Naturally the White House waited until Friday evening to let this news out. It is catastrophic to his agenda even though he’ll want to blame George Bush.

The Obama administration has released new deficit numbers, and they are not pretty.

The deficit for Fiscal Year 2009, which ended Sept. 30, came in at a record $1.42 trillion, more than triple the record set just last year.

In addition, future deficits are currently projected to total $9.1 trillion in the coming decade.

The Democrats’ natural reaction will be to raise taxes. But that would hurt the alleged economic recovery. In fact, the Democrats are going to need to halt their spending spree. Likewise, if the Blue Dogs are serous deficit hawks, it will mean they must vote no on health care reform.

Could you make your family budget look good in a ten-year analysis if you counted ten years of income but only seven of expenditures? That’s what the Congressional Budget Office did in their report on Senator Max Baucus’s health care bill.

Their subpar accounting includes revenue from tax increases and cuts to Medicare and Medicare Advantage starting in 2010. However, the bulk of expenditures begin in 2013, when many of the bill’s programs go into effect. It sounds like the CBO has started taking accounting tips from old Enron manuals. How can Democrats be taken seriously if they use ten years of revenue to pay for seven years of expenditures?

It’s frightening that Congress could soon vote on a bill that will cost Americans hundreds of billions of dollars without the crucial information of an honest CBO score. But that’s just what Democrats will ask us all to do. It is smoke-and-mirrors trickery that should have no place in Congress – a deceitful playbook from which the Congressional Majority has played from time and time again.

Democrats will use these CBO numbers to continue the charade that their proposals would reduce health care costs for Americans. But one only has to look at the dozens of new taxes Senator Baucus’s bill creates to see that health care will become much more expensive for Americans. And for the first three years, we really won’t be getting what we’re paying for.

We now have a pattern on our hands. When the math behind Barack Obama’s health care plans doesn’t work, Obama attacks math. Now, he doesn’t do it directly. He gets Peter Orzsag to debase his intellect for Obama’s political ends. First, he did it with the IMF score. Then this week he pressured the CBO scorers early this week after their math provided defeat after defeat to his healthcare dreams. And then this weekend, Orzsag has attacked Doug Elmendorf, the CBO director.

Read on for all the examples…

Promoted by Jeff

President Barack Obama refuses to release mid year budget numbers on the traditional reporting date. He has put this off until Congress goes into recess for the summer. He does so because he wants both houses of Congress to pass expensive legislation and then adjourn for their August break without the public knowing how poorly Presbud2009 is currently performing.

The Associated Press does a sound job on reporting the facts surrounding the perfidy. The Most Open Regime, er, umm, I mean Administration in US History has been far more parsimonious with data than it has with expenditures.

The administration’s annual midsummer budget update is sure to show higher deficits and unemployment and slower growth than projected in President Barack Obama’s budget in February and update in May, and that could complicate his efforts to get his signature health care and global-warming proposals through Congress.

The release of the update - usually scheduled for mid-July - has been put off until the middle of next month, giving rise to speculation the White House is delaying the bad news at least until Congress leaves town on its August 7 summer recess.

When George Orwell’s dystopian masterpiece

1984

envisioned Great Britain under fascism, he had them chant a satirical slogan “Ignorance is Strength!” Orwell meant to get the reader to realize this was an awful thing. President Barack Obama has thought outside the box of common decency on this one. He sees a feature where Orwell saw a bug.

With the CBO low-balling the cost (PDF) of President Obama’s signature healthcare reform at $1Tr over the next decade, poor budgetary execution would represent an inconvenient truth. So inconvenient, that it reminds me of what happened when The Tampa Bay Buccaneers first joined the NFL.

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Special thanks to Kevin Hassett who inspired this cartoon from his article that can be seen here.

We have reached the moment I knew was coming.  I said it when Strickland pulled his flip-flop on slots:

I have a suspicion this is a setup.  There will be a battle over gambling and when it doesn’t work, the response will be we have to raise taxes.  This is a last ditch effort to avoid tax increases.  If Ted Strickland was a leader he would stick to his principles and both oppose increased gambling and hold the line against taxes.

