(CNN) -- The Republican Party's response to President Barack Obama's annual message to Congress was laced with dire warnings about presidential profligacy that would leave Americans with a "crushing burden of debt."
Rep. Paul Ryan, a rising GOP star, delivered the official rebuttal to the State of the Union speech. He warned that the United States faced "catastrophic levels" of red ink unless it reined in spending -- which he said had ballooned under the Obama administration.
"The facts are clear: Since taking office, President Obama has signed into law spending increases of nearly 25% for domestic government agencies, an 84% increase when you include the failed stimulus," Ryan said. "All of this new government spending was sold as 'investment.' Yet after two years, the unemployment rate remains above 9%, and government has added over $3 trillion to our debt."
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-- Ryan doesn't cite any specific figures for his claim, but a quick look at figures from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office figures suggests the new chairman of the House Budget Committee is a bit off the mark. Nondefense outlays grew by 11.3% from 2008 to 2009, and 17.3% between 2009 and 2010, according to the CBO.
-- The 2010 total of $682 billion in nondefense outlays includes $95 billion from the stimulus, known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, while 2009's $581 billion included $31 billion in funding from the stimulus, according to the CBO. Without those figures, the CBO put the increase in domestic discretionary spending at 5.3% in 2009 and 6.7% in 2010.
-- It's true that the stimulus didn't deliver the results promised by the Obama administration in terms of lowering the unemployment rate. The administration predicted it would bring the jobless figure down to 7% by the end of 2010; instead, the current rate is 9.4%. But the CBO estimated that the spending programs funded by the Recovery Act had created or saved nearly 4.8 million jobs by the middle of the year.
Bottom line:
Ryan's numbers don't square with the projections of the nonpartisan CBO. It was not immediately clear where they originated.
CNN's Matt Smith and Katie Glaeser contributed to this report.
