Obama's 2013 Budget: A Monument To Irresponsibility
IBDEditorials.com
Financial Ruin: What do you call a budget that boosts spending $227 billion, adds $329 billion to an already huge deficit, and does nothing to fix the entitlement crisis? If you're President Obama, it's called "fiscal responsibility."
In the message Obama attached to his 2013 budget, he claimed that he's "taken many steps to reestablish fiscal responsibility."
But his budget is a colossal monument to irresponsibility, continuing a deficit-fueled spending spree that will take the country ever closer to fiscal ruin.
Just how big is this budget's spending splurge? Among other things:
• It increases projected federal spending for this year and next by a total of $227 billion, and adds $329 billion to projected deficits for those years.
• It includes another $315 billion in stimulus spending this year and next, despite the abject failure of the last stimulus, and claims by Obama himself that the economy is already on the mend.
• It spends a stunning $2.7 trillion more over the next decade than the Congressional Budget Office's "baseline" projections.
• It produces nearly $7 trillion in total deficits over the next decade, despite claims by Obama that he's cutting the deficit by $4 trillion.
Obama also claims his budget enacts "a wide range of mandatory savings," including "more than $360 billion in reforms to Medicare, Medicaid, and other health programs over 10 years."
But his own budget numbers show he barely makes a scratch in overall entitlement spending, trimming a tiny $23 billion over the next decade compared with his "baseline" projections.
By doing so, Obama ignored the warnings of every serious budget expert — including his own bipartisan debt commission — that without meaningful entitlement reforms the nation's fiscal crisis will never be resolved. In fact, Obama has categorically ruled out any serious entitlement reform ideas.
Obama also says his budget plan will "strengthen our economy and boost job creation," but it contains a $1.5 trillion tax hike on businesses and investors most likely to actually grow the economy and create those jobs.
It would also more than double the dividend tax rate on the wealthy, boost the capital gains tax to 20%, raise income tax rates on families making more than $250,000, impose a new minimum tax on millionaires, and hike taxes on the oil and gas industry, among others.
Obama's budget message is misleading in other ways. He claims to have inherited a $1.3 trillion deficit, and "a projected 10-year deficit of more than $8 trillion."
But that's simply false. In January 2009, the Congressional Budget Office projected a 2009 deficit of $1.2 trillion for that year, and a 10-year total of $3 trillion.
He also claims ObamaCare will cut federal deficits by $1 trillion over the next 20 years. But that's based on a CBO calculation that even it says is meaningless "because the uncertainties involved are simply too great."
If this is what Obama considers being responsible, is it any wonder the country is in such dire straits?