And the Governor has just made his first move in this little game:

Senate President Bill M. Harris, R-Ashland, has said he is OK with Strickland implementing slots on his own, but he has refused to support a legislative vote. A week’s worth of meetings have not brought the two sides closer together, so Strickland has tossed the ball into Harris’ court.

“I believe that he and the Senate Majority have an obligation to say what taxes they would increase or what services they would further reduce in order to balance the budget,” Strickland said in a statement.

“I look forward to hearing from the Senate what other source of revenue, or what additional cuts, they will suggest in the three remaining days of the legislative conference committee. I continue to be available around the clock and will remain accessible to the legislative leadership.”

See how that works?  Propose something that you know full well is opposed by the legislature and the public (and yourself it until just a minute ago) and then act disappointed when they don’t go along.

Next step is blaming the GOP.  If they do the stupid thing and raise taxes you know the base will be angry and the message of the party will be blurred. If they propose the cuts then you can blame them for the angry constituents of whatever programs get cut.

Strickland filled the budget with gambling money because he didn’t want to be on the hook for those cuts and he is trying to maneuver some of the blame on to the plate of Bill Harris and Republicans.

And you know what they should do?  They should suck it up and cut. The immediate backlash may seem harsh but in the long run a GOP who raises taxes is not going to be in the majority.  2010 is a ways off.  Do what you know is right and keep your foundational prerogatives straight.

Ohio got in this very position by refusing to make the hard choices; by being risk averse and satisfied with the status quo of high taxes and bloated government (and when they did cut taxes they story line of Taft incompetence and “corruption” was already in place and the base was turned off).  You have a chance to change that by sticking to your guns and then running on making the tough choices and moving the state forward on your basic principles: low taxes, effective government, and economic growth based on free market ideas not government programs.

This may seem like a giant game of chicken over the future of the state.  So be it. Embrace it.  Make Strickland blink  It is not only the right thing to do for Ohio, and for the future of your party, but it is the best gift you can give GOP candidates for office in 2010.

Yesterday California voted on a slate of budget measures put forth by tax-and-spend Democrats. Three of them were outright terrible for the state, two were playing pure budgetary shell games, and one was a meaningless propaganda exercise meant to bolster the rest.

Proposition 1F, the propaganda exercise that attempts to deny pay raises for state elected officials when the budget is in deficit, passed and did so overwhelmingly: 74% Yes, 26% No. The rest? Not so much. They all failed with the Nos getting anywhere from 63% to 66% of the vote!

Where do we go from here? I’ll quote from my piece yesterday discussing Chuck DeVore’s analysis of the issue:

Today he pointed out that we face about a 23 billion dollar deficit on an approximately 90 billion dollar general fund.

….Should 1A fail, DeVore thinks we’ll face one of two actions by the Democrats. One option would be to cut popular government programs like police, fire, medical, and schools, hoping to burn down the state and blame it on Republicans. The other would be to pass an illegal tax increase with only a simple majority instead of the Constitutionally-required two-thirds majority. Either option will devastate our already-lagging state economy. The Assemblyman thinks we’ll be the second-last state to recover from this economic slowdown (I assume the last being Michigan under its equally-horrible Democrat Governor Granholm).

So we won, but now the real fight begins. It’s a deathmatch for the California economy, and much may hinge on what side Governor Schwarzenegger chooses to join for it. Will he join the tax hikers or the spending cutters?

Time will tell.

Did you know that unless we pass Replacement Governor Pat Quinn’s union appeasing, pension stuffing budget, Illinois prison doors will be opened for a flood of dangerous criminals to walk free? Did you know that the old and infirm will be left to die in the streets? Did you know that all our teachers will be sent home never to teach again? The busses will stop, health care will end, local governments will lose state aid, locusts will descend from the skies, we will find our skin erupting in boils and disease will plague the state? Did you know it’s doomsday?

Well if you didn’t, Replacement Governor Quinn has been so kind as to have informed us all of the pending doom to the state of Illinois unless he gets his way. Quinn issued his “doomsday budget” warning at an address made yesterday at Chicago’s City Club, a downtown civic organization popular as a platform for city and state politicians to issue political pronouncements. Sadly, the Replacement Governor’s doomsaying is no different than the previous criminal governor we had that did the same thing. It is little else but scare tactics designed to force the legislature to bend to his will.

