The president’s budget makes clear that a huge expansion of government is not just about today’s economic downturn. Once the recession is behind us, this budget will continue pushing for more and more government in our everyday lives.
Instead of tightening Uncle Sam’s belt the way so many American families are cutting back these days, the president’s proposal spends so aggressively that it essentially adds $1 trillion to the debt, on average, every year.
Except for some accounting gimmicks, the budget makes no attempt to cut wasteful spending or find savings. It ignores reform for major entitlement programs such as Medicare and Social Security, which are on track to cost us $67 trillion more than we have over the next 75 years.
And remember, all of these projections are based on the assumption that the economy will be humming along by early 2010. This is highly unlikely, and will only cause the deficits to be greater than quoted. We we need austerity in our budget most, we have the most egregious spendthrift at the helm in history. We’re doomed.
Elections have consequences.
Indeed they do. Elect a bunch of big-government lefties and all of a sudden the budget deficit in the first year of the Obama administration is within a rounding error of the aggregate deficit from eight years of Mr. Bush.
And do not forget that Congressional Democrats intentionally delayed approval of the FY09 budget until after a new administration was in place. This one belongs to the Donks.
One can only wonder why Senator Gregg ever thought he could serve as Secretary of Commerce in this administration.
I’m glad he pulled out.
You have to adimt it was clever selling a massive government expansion and a “business as usual” budget as an emergency stimulus package.
When my daughter is “clever” in this way she gets sent to her room
It will be interesting to see if there is a backlash in 2/4 years. I think that the changes he is making enjoy widespread support – despite what would appear to be obvious consequences. Many really do think this is a good thing – of course I live in a state where 27% of the employment is diretlty on the government payrolls
Before we start going on about Obama deficits, we can go on about Bush deficits. It’s hardly surprising that a Democrat, under the circumstances, is going to ignore deficits; it’s hypocritical for a Senate Republican to object, see as how they made no effort over the last eight years to keep spending in line.
[url=http://www.speaker.gov/newsroom/pressreleases?id=0022]AHEM!![/url]
#7: It may indeed be hypocritical, but the objection must be made, none the less.
C. Wingate, there’s no question that Congressional Republicans dropped the ball on spending restraint, and so did Bush. Anger over this is one of the reasons for the loss of Congress in 2006. But this is like repentance after sin. There’s no reason not to try to do better, even if they’ve been bad in the past.
Plus, it might be interesting to see how Sen. Gregg’s own record on spending was. There were Republicans who were critical of GWB’s spending habits (and of the congressional leadership of their party). Anybody know where Gregg was at the time?
[blockquote]Anybody know where Gregg was at the time? [/blockquote]
I checked the National Taxpayers Union for the past few sessions in Congress, and Gregg gets a steady “A” rating, bouncing from the high 70s to high 80s in percentile.
The excuse “Well Bush did it” did’t work for me as a child and it should not work for grown legislators! Obama will increase the deficit by more than all the Presidents of the US combined including George Bush’s deficits. Obama’s deficits are going to approach 12% of GDP as compared to Bush’s approaching 4%. This is simply unsustainable. Obama’s cap and trade energy policies will increase the average home energy costs by $6,000.00 dollars per year. The cost to the average American family will be staggering and completely unprecidented! It is madness on a grand scale.
The fact is nearly all Congressional Democrats are fiscally profligate and at least some – certainly too many – Republicans are also fiscally profligate. Bottom line is any fiscally profligate member of Senate of House should be tarred and feathered, at least figuratively, no matter how much ‘good’ they do for the folks at home. They should be fired and sent home. If ‘We the People’ don’t clean up the mess we created by our votes, we will kill our country. And God have mercy on us.
The Republicans learned from the Domocrats that this is how you buy votes. You can’t buy votes by being fiscaly conservative. However the Republicans should have known that you can’t outspend the Democrats. This is not to excuse Bush and the Republicans. But piling on spending on top of spending will lead to disaster.
I’m not going to sign on to the battle between the various economic dogmatists. The point is rather that for all the alarmism spread in this forum back during the campaign and before the inauguration, what we are getting looks remarkably like business as usual. I don’t see “big-government lefties” (and if you want a big-government program, look no further than the TSA), and in fact I see next to nothing in the way of bold programs. What I’m seeing instead is a cobbled-together lack-of-system of handouts to big financial businesses.
Sadly, CW, it seems both Republicans and Democrats love big government too much. Republicans, it breaks my heart to say, can’t find it within them to really embrace our Constitution as the limiter of government our founders intended. They seem to think increasing government is a key to their return to power. Like fire, government when controlled can be a wonderful servant, when uncontrolled government becomes a fearful master. Democrats are under no illusions of the nature of government and have embraced the position that the fearful master of government will be theirs to direct. Both approaches are corrosive to our Constitutional Republic which seems inexorably headed toward subservience to some godawful international common denominator no matter which party is in charge. God help us as we seem unwilling to help ourselves.
17, I agree. The Rebublicans have now learned that the way to power is through big government. No real difference between the two. Don’t put your faith in human governments.