What's that about the Obama Spending Spree? Center for American Progress begs to Differ.

MSNBC: Pulitzer-Prize winning independent fact-checker Politifact, checked Rep. Jeb Hensarling's (R-TX) statement to President Obama at the House Republican Retreat on Friday that: "What were the old annual deficits under Republicans have now become the monthly deficits under Democrats." Politifact gave that a "False."

"Rep. Jeb Hensarling did some extreme cherry-picking to suggest that deficits have ballooned under Obama," the Web site writes. "

Politifact.com: Obama said the question sounded more like a talking point from someone running a campaign and was an example of why it's so hard to achieve bipartisan legislation.

In a press release issued by Hensarling after the meeting, he noted that the monthly deficit in October 2009 was $176 billion … to begin with, Hensarling is choosing the highest number. Over his full, eight-year term (including much of the 2009 deficit that rightly falls to him), the country ran up $3.3 trillion in total deficits. That works out to an average of about $412 billion per year -- more than double the number Hensarling is using. If you want to just look at the six years Bush had a Republican Congress, the average drops to about $260 billion a year.

In October 2008, the month before Obama was even elected, the monthly deficit was $232 billion. That's higher than any of the monthly deficits under Obama. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget office estimated the 2009 deficit at nearly $1.2 trillion on the day Obama was sworn in. Obama increased it by about $250 billion.

In summary, Hensarling's numbers only work if you cherry-pick the highest month under full Democratic control and compare it to one of the lowest years under full Republican control. If you compare average months (about $112 billion a month for Obama and the Democratic Congress) to average years under Bush (about $412 billion a year if you include his full 8-year term, or about $260 billion a year if you only include the first six years with a Republican Congress), Hensarling's numbers are wrong. There are so many bookkeeping tricks in this one that he's far from the truth. We his claim False.