Memo to FoxNews audience... there is no "Government spending crisis"

Caught this tweet earlier today...

‏ @fgonzalez1978

Obama and the Republicans are arguing about who to tax. They're debating the wrong side of the equation. It's the spending, stupid.

This is classic #handToForehead moment.

The U.S. hasn't seen some massive increase in domestic spending via Obama.

I'll outsource to Dean Baker at Center For Economic and Policy Research::

government spending, excluding interest on the debt, is barely rising. In 1980, it was 19.8 percent of GDP. Non-interest spending is projected to be 21.1 percent of GDP in 2020. An increase of 1.3 percentage points over 40 years doesn't fit most people's definition of "out of control."

There are scary projections of large long-term deficits for the more distant future, but these are attributable to our broken health caresystem. We currently spend more than twice as much per person on health care as countries with longer life expectancies. This ratio is projected to rise to three or four times as much in the decades ahead. 

If health care costs do follow this path, it will lead to enormous economic problems, including budget problems, since we pay for more than half of our health care through government programs like Medicare and Medicaid. However, if we get our costs in line with the rest of the world, we would be looking at huge budget surpluses, not deficits.