President Obama’s Freudian Slip On His Budget

President Obama had a Freudian slip at his press conference yesterday while touting his new budget for the 2012 fiscal year. Before immediately catching himself and continuing on with his spin, he dropped the “S-Bomb” in declaring that his budget would bring:

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annual domestic spending to its lowest sh** — lowest share to the economy since Dwight Eisenhower

Obama could not help but concede – albeit, for just a second or two – that his budget proposal was in reality a pile of manure. Consider, for example, that balanced budgets are promised by mid-decade, but only if mounting interest costs on the debt are excluded from the calculations. That’s like trying to pretend your household budget is in great shape by just forgetting about counting the mortgage, car and credit card interest owing every month. The current year’s budget is expected to hit a record $1.6 trillion. To deal with the rising federal debt, Obama proposes to freeze federal discretionary spending at current levels, which would “save” nearly $500 billion over ten years. In other words, he would lock in place the record rise in spending during his first two years in office that helped get us to this unsustainable level of deficits in the first place. Obama’s proposed budget for the 2012 fiscal year would raises taxes. It would also increase spending on nonsensical programs, like high speed trains, and increase education spending by 20 percent when it is already far too high – over $70 billion. Most importantly, President Obama has abdicated any demonstration of presidential leadership by sidestepping the comprehensive recommendations of the bipartisan commission that he appointed to save $4 trillion over ten years by reducing all domestic and military spending, including the sacred cow entitlement programs of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, as well as overhauling the tax code. On the “O’Reilly Factor” last night, Bill O’Reilly repeated a simple solution advocated by some leading Republicans to getting the nation on the path of real deficit reduction – go back to pre-bailout, pre-stimulus 2008 spending levels. Consider the following comparisons between fiscal years 2008 and 2012, from the President’s 2012 budget report: More...