The very serious centrists come to America's rescue! Except what they left out was that government spending increasing as a percentage of GDP is the norm during recessions because they're pandering dolts with their head in the sand. Under what kind of absurd framework would it be positive for counter-cyclical measures (unemployment benefits, medicaid, food stamps etc.) to not exist so that the government would shrink in conjunction with the economy?
People, this isn't rocket science. Obama was burdened with a crushing economic crisis that required tough action on a few fronts (action that he didn't deliver but that's besides the point) and was bound to create enormous fiscal stress because tax revenues plummeted while expenditures were bound to increase based off of formulas already set in stone. To me this article is negative and reveals one of the biggest moral failures of Obama but it's also the reality we're living in. Obama isn't a big spender, he's not a dangerous radical and he most certainly is not a socialist. He's a slow-moving and ineffective moderate who didn't engage in enough counter-cyclical spending to bring us out of this recession properly and we're still paying the price of that.