Say What You Mean, Mean What You Say, Part 3

Is President Obama playing a shell game with his promises to cut the deficit? Study the numbers and judge for yourself.

Obama's Deficit Charade

By Terence Jeffrey
Townhall
February 25, 2009

President Obama posed as a fiscal conservative Monday when he hosted a "fiscal responsibility summit."

Close inspection reveals that what he is actually proposing, however, is a massive increase in government debt -- thus raising the already unsustainable burden of government that is certain to fall on our children unless the welfare state is somehow curtailed. ...

President Obama said Monday that his "administration has inherited a $1.3 trillion deficit" for fiscal 2009.

The extraordinary size of that deficit is due, of course, to what one would have hoped were passing circumstances and one-time policies: a recession, a $700 billion bailout of the banking industry and that part of the $787 billion "stimulus" President Obama signed last week that will actually be spent in this fiscal year.

"And that's why today I'm pledging to cut the deficit we inherited in half by the end of my first term in office," President Obama said at his summit.

But what does that mean? The administration says President Obama's promise to "cut the deficit we inherited in half" means he will reduce it from $1.3 trillion in fiscal 2009 to $533 billion in fiscal 2013.

This $533 billion deficit -- that President Obama vows will be the lowest annual deficit he runs in any of the next four years -- is larger than any deficit the profligate President Bush ran before this recessionary year.

In fact, President Obama's planned $533 billion deficit for fiscal 2013 is more than twice as large as the $248.1 billion deficit Bush ran in 2006 and more than three times as large as the $162 billion deficit Bush ran in 2007.

In other words, President Obama is planning to permanently increase the scale of government borrowing -- even before we are hit by the fiscal tidal wave that will come when the bulk of the baby boom generation retires and begins collecting Social Security and Medicare benefits.

The truth is this: Our federal government has been wading ever deeper into red ink for a full half-century, and President Obama is now planning to wade deeper and faster than any president who has gone before him. ...

Say What You Mean, Mean What You Say, Part 2

What is the President really planning to do? You may be justifiably confused if you listen to what he says and compare it to what he does.

Editorial: Obama's proposal, goals don't line up
He promises fiscal discipline and expensive new initiatives

The Detroit News
February 25, 2009

Credit President Barack Obama for heeding calls to strike a more hopeful tone in his address to Congress and the nation Tuesday night. Americans needed a break from the relentless predictions of economic doom and to instead hear that things will indeed get better.

But the programs, policies and promises laid out in his speech are a mess of contradictions that the president will have to reconcile if he hopes to keep the public's confidence.

An overriding theme of the address was fiscal responsibility. Obama repeated his promise to halve the federal deficit, now well in excess of $1 trillion, by the end of his first term. Even if he does that, it will merely take the deficit back to where it was before the stimulus spending began late last year. Overspending revenues by a half-trillion a year doesn't shout fiscal discipline. ...

And pledging a tax hike on those Americans who invest the most private money in the economy would seem to work against the president's stated goal of creating jobs by stimulating private investment.

For a guy who claimed not to believe in bigger government, Obama promised to make it much bigger with an array of new initiatives from energy to education. Financing those programs will require higher taxes on a far broader swath of Americans than the 2 percent of wealthiest citizens he said he would limit the tax punishment to. ...

The lack of a detailed financial plan from the administration is eroding investor faith in its ability to handle the job and is contributing to the ongoing stock market decline. ...

The president ought to simplify. All Americans want him to do right now is get the economy moving. Policies that work at cross-purposes won't accomplish that goal.

Say What You Mean, Mean What You Say, Part 1

Polls and pundits are praising President Obama for his speech last night as audiences gave the President high marks for his delivery. But was it the President's plans or his rhetoric that people were approving? They may not be the same thing.

Conservative words for a liberal agenda

By John F. Harris and Jonathan Martin
Politico
February 25, 2009

In his programs and promises, President Barack Obama Tuesday night offered the nation by far the most expansive agenda for the national government in decades.

In his words and mood, however, Obama presented this breathtakingly ambitious vision in a way intended to convey caution, moderation, sobriety.

The 52-minute address outlined more commitments by the public sector, more intervention into the private economy, and more spending than anything Washington has undertaken at least since the Great Society and more likely the New Deal.

The substance reflected Obama’s bet that the country—alarmed by the economic crisis, repelled by the failures of the president who preceded him—is ready to move in a decisively more liberal direction.

The rhetoric, by contrast, reflected his apparent belief that most Americans remain instinctually conservative, leaving him and his agenda acutely vulnerable to backlash. ...