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Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, Republican of Irvine, is running for Senate in the hopes of challenging and defeating Senator Barbara Boxer (Dunce-California) in November 2010. He’s gotten off to an early start, but he needs it, because he’s definitely an underdog. California has not elected a Republican Senator since Pete Wilson in 1986, nor have we elected a pro-life politician to a statewide office since Attorney General Dan Lungren won in 1994, and before that the re-election of Governor George Deukmejian in 1986. It’s been a long time.

Chuck DeVore has a plan, though. During a conference call today with online activists and ‘bloggers,’ which your reporter was able to listen in on, he said that he’s consciously attempting to mimic the successful strategies followed by Barack Obama in his underdog victory over Hillary Clinton last year. He intends to use the Internet and the grass roots to get more done than Republicans in his position have in the past.

He’s ready on the issues, too, and not just the tools of politics.

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(Via Drudge) 17 billion. Off of a 3.4 trillion dollar budget.
How quaint.

May 7 (Bloomberg) — President Barack Obama is seeking $81 billion more in spending on domestic initiatives in his record $3.55 trillion budget plan while calling on Congress to trim $17 billion worth of programs, including tax breaks for the oil and gas industries.

[snip]

Unlike past years, the administration won’t release until May 11 its “analytical perspectives” or “historic tables” that help explain its spending decisions and put them in context. Obama repeated his pledge to cut the deficit in half by the end of his term in 2012.

I know that this is going to sound like a radical notion, Mr. President: but maybe if you stopped letting your fellow-Democrats swill at the trough…

(Heritage)

…you’d stop seeing this graphic that keeps mocking your pose of being for fiscal responsibility?

Just a thought.

Moe Lane

*Number taken from AoSHQ.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

The California Constitution requires that our state government’s budget be balanced every year. Having a RiNO* in the Governor’s chair and Democrats controlling the entire legislature make that a fantasy though. They spend, and spend, and when tax revenues fall, they cry about Republican failures to approve tax increases.

Thanks to the Governor and a few other turncoats, they got a sales tax increase this year, but even that’s not enough to balance the budget. So now the Democrats turn to the voters to approve of a massive shell game that will let them tax and spend without consequence. I ask Red State readers to join me in opposing the entire slate, forcing us to live within our means, and giving our Republicans in Sacramento support in fighting runaway spending.

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There President Obama goes yet again — saying one thing while doing the opposite.

After prodding by the White House, Congressional Democrats near a budget deal so Obama can have his spend too much, tax too much, borrow too much budget in place within his first 100 days.

President Obama’s budget includes a $1.75 trillion deficit so he can spend nearly $4 trillion in fiscal year 2010. The Congressional Budget Office predicts will Obama’s budget result in deficits of $9.3 trillion over ten years — $2.3 trillion more than the deficit estimated by the White House. And then, in this week’s Obama propaganda video, he has the audacity to call for fiscal discipline. Is he serious?

“We cannot sustain deficits that mortgage our children’s future, nor tolerate wasteful inefficiency.”

Too bad Obama doesn’t practice what he preaches.

When Barack Obama released, his budget, he claimed that it didn’t contain “gimmicks” and that he cost of the budget was so high because he fully funded Iraq and Afghanistan in the budget and didn’t use gimmicks. Jackie Calmes of the New York Times swallowed the line so completely that she called her story “Obama bans gimmicks, deficits will rise”. (Never mind that the ever skeptical Slate Magazine had a different view) Her second paragraph of her story said:

The new accounting involves spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Medicare reimbursements to physicians and the cost of disaster responses.

Yet, just a little over a month later, … Barack Obama is asking for more money:

Washington, DC — President Obama today submitted to the Congress a Fiscal Year (FY) 2009 supplemental appropriations request totaling $83.4 billion to fund ongoing military, diplomatic, and intelligence operations.

