By Dan Calabrese ——Bio and Archives--January 30, 2015
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Obama's aides believe that improving conditions give Obama credibility to push his spending priorities unabashedly - despite the fact that Republicans still believe government spends far too much. Federal deficits, gas prices and unemployment are all falling, while Obama's poll numbers have crept upward. The president has been newly combative as he argues it's time to ease the harsh measures that were taken to help pull the economy out of recession. Obama's budget, to be formally released Monday, will call for $74 billion more than the levels frozen in place by across-the-board cuts agreed to by both Democrats and Republicans and signed by Obama into law. The White House said his new budget proposals will "fully reverse" the so-called sequestration cuts by increasing spending on both the domestic and military sides by similar amounts.
Under Obama's proposal, national security programs would see an increase of $38 billion over current spending limits, raising the defense budget to $561 billion. On the domestic side, Obama is calling for $530 billion in spending - an increase of $37 billion. White House said his budget will be "fully paid for with cuts to inefficient spending programs and closing tax loopholes," but taxpayers will have to wait until the budget is made public to find out exactly how.At least he didn't say he'd pay for it by "cutting waste, fraud and abuse," but there's no difference whatsoever. It's the age-old empty claim that you can find all these inefficiencies in the budget, eliminate them in one fell swoop, and then use the money to give everyone more free crap. Now of course Democrats will argue that because the economy is finally starting to improve (if only in relative terms . . . 2.6 percent growth in 2014 Q4 is nothing to throw a party about), it's a great time to "invest" in things. Of course, when the economy is struggling, that's when they say we have to spend more to "stimulate" it. In other words, when do Democrats want to spend more? Always. Why? Because. Obama's game here is to lay out all kinds of new goodies he wants to promise the public, then set up an opportunity to beat up the Republicans for saying no because they know we're still piling up massive debt (approaching $18 trillion) and we're still staring at a massive entitlement obligation that we have no earthly idea how to deal with. In that setting, Obama just decides to borrow and throw around another $74 million because, hey, it's only money, and he's tired of "mindless austerity." Most of us are tired of mindless borrowing, but we'll see if congressional Republicans are confident enough of that fact to put their feet down and make Obama stick to the limits that he said he would stick to. Of course, no one really believed at the time that he was serious - probably not even the people who made the deal with him. Let's see if they've learned anything.
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