President Obama's federal budget has been unmasked as part fantasy, part gimmickry and part shell game. These "parts" mixed together yield a plan that shockingly adds $11 trillion in gross debt over the next ten years, propelling the nation's total indebtedness to a breathtaking $26 trillion.
With a straight face, Obama asserted his budget "will cut the deficit by $4 trillion over the next decade." Only this president could utter such a deception while proposing a budget that actually grows public debt by 73 percent from today's level in order to fund deficit spending.
Undeterred by his pledge in February of 2009 to slice the deficit in half, the president's scheme shuns austerity in favor of more spending. His budget contains $47 trillion in expenditures over the 10-year planning cycle, the largest increase in government outlays in history.
The proposal hikes spending on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, despite the president's assurances that his budget chips away at the programs. Together those three entitlements account for roughly 40 percent of the federal budget. It is sheer lunacy to suggest budget deficits can be arrested while entitlement costs escalate every year.
Based on his own rosy projections, the president admits his budget produces a $1.33 trillion deficit in 2012, meaning the government will have to borrow more money to cover the shortfall. This will mark four straight years of trillion-dollar-plus deficits rung up by the Obama Administration.
By the end of his first term, President Obama will have added $5 trillion to the nation's publicly held debt. No one-term president in the history of the United States has come even close to that standard. Yet Obama continues to blame everyone but himself for his broken promises to stem the tide of red ink.
In his latest lament, Obama attributed his super-sized budget to economic events "beyond his control." The president grumbled that a "lot of us didn't understand" how bad the economy was going to get. That is a stinging rebuke of his fiscal team and his own grasp of the economy.
As soon as Obama's budget thudded on the desks of legislators, it was pronounced dead on arrival. While the president blames Republicans for every impasse, his own party has not passed a budget in the Democrat-controlled Senate in nearly three years. And they won't approve his latest offering either.
Even the most ardent Obama supporter has to cringe at his budget dishonesty. For example, the president's budget achieves $1 trillion in cuts by taking credit for money it never planned to spend. Nearly every budget category grows, one exception being the Department of Defense.
The president could restore fiscal integrity over 10 years by simply limiting the growth of spending to two percent a year. The Cato Institute, a Washington think-tank, calculated that single action would result in a balanced budget by 2022. It would keep spending at the current rate of inflation.
Meanwhile, the budget envisions $2 trillion in new taxes to reduce the deficit. Yet the nation's debt continues to soar under the Obama blueprint. Even if the president confiscated every penny of income from everyone making over $1 million a year, it would reduce the deficit by only $616 billion.
The president's budget charade has been masked by the parasitic mainstream media. The Washington Post called the proposed budget cuts "draconian." USA Today hailed the balanced approach of new taxes and spending reductions. News reports neglected mentioning the ticking debt bomb hidden in the budget.
The media can no longer disguise the fact that President Obama has absolutely no intention of ending the spending spree he initiated when he assumed office. He can make all the excuses he wants.
Most Americans want no part of a budget that saddles the country with Greece-like debt.
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