Obama and the Budget: A Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name
The New York Post's Charles Hurt on "The New Era of Spend and Blame":
After running a campaign against the $1 trillion deficit he "inherited" from President Bush and the Republicans, Obama quickly matched it. During his first 50 days in office, he and his Democratic-controlled Congress spent $1 billion an hour.
Under Obama's proposed budget, the overall national debt doubles in five years and triples in 10.
The Washington Examiner's Byron York on Obamanomics:
Barack Obama used to get very upset about federal budget deficits. Denouncing an "orgy of spending and enormous deficits," he turned to John McCain during their presidential debates last fall and said, "We have had, over the last eight years, the biggest increases in deficit spending and national debt in our history…Now we have a half-trillion deficit annually…and Sen. McCain voted for four out of five of those George Bush budgets."
That was then. Now, President Obama is asking lawmakers to vote for a budget with a deficit three times the size of the one that so disturbed candidate Obama just a few months ago. And Obama foresees, for years to come, deficits that dwarf those he felt so passionately about way, way back in 2008.
More here. Hat tip to both above: Charlie Spiering.
For a definitive account of Barack Obama's first proposed budget (for fiscal year 2010), check out Reason columnist and Mercatus Center economist Veronique de Rugy's working paper on the subject. It's stuffed with charts, tables, and graphs that underscore the enormity of Obama's spending, which represents at least a 19 percent increase over spending in FY2008.
And go here for her Reason col on the subject. A snippet:
The budget "saves" hundreds of billions of dollars by not continuing to spend $170 billion a year in Iraq until 2019. Obama includes war spending in his baseline projections to be able to show a $1.49 trillion savings over 10 years. Yet even under the previous administration we were supposed to be out of Iraq by 2012. It's highly dissembling to say we can get savings by cutting spending that isn't actually going to occur.
The bottom line is that there is very little to be happy about in Obama's first budget. It simply expands the Bush policies of bigger government and increased centralization, which threatens to permanently transform America's culture and economic outlook by making more and more Americans dependent on government.