Not Saying Much: But Obama is More Fiscally Conservative

(via Ezra) Arch-Conservative Washington Times tells how Obama has been more successful with cutting spending than W was:

President Obama notched substantial successes in spending cuts last year, winning 60 percent of his proposed cuts and managing to get Congress to ax several programs that had bedeviled President George W. Bush for years.

The administration says Congress accepted at least $6.9 billion of the $11.3 billion in discretionary spending cuts Mr. Obama proposed for the current fiscal year. An analysis by The Washington Times found that Mr. Obama was victorious in getting Congress to slash 24 programs and achieved some level of success in reducing nine other programs.

Among the president's victories are canceling the multibillion-dollar F-22 Raptor program, ending the LORAN-C radio-based ship navigation system and culling a series of low-dollar education grants. In each of those cases, Mr. Obama succeeded in eliminating programs that Mr. Bush repeatedly failed to end.[...]

By comparison, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget says Mr. Bush won 40 percent of his spending cuts in fiscal 2006 and won less than 15 percent of his proposed cuts for 2007 and 2008.

Ezra points out:

And if you compare the major early initiatives of George W. Bush and Obama, the picture is even starker. Bush cut trillions in taxes without paying for it and added trillions in Medicare spending without paying for it. Obama, by contrast, put the stimulus bill on the deficit, as you would expect for a countercyclical program, but his health-care bill actually raises more money than it spends, and reduces the deficit in both its first and second decades. Saying Obama is far more fiscally responsible than Bush may not be saying much, but it does put Republican fury about the deficit in context.