PolitiFlub: President Obama's near-sterling record on spending?

MarketWatch's Rex Nutting published a defense of President Obama's spending record on May 22.

Quite a number of conservatives have written to rebut Nutting regarding his point that Obama has not presided over an unusually large increase in federal government spending.  But, strangely, conservative-leaning PolitiFact did not join the chorus of criticism.

Instead, PolitiFact rated a secondhand viral Facebook version of Nutting's argument "Mostly True."

The problem? The flub, that is?

PolitiFact entirely ignores the fundamentally accurate criticism undercutting Nutting's argument in favor of Obama's light-spending ways:  The Bush budget of 2009 provides a very unusual baseline against which to compare Obama's spending.

PolitiFact simply closes its eyes to that context:

Our ruling

The Facebook post says Mitt Romney is wrong to claim that spending under Obama has "accelerated at a pace without precedent in recent history," because it's actually risen "slower than at any time in nearly 60 years."

Obama has indeed presided over the slowest growth in spending of any president using raw dollars, and it was the second-slowest if you adjust for inflation. The math simultaneously backs up Nutting’s calculations and demolishes Romney’s contention. The only significant shortcoming of the graphic is that it fails to note that some of the restraint in spending was fueled by demands from congressional Republicans. On balance, we rate the claim Mostly True.

The rest of the fact check is equally blind to the critical context of the claim.