Obama and the Deficit

Hey, big spender!

Barack Obama seems to be operating under the illusion that Americans are completely clueless.

I'm surprised the brilliant, Lincolnesque Obama doesn't understand that "you can fool some of the people all the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all the time."

From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

A week after signing an almost $800 billion stimulus bill that will make a huge deficit even bigger, President Barack Obama vowed to reverse the nation's fiscal course by the end of his term, saying, "We cannot and will not sustain deficits like these without end."

Presiding over an unusual White House conference on the government's financial outlook, Obama promised a more truthful budgeting process, saying it has been "an exercise in deception" in the past.

The bipartisan meeting, with Obama fielding questions from both liberal and conservative lawmakers, was another effort by the president to strike a collegial tone amid substantive differences between the parties.

It was also part of Obama's attempt to juggle two different goals early in his presidency: the short-term effort to jump-start the economy with massive spending and deficits, and the long-term goal to shrink those deficits and control government costs.

Obama argued Monday that there is no contradiction between the two, saying that without the spending surge in the stimulus, the economy would take longer to recover, tax revenues would go down "and long-term deficit and debt projections would be even higher."

Obama is a real piece of work.

He complains about the huge deficit that he inherited from the Bush administration while he himself is adding trillions of dollars to the deficit.

But he justifies this most massive spending spree in U.S. history with the lame argument that increasing the deficit is a good thing and necessary because that will keep it from growing higher.

Obama wants to calm Americans with his promise to dramatically cut the deficit, vowing fiscal responsibility. Some, the blind, will buy what he's selling. Some will see this for what it is -- crap.

Obama's Deficit Goals Count on Rosy Assumptions

President Obama's ambitious goal of cutting the federal deficit in half relies on a perfect -- some might say improbable -- convergence of factors: a recovered economy, a tax boost for the rich and success in easing foreign entanglements.

In calling for a deficit of about $530 billion in four years, Obama has established a marker by which to measure his first-term performance as president. The dollar figure could be his albatross or his badge of success.

"This will not be easy," Obama said Monday as he kicked off a fiscal summit at the White House. "It will require us to make difficult decisions and face challenges we've long neglected."

Obama's fiscal summit is a joke, coming on the heels of the passage of the bloated, porked up, so-called stimulus bill. Does anyone really believe that Obama is going to curb the spending binge?

The Democrats aren't going to grow the economy. They are growing the government. That's the plan.

...For him to succeed, the economy will have to meet current forecasts that it will begin to turn around gradually during the second half of the year. Even so, Obama might still have to seek billions more to help rescue the beleaguered financial sector.

Administration officials say Obama will also achieve budget reductions through lower spending on the war in Iraq. However, it is unclear how much of those savings he will then devote to Afghanistan, where he already has agreed to boost troop strength.

Further budget assistance would come from increases in taxes for wealthier Americans.

Administration officials have said Obama will meet his campaign pledge to end President George W. Bush's tax cuts for people who make more than $250,000. Those tax cuts are to expire at the end of 2010.

What a mess!

If Obama is truly looking at the long-term big picture, he wouldn't be discouraging economic growth by raising taxes and intruding more and more on the private sector.

Cutting the deficit while embarking on a Spend-o-rama of historic proportions?

I don't think so.

It's ridiculous for Obama to preach about fiscal restraint.

WASHINGTON -- Urging strict future restraint even as current spending soars, President Barack Obama pledged on Monday to dramatically slash the skyrocketing annual budget deficit as he started to dole out the record $787 billion economic stimulus package he signed last week.

"If we confront this crisis without also confronting the deficits that helped cause it, we risk sinking into another crisis down the road," the president warned, promising to cut the yearly deficit in half by the end of his four-year term. "We cannot simply spend as we please and defer the consequences."

What Obama says is not what Obama does: "We cannot simply spend as we please and defer the consequences."

"Yes we can."