The Obama budget is two months late, of course, but that's the least of its problems. You small-government people? Ha! We're not reducing the size of government today. We're not reducing the size of government tomorrow. We're not reducing it ever. Not unless the political dynamic of this country changes dramatically.
You can see the breakdown here. Obama not only wants to spend $3.77 trillion this year - which is $93 billion more than we spent in FY 2013 - but look what he envisions for a decade from now. In 2023, the federal government would grow to $5.66 trillion! That means that over the next decade, far from shrinking in any way whatsoever, the size of the federal government would grow by 50 percent.
Oh, but don't you worry. We'll reduce the deficit. How's that? Well, Obama assumes all kinds of revenue from tax increases already enacted, and new ones he's proposing (like an additional 94 cents a pack on cigarettes and a mandatory minimum tax of 30 percent on anyone who makes more than $1 million), but the really big audacious assumption is the one about economic growth. This year's Gross Domestic Product is estimated at $16.2 trillion, and we've been seeing anemic growth ever since Obama took office.
In order to claim he will reduce the deficit to "only" $744 billion in 2014, Obama assumes GDP will grow to $17 trillion in 2014. And in order to claim the deficit will decline to $439 billion in 2023, Obama basically assumes GDP increases of roughly $1 trillion a year for the next decade. That would represent much faster growth than we've seen at any point during Obama's presidency, and he thinks this will happen even with all the new taxes he proposes and all the costs of ObamaCare.
There is also this: The Federal Reserve cannot artificially keep interest rates near zero forever, and when they rise back to normal levels, interest payments on the national debt will explode. Obama's budget doesn't account for this at all, just as it doesn't account for other fairly predictable costs like adjustments in Medicare reimbursements and, of course, the cost of administering ObamaCare itself - which is already showing itself to be far greater than we were promised in the CBO's garbage-in-garbage-out projections.
And of course, you always have to remember with these 10-year projections that only the first year carries any force of law - assuming it even passes. There is nothing holding future Congresses to these levels of spending, and you know how happy they are to pass "emergency outlays" any time they have an excuse for doing so (or any time the public isn't paying attention, which is often).
You'll also hear a lot about Obama supposedly cutting entitlement spending. What he's proposing is to go to a new formula for calculating cost-of-living increases called "chained CPI," which takes a slightly more realistic view of movement in the cost-of-living but does not represent any sort of fundamental restructuring. Our unfunded entitlement obligations exceed $100 trillion, and going to "chained CPI" is not going make much of a dent in that. Politicians need to stop being frightened and start leveling with the public about the actions that are really necessary to prevent entitlement programs from bankrupting the nation.
And even the tiny action Obama claims he is willing to undertake is only offered on the condition that Republicans pass massive tax increases.
The bottom line of all this is that Obama is simply not serious about dealing with the national debt. His assumptions about economic growth are wildly optimistic. His spending projections are comically short of what will likely happen, and yet even there he sees the federal government spending an astounding $5.66 trillion a year in a decade.
There is really no one in a leadership position right now who is prepared to lead the American public to a solution based on smaller government and real growth policies. I'm not saying there is no one in Congress who believes in such policies, but they're not impacting the terms of the debate and they're certainly not influencing policy. John Boehner has been reduced to quibbling with Obama over small differences in how much the government will grow. Even Paul Ryan, whose proposal laudably balances the budget in 10 years, does not propose any serious rethinking of the role of the federal government in our lives.
I don't know how this changes, but I do know this: If political leaders wait to be led by the public, we're in trouble, because the public is not going to recognize the disaster this is leading to until it's upon us. Someone is going to have to take on the Democrats, the media and establishment Republicans and find a way to bring the public along. I like the fact that Ryan warns of a predictable fiscal crisis, but all his actual proposals really do is give us better financial management of the same gargantuan government. They don't challenge the public to think differently about what government is and how much it should try to do.
That won't get the job done. As long as the public thinks the way it does now, it will keep demanding more government than our economy can really deliver. And if Republicans like Ryan concede the giant role of government, why should the public elect them to manage it when they can choose the party that loves big government. Obama really loves it. He loves $5.66 trillion worth of it come 2023.
Whoever is prepared to stop that from happening, you can come forward any time.
