It particularly hits Obama hard; the majority of spending during his first couple years in office were due to commitments from before his inauguration: a couple

It particularly hits Obama hard; the majority of spending during his first couple years in office were due to commitments from before his inauguration: a couple wars plus TARP, the Bush stimulus (which was bigger than the Obama stimulus, mind you), and suchlike. It might not even be a terrible idea to count the Bush tax cuts in there. It isn't officially counted as government spending for obvious reasons, but realistically we might as well think of it as the fiscal policy equivalent of deciding to take your paycheck straight to the bar even though you're up to your eyeballs in credit card debt.