Forget "Where's Waldo?" Where's Obama's GDP?

Obama's GDP came to $133.66 trillion through calendar 2016, Obama's spending to $28.72 trillion through fiscal 2016, 21.48% of the total.

Bush's GDP came to $102.87 trillion through calendar 2008, Bush's spending to $19.16 trillion through fiscal 2008, 18.62% of the total.

Together they averaged federal spending of 20% of GDP in response to  9/11 and the Panic of 2008, but it has gotten us nowhere except in deep kimchi.

Contrast their record with the 16 years before the Income Tax was passed, 1898-1913. It's a good comparison because the Panic of 1907 was a real crisis, in response to which the Congress foolishly introduced the Corporate Tax in 1909, and both the Income Tax and the Federal Reserve in 1913.

Federal spending over the whole prior period through 1913 was just 2.5% of GDP, 8 times less than now, yet GDP increased 142% despite a whopping 11% hit to GDP in 1908. GDP didn't recover from the Panic of 1907 until 1911, but it did so without any increased federal spending.

Fast forward to America's GDP hiccup from 2008 to 2009, which amounted to a measly 2.0% hit to GDP. GDP promptly recovered by 2010, yet all these yokels could deliver us was a total GDP increase of just 80% since the year 2000, 44% less robust than that period 100 years ago, before the advent of the bureaucratic state.

Put more sharply, Obama spent nearly $10 trillion more than Bush to solve a comparatively tiny $300 billion shortfall in GDP, but got nothing for it. Where, pray tell, did all the money go? Where is the GDP?

The spending excess has left us with a pile of debt which is now costing us $411 billion a year to service, 70% of the current Defense budget, despite the lowest interest rates in history.

At some point those rates will rise, and when they do, you'd better pray we still have a strong enough military to defend ourselves when the people we can no longer pay come a callin'.

There will be blood.