It turns out that strikingly little of the “whopping” increase in spending in 2009 came from such efforts. In his breakdown of the sources of increased spending, the Center for American Progress’s Michael Linden shows that 41 percent of increased spending was from President Bush’s financial rescue; 18 percent was from the mandatory Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid programs; and 7 percent was from defense. Only 18 percent of the increased spending – or $108 billion – came from the stimulus package in 2009.

Generously categorizing Linden’s “other domestic spending” category as stimulative and adding in increased spending on unemployment benefits (which is definitely stimulative), Obama’s efforts to counteract the economic downturn, one consequence of which was cuts to state spending, accounted for only 34 percent ($205 billion) of increased spending in 2009. The rest of the increases have little to do with stimulating the economy (Medicaid spending surely increased in part because of an increased caseload caused by the recession. But this is also a primary cause of fiscal strain for states, which share the program’s cost.).

A comparison of federal spending and aggregate state spending is irrelevant. Comparing federal stimulus spending and state spending cuts is only appropriate and useful because both are responses to the economic downturn.

Update (7/1): Matt Mitchell at Mercatus quite rightly exploits my lazy sentence above that “The rest of the increases have little to do with stimulating the economy.” To the extent that these spending increases are automatic stabilizers and occur as deficit spending, they do in fact have stimulative effect (Matt would disagree but I’ll leave it to others to debate the wisdom of Keynesian stimulus – my perspective is obvious.).

The important difference between ARRA and these other spending increases is, far from being about mere intentionality, that the ARRA spending was designed in the context of these other increases and state spending decreases. That is why ARRA is compared, with concern, to cuts in spending at the state level. Mitchell wants to say that deficit spending does not stimulate the economy and that’s fine. My point, though, is not to re-litigate the wisdom of such spending, but to suggest that the comparison is not pulled from thin air.