The Wall Street Journal gets to the heart of the problem with the President’s proposed budget:
One rule of budget reporting is to watch what the politicians are spending this year, not the frugality they promise down the road. By that measure, the budget that President Obama released yesterday for fiscal 2011 is one of the greatest spend-while-you-can documents in American history.
We now know why the White House leaked word of a three-year spending freeze on a few domestic accounts before this extravaganza was released. No one would have noticed such a slushy promise amid this glacier of spending. The budget reveals that overall federal outlays will reach $3.72 trillion in fiscal 2010, and keep rising to $3.834 trillion in 2011.
As a share of the economy, outlays will reach a post-World War II record of 25.4% this year. This is a new modern spending landmark, up from 21% of GDP as recently as fiscal 2008, and far above the 40-year average of 20.7%.
So much for fiscal responsibility. It’s clear that promises of reducing the deficit are really a p.r. tactic, more than an actual commitment. Like the grossly obese man who promises that the diet will start tomorrow, there is little admirable in promising to start cutting back years for now.
IWF’s President, Michelle Bernard, offered a similar assessment when responding to The Hill yesterday on the question of whether Democrats will pay a price for the bloated budget:
The horrific state of our government’s finances is old news. The American people are worried about our mounting debt and its long-term effect on the economy. This budget will do nothing to make them feel better. It’s another instance of kicking the can down the road and promising to become fiscally responsible next year.
The question is how will the public react to this massive budget and to the obvious political spin that the White House has tried to employ, and much of the media has dutifully parroted? Massachusetts suggests that voters are no longer falling for well-worded promises of this political action or that: They know to judge politicians not by what they ,but what they do. That could be bad news for the President and his allies.