Federal Government Spending Soars
Source of graph: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.
(p. A17) This has been an unforgettable year in the history of American spending.
It began with an eye-popping $800 billion stimulus bill that came from nowhere and went to nowhere. Done with that, the Washington Democrats turned to President Obama's health-care reform, which looked big at first, but turned out to be bigger. A well-publicized June estimate of the Senate bill's cost by the Congressional Budget Office put the 10-year price tag at $1.6 trillion. So $800 billion, then a trillion.
Dollar signs rocketed into the sky all year: hundreds of billions on various TARP salvage projects, much drawn from some magic stash held by the Federal Reserve. The Obama cap-and-trade bill was going to use an auction to siphon $3.3 trillion from various states to Washington over 40 years. Oh, almost forgot--an FY 2011 $3.8 trillion budget.
For the full commentary, see:
DANIEL HENNINGER. "It's the Spending, America ." The Wall Street Journal (Thurs., February 18, 2010): A17.
