Here are the actual budget amounts for the beginning and end of Bush's terms in office (note the the 2009FY--i.e., Oct1 '08 to Sep30 '09--is the last Bush budget, not Obama's as some rightwingers like to say):
2002 2.0T
2009 3.5T
Here are the Obama budgets
2010 3.5T
2015 3.7T
source:
US Federal Budget Definition - Spending Breakdown Deficit Debt Pie Chart
The increase over Bush's 8 years is 75% or roughly 9.4% per annum (the big increase in his 2009 budget was due almost entirely to the transfer to the budget from all the "off-budget" "emergency" appropriations for Iraq War spending over several years before he left office plus some of the TARP spending) . The increase over Obama's first 6 budgets is only 5.7% or about just under 1% per annum--at or even below in overall inflation rate during those years. So, clearly Obama has signed his name to budgets that have resulted in a much (MUCH) slower growth in spending than Bush. The budgeting process is a negotiating process between the executive and legislative branches so when a budget is finally passed and signed into law everyone involved either gets the blame for excess spending or credit for controlling it. I don't mind giving Congress half the credit for this reduced spending but they don't get it all, by any shot. BTW, since the slow recovery is largely due to the private sector failure (i.e., the banks who got made whole by TARP and QE with the expectation that they would use that money to pump into the economy by freeing up credit and
did not do so, the fact that government spending was also kept very tight for the past 6 years and the republican "sequester" have certainly contributed to that sluggishness.
