest inflation-adjusted increases ever in government spending and the largest deficits (even larger than those the U.S. ran in the worst part of World War II), and it is hard to remember that his constant theme during the presidential debates was “net spending cut.”

Having racked up those deficits (and endangering our national defense), some might question Obama's patriotism.