James Capretta of the Ethics and Public Policy Center has an eye-opening look at the most recent budget projections released by the White House and describes what those numbers tell us about the Obama Administration’s plans for the country. He writes:



The budget deficit in 2010 is expected to set a record at $1.471 trillion – or 10% of GDP. In 2011, the administration projects the deficit will again top $1.4 trillion. From 2010 to 2020, the Obama budget plan would run up a cumulative deficit of nearly $10 trillion, and the nation’s debt would reach $18.5 trillion in 2020, up from $5.8 trillion at the end of 2008.


Even more ominous for the president is the economic forecast. It shows unemployment remaining at over 8% through the 2012 presidential re-election campaign, despite the assumption that relatively normal economic growth would have been underway for more than two years by then.


The primary problem is quite plainly out of control federal spending. In 2008, total federal outlays were about $2.9 trillion. President Obama wants to add $1 trillion to that total in 2011, or about a 33% expansion of governmental activity in just three years. And that’s just the beginning of it. By the end of the decade, federal outlays would reach $5.6 trillion, nearly double what they were a little more than a decade earlier, and that’s assuming a massive and speculative peace dividend after 2011 and cuts in domestic discretionary programs that the president has yet to identify. …


The president’s governing and budget strategy should now be evident to one and all. He has spent his first two years in office working to secure expansions in the scope and power of the federal government. Working with very sizeable Democratic majorities in both the House and the Senate, he passed an $800 billion-plus “stimulus” program, a massive health care entitlement covering tens of millions of new beneficiaries, a full federal takeover of the student loan industry, and sweeping new regulations for the financial sector. All of these initiatives have increased federal power and spending and have been financed with new tax and regulatory burdens on the private sector of the American economy.


In other words, the deficits aren’t really an accident or simply an outcome of the recession. Sure, the government spent trillions propping up banks and on other stimulus in the name of preventing economic collapse. But it is clear that this Administration has no intention of rolling back that increased spending. Far from it, the Administration wants to make that new spending the baseline so that it is permanently a part of our budget, our economy, and our society.


The deficits are a problem because they make it harder to finance new government initiatives, but in the eyes of liberals, they are also a good reason to increase government’s take from the private sector. Instead of making serious proposals for how to scale back government, this Administration and its allies are going to make the case that we need to reconfigure the tax code so that it fits our new, grossly obese government. It’ll be up to the American people to call them on this tactic, and reject the permanent expansion of our government.