Editor, The Herald:

I appreciate the recent letter link to the government's budget figures so that we can check the US government's budget figures for ourselves. This gave me an opportunity to check the facts. The letter writer should check his own facts. First of all, the claim “making the rounds” is not that President Obama has spent more in his term than the last three presidents combined but that the deficits he has accumulated have been more than the last three presidents combined.

The second mistake was the statement that President George H. W. Bush served two terms; he served only one term. I assume the letter writer was confusing him with his son, President George W. Bush, who did, indeed, spend 19 trillion dollars during his eight years in office. George W. Bush also accumulated deficits totaling about two trillion dollars over his eight years.

Even though he cites some correct figures, they are absolutely useless for comparison purposes. He compares the total amount spent since 1980, $45 trillion, to the amount of the deficit for one year under Obama, $1.2 trillion. If you want to compare figures, at least compare apples to apples. If he wants to compare Bush's eight years of spending to Obama's 3 years of spending, at least use the correct figures. In eight years, Bush spent $19 trillion, with $2 trillion in accumulated deficits while in three years Obama has spent $10.6 trillion with $4 trillion in accumulated deficits. So Obama has racked up twice as much in deficits in 3 years as Bush accumulated in 8 years. Comparing Bush's first three years with Obama's first 3 years might even be a fairer comparison. In his first three years, Bush totaled $6 trillion in spending with accumulated deficits of $406 billion (that's $0.4 trillion) compared to Obama's $10.6 trillion in spending with $4 trillion in accumulated deficits, That's nearly double the spending and ten times the amount of deficit spending.

The most frightening aspect of these figures is the fact that for every $10 the government spends, we now borrow $4. This is unsustainable and will destroy our economy if it continues. Obama is making no effort to cut spending as evidenced by his most recent budget submission. In it he even restored spending that both parties had agreed to cut in the big debt limit compromise of a few month's ago. Obama likes to talk about a “balanced approach” to spending. I would like to see a “balanced budget approach” to spending!

Cindy Koether

Prince Edward