The big news of today, following on his non-State of the Union Tuesday, the President presented the outline of his budget for the next year. It is, as are all such budgets, a bloated monstrosity of spending more money than you or I can easily conceive of. The summary of the budget that Obama sent out to Congress is 140 pages long. If you have to call something a summary, and its 140 pages long, there’s something weird there.
To be fair, the United States simply can’t have a simple budget, there’s too much going on in such a large nation. And also to be fair, its not like any budget from any President in my lifetime has been “simple” or “small”. Conservatives can talk about how Reagan was a fiscal conservative all they like, and maybe by some definitions he was, but his budgets were still huge.
It’s a huge, spendy budget, and I’ve not heard anyone deny that. Peter Orszag, head of the budget office, has said, however, that there are 4 ways in which the United States will save money. 3 of them leave me somewhat doubtful. They could be true, sure, but they might not be.
The winding down of the Iraq war will save money. That’s the one I’m fairly confident about. The idea that the stimulus and normal business cycles will bring income back up is much less a sure thing, as is the nebulous statement that the Obama administration will “make government more efficient”. And the idea that the tax cuts for the wealthy will expire next year may be likely, but I can see that being one of those things the White House agrees to extend in exchange for something more valuable to their agenda.
On the other hand, I’m still flabbergasted when anyone thinks Obama was going to submit anything other than a massive, spendy budget. While Jindal spent a lot of time stating that the Republicans had moved away from their roots of fiscal conservatism – and they had – the Democrats have never made any bones about believing that the Government spending money on big programs is good for the people. That private solutions are often unfair to the workers, so the Government creates health care systems, creates education systems, etc. You can disagree with that, and there’s legitimate cases to be made for the opposite philosophy, but at least the Democrats have been true to what they believe.
While politics can often look like a game of “gotcha”, it is unreal to expect that just because Bush Republicans (Neo-cons) spent outrageous sums of money that the Democrats would reign it in. No, the main difference between Neo-cons and Democrats is where the focus the spending. Perhaps if the Republicans ever run an actual fiscal conservative again, we’d remember the way it is supposed to work.
House Minority Leader, Mr. Boehner from Ohio, has criticisms of the budget. No doubt he’d have criticisms of any bill coming from President Obama, but perhaps, as I said, some of his criticisms come from a legitimate philosophical difference. On the other hand, some of his criticisms are just amazingly… well, the way he says them is stupid. “The era of Big Government is back”? Its BACK, Mr. Boehner? When has it ever gone, under Neo-con rule? Way to be disingenuous. “The President’s Bill is beginning to make Bush look like a piker when it comes to spending”? That’s a little unfair, considering that Obama has done his level best to have the country not look back at Bush’s problems (well, almost – the occasional unnamed jab at the past does come in there). No, Mr. Boehner, the recent President Bush managed to look like a piker all by himself.
JC Economy, National Politics, Political Parties Boehner, finance, obama, Orszag, pork
