And it's completely false.
(This despite Politifact's "Mostly True rating. But who's surprised by that?)
Started by Rex Nutting at Marketwatch, the claim goes something like this:
Although there was a big stimulus bill under Obama, federal spending is rising at the slowest pace since Dwight Eisenhower brought the Korean War to an end in the 1950s.
The claim relies on statistics cherry-picked from different sources and, tellingly, uses CBO projections rather than actual outlays, and lets the President off the hook for FY 2009 - a budget that was passed by a Democratic Congress and signed into law by President Obama.
This is all courtesy of a post over at Political Math, who has been relentless on Twitter the past few days debunking the claim that Obama isn't a big spender. The dataviz wiz has put together a handy infographic that puts all the information you need to know into one place.
This has been yet another reminder that fact-checking is done best by the blogosphere, not the MSM-appointed "fact checkers."
Editor's note: the chart has been updated at Political Math and is updated here.