Mark Twain once quipped: “Get your facts straight, then you can distort them as you please.”

Have you ever found yourself debating a liberal who claims that Barack Obama isn’t the biggest spender this side of oblivion? Did you find yourself scrambling to refute the claim, frantically searching the Internet for facts to refute them?  Well, fear no more… below I take you on a step by step process to demolish their claims with data from the White House’s own website.  All you need is a browser and a copy of Microsoft Excel.  In short: I’m going to show you how to create your own chart showing just how much spending and deficits President Obama has presided over.  There will be little doubt left where things end up.

Step 1: Go to your favorite search engine and type in “OMB historical tables.”  (I’d take you through the WhiteHouse.gov website but I’m afraid you’d get lost)  OMB stands for the Office of Management and Budget, a supposedly independent arbiter of spending, revenues, and deficits from the Executive Branch.  If the search engine gods have smiled on you, your first link should be to this URL: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/Historicals/

Step 2: You are now looking at the official data collected from the OMB giving detailed outlays, surpluses, deficits and more going all the way back to 1789! Assuming you have Excel, click on the link for “Table 1.1—Summary of Receipts, Outlays, and Surpluses or Deficits (-): 1789–2017”: (on some phones you can even do this with built in applications).

Step 3: Open up the Excel file (hist01z1.xls).  It should look something like this:

Let me orient you a bit to this.  We’re going to be looking at columns A through D.  Since President Obama is so fond of laying blame at his predecessor’s feet we’re going to compare his performance to that of President Bush.

Step 4: Let’s separate the data a little bit so we can concentrate on the last ten years or so. Here’s how we do it.  Highlight all the rows from 2001 through 2012 Estimate and columns A through D with your mouse.  It looks something like this:

Step 4: Copy the section by pressing Ctrl-C (or Apple-C) on your keyboard or go to Edit and Copy.  Next create a new spreadsheet by going to File and New.  Now click on the cell A2 (so we can give a little room at the top.)  Press Ctrl-V (or Apple-V) on your keyboard or go to Edit and Paste.  You should have some room at the top for the column headers in row 1.  Type in Year (press tab); Receipts (press tab); Outlays (press tab); Deficits.  Expand the columns a little bit if you can’t see all the numbers correctly.  It should look something like this:

Step 5: This is where the fun begins.  Let’s do this in one fell swoop so you can get on with your life and leave your liberal friends in the dust.  Highlight everything on the page.  Now hit Insert >  Chart > Line Chart.

The result should look something like this:

Notice the drop in receipts from 2008 with the increased spending into 2009 (TARP and Stimulus).  Now check the gap between spending (outlays) and taxes (receipts) past 2009.  The gap is a chasm!  Bottom line: from 2010 President Obama has presided over massive spending increases and even larger deficit spending.

Here’s a quick comparison.  Over 8 years President Bush ran up $2 Trillion in deficits.  Let’s leave 2009 in no-man’s land and give Obama credit for 3 years.  Results? Nearly $4 Trillion in deficits.

Case closed.