Jeb Bush Owes President Obama A Warm Kiss

Kira Lerner

Kira Lerner Political Reporter, Think Progress

During the third GOP presidential debate on Wednesday night, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush made a bold bet.

“You find a Democrat that’s for cutting taxes, cutting spending $10, I’ll give him a warm kiss,” Bush said.

Unfortunately for Bush, spending under President Barack Obama has decreased and is on track to reach the lowest level in more than 50 years by 2023. While Obama has pushed through a series of tax hikes on the wealthy and policies to expand middle class tax credits, spending on domestic and defense programs has actually been on the decline since 2010.

In 2014, the Congressional Budget Office announced that the U.S. budget was the smallest it had been since he took office, a fact that contradicts Republican arguments that entitlement spending under Obama has been unrestrained.

Watch Bush during the debate:

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This has been reposted from Think Progress.

Kira Lerner is a Political Reporter for ThinkProgress. She previously worked as a reporter covering litigation and policy for the legal newswire Law360. She has also worked as an investigative journalist with the Chicago Innocence Project where she helped develop evidence that led to the exoneration of a wrongfully convicted man from Illinois prison. A native of the Washington, D.C. area, Kira earned her bachelor's degree at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism.

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