Do I have egg on my face due to Obamanomics?

(This Facebook post went viral)

The blog post I wrote earlier this week about the myth of President Obama’s spending spree drew a sharp rebuke from Dan Calabrese, a conservative who writes for michiganview.com.

In fact, the Wall Street Journal column that sparked my post has generated considerable debate on Facebook, Twitter and numerous websites. The basic premise of WSJ’s Rex Nutting is that a historical analysis of year-by-year spending shows that Obama has increased expenditures by 1.4 percent, the slowest rate of any president in 60 years.

Conservatives pounced, calling Nutting’s analysis horribly flawed, in particular because of the way he assessed the fiscal year 2009 budget baseline – the metric by which he compares Obama to his predecessors.

However, Politifact took a closer look and declared that Nutting’s basic assertions were “mostly true.” As for the GOP claims, Politifact said the reality of the situation “demolishes” Mitt Romney’s claims about out-of-control spending by Obama.

Meanwhile, Calabrese, in a diplomatic way, says that I was duped.

“Some people will believe anything,” he wrote, “but I must say this surprises me a little coming from Selweski -- a nice guy who showed me the journalism ropes many years ago when I interned at the Daily, and these days one of those ‘centrist’ types who considers himself above all the icky partisanship and ideology out there.”

Well, I have to admit that I should have taken a closer look at Nutting’s use of some questionable data comparisons. I don’t believe I have egg on my face. Maybe just a few drops of yoke that really stand out.

If you missed it, here is my initial blog post on this subject.
You can read Calabrese’s column here.

Here is another conservative take on Obama’s fiscal policy.

And you can read PolitiFact’s conclusions here.