Let me remind everyone that Obama’s last budget failed to pass in the Democrat Party controlled Senate by a vote of 97 – 0. That’s ZERO, as in nada, not one democrat vote. So to see his next proposal held up once again by those same democrats as an example of fiscal sanity is, well, quite honestly, ridiculous.
In February 2009, while democrats’ controlled the White House and both houses of congress, Obama submitted his first budget to Congress. It boldly predicted that the federal deficit would decrease dramatically during Obama’s term, dropping from an estimated $1.841 trillion in fiscal 2009 to $557.4 billion in fiscal 2012. However, in the fiscal 2013 budget that Obama submitted to Congress today, the White House is predicting that the federal deficit for fiscal 2012 will not be $557.4 billion after all.
Instead, the White House says, it will be $1.3269 trillion.
That means Obama’s fiscal 2010 budget proposal missed on its fiscal 2012 deficit prediction by $769.5 billion–an error of 138 percent. Kinda’ missing that whole promise to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term, huh? The federal debt has increased by $4.47 trillion since President Barack Obama released his first federal budget on Feb. 26, 2009 and that budget was entitled, “A New Era of Responsibility.” Comical in retrospect….
Now let’s look at how the Associated Press critiques this latest budget.
(AP) Taking a pass on reining in government growth, President Obama unveiled a record $3.8 trillion election-year budget plan Monday, calling for stimulus-style spending on roads and schools and tax hikes on the wealthy to help pay the costs. The ideas landed with a thud on Capitol Hill.
Though the Pentagon and a number of Cabinet agencies would get squeezed, Obama would leave the spiraling growth of health care programs for the elderly and the poor largely unchecked. The plan claims $4 trillion in deficit savings over the coming decade, but most of it would be through tax increases Republicans oppose, lower war costs already in motion and budget cuts enacted last year in a debt pact with GOP lawmakers.
By the administration’s reckoning, the deficit would drop to $901 billion next year – still requiring the government to borrow 24 cents of every dollar it spends – and would settle in the $600 billion-plus range by 2015. The deficit for the current budget year, which ends Sept. 30, would hit $1.3 trillion, a near record and the fourth straight year of trillion-plus red ink.
Oama’s budget blueprint reprises a long roster of prior proposals: raising taxes on couples making more than $250,000 a year; eliminating numerous tax breaks for oil and gas companies and approving a series of smaller tax and fee proposals. Similar proposals failed even when the Democrats controlled Congress.
Another contrast with Republicans will come on Medicare, the enormously popular health care programs for the elderly. Obama leaves the program mostly alone, while Republicans are on record in favor of gradually replacing the current system in which the government pays doctor and hospital bills with a voucher-like plan that would have government subsidize purchases of health insurance.
Nor does Obama tackle Social Security’s fiscal imbalance. Payroll taxes paid into the program fall well short of what’s needed to cover benefits; the shortfall is made up by tapping into a $2.7 trillion trust fund that’s built up since the last overhaul of the program in the early 1980’s.
The projections in Obama’s budget show that he is doing little to restrain the surge in these programs that is expected with the retirement of baby boomers. Obama’s budget projects that Medicare spending will double over the coming decade from $478 billion this year to almost $1 trillion in 2022.
Medicaid, the government health care program for the poor and disabled, would more than double from $255 billion this year to $589 billion by 2022. (read article)
Will someone in the GOP please friggin’ go on the attack with this because I’m really beginning to believe the establishment is intentionally propping up Obama.
Not once, not one friggin’ time has Speaker Boehner or Mitch McConnell beat up Obama for never having a single budget for one single day in office. Why? What is it about brutal honesty that they are afraid of? Are they worried that too much emphasis on reducing spending and the size of government will force them to ACTUALLY follow-through and be forced to DO IT when/if they are in control?
Seriously. What reason(s) can you provide that explain the Republican avoidance of confronting this truth and smashing Democrats over the head with it in front of the electorate ?
