Obama Complains About 'Mindless Austerity' While Bankrupting The Country

IBD reports:

Economic Policy: President Obama says it's time to end the "mindless austerity" and start spending again. This from the man who's alone added $6.7 trillion to the nation's debt.

'I want to work with Congress," Obama said in releasing his fiscal 2016 budget, "to replace mindless austerity with smart investments."

Mindless austerity? The only austerity seen in the past six years has been in the minds of liberals for whom more federal spending is never enough. Austerity, after all, implies higher taxes and deep spending cuts to reduce deficits.

Let's check the record to see just how much austerity there's been.

On the spending side, outlays have been relatively flat for five years, but that was after they exploded in Obama's first year in office.

As a result, the $3.45 trillion spent last year was 18% more than the government spent in 2008. It's also equal to 20.3% of the nation's economy, which is above the average of the previous 60 years.

Meanwhile, the federal budget is set to climb 4% this year and 7% next year, even with the government left on autopilot, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Obama's big new spending plans would simply pile more government spending on top of this automatic growth.

Comrade Obama likes big government.