An overwhelming amount of this money — nearly 95 percent — is to move forward with the President’s agenda of ending the war in Iraq responsibly and his new strategy of refocusing the fight against al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

These are things that Obama campaigned on since 2007. But he didn’t plan for them in his budget. His budget assumed that the US would break its agreement with Iraq to pull out (decided before the election), according to Slate:

In this manner, the Obama administration pretends that some of the Bush tax cuts are going to affect the budget years after they are set to expire. It also assumes higher Medicare physician payments than projected under current law requirements. The same is true with the accounting for the Iraq war. The baseline assumes the war will be funded at high levels for the next 10 years, even though Obama is planning to bring 100,000 troops home in the next 19 months.

You would think that would save money. But no. Obama needs more. His budget not only had gimmicks. it just had lies.

On April 2nd, Speaker Nancy Pelosi succeeded in passing her federal budget that outlines more than 3.5 trillion dollars in spending for fiscal year 2010. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected a 1.8 trillion dollar deficit for the current fiscal year (FY2009), and that projection does not include the stimulus bill that will cost Americans more than one trillion dollars, which was signed into law by the President on February 1st. As of April 7, 2009, the U.S. national debt stands at more than eleven trillion dollars (you can view the latest numbers here).


The sheer magnitude of Speaker Pelosi’s spending spree is mind boggling. Most of us do not use the number 1,000,000,000,000 in our daily lives, so it is difficult to attach tangible value to the figure. However, as Congress and the Administration continues spending your tax dollars trillions of dollars at a time, it is worthwhile to have a discussion about what these numbers really mean.

One of the simplest ways to get an idea of one trillion dollars is to consider the amount in terms of the passage of time. One million seconds is equal to roughly eleven days and twelve hours, and one billion seconds is thirty-two years. One trillion seconds equals thirty-two thousand years.

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That’s the word that the Washington Post used, so don’t blame me (H/T: Glenn Reynolds):

Obama’s Machine Sputters in Effort to Push Budget
Grass-Roots Campaign Has Little Effect

When his post-campaign organization was unveiled in January, Barack Obama vowed that the 13 million-strong grass-roots network built during his presidential campaign would play a “crucial role” in enacting his agenda from the White House.

But in its first big test, the group dubbed Organizing for America (OFA) had little obvious impact on the debate over President Obama’s budget, which passed Congress on Thursday with no Republican support and a splintering of votes among conservative Democrats. The capstone of the campaign was the delivery of 214,000 signatures to Capitol Hill, which swayed few, if any, members of Congress, according to legislative aides from both parties.

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I’ve received word that the Senate passed our current budget monstrosity 55-43.  No Republican defections: we picked up Bayh and Nelson of Florida Nebraska [my bad!].  Earlier, the House version passed 233/196 with no Republicans voting for it, 20 Democrats voting against it, with supposed fiscal conservatives (and European junketeers) Charlie Melancon (LA-03) and Bart Gordon (TN-06) singled out for special ridicule as being part of the group of Blue Dogs that signed off on a 3.6 trillion dollar budget.  In short, the GOP Held The Line again.

This, by the way, despite a whopping 214,000 signatures gathered by the Democrats in support of the budget: as the Washington Post rather gleefully noted [H/T: Instapundit], the stenographers over at CNN and Huffington Post duly wrote down the 642K number quoted without asking how many duplicates. It turns out that they counted each signature three times.

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George Soros, MoveOn.org, the SEIU, the unions, and Barack Obama’s other supporters are pouring millions into the effort to put pressure on swing Democrats to support the Obama budget. Apparently their money is being wasted:

Aides to moderate Senate and House Democrats being targeted by ads and e-mail campaigns said their offices have fielded a relatively light volume of telephone calls, especially in comparison to the crushing response to debate on the economic stimulus package earlier this year.

The office of one Democratic senator targeted by several pro-budget media campaigns reported about 2,600 calls last week about the budget, a mere fraction of the amount of feedback generated by the stimulus debate…

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Well, that may be unfair: as Andrew Malcolm notes, if Obama hadn’t spent the last month trying to convince people that his 3.6 trillion dollar budget was a good idea it might have slipped even further than the recent Gallup poll shows that it has. Which means that he’s saved or created - what? Five, six points on the polls?

Looking at the poll itself, it’s interesting to see how an outside-the-margin of error result can be framed as ‘holding steady.’ 46/26/30 for/against/don’t know enough last month versus 39/27/33 this month, and support for it has slipped down the Republican/Democratic/Independent line. Although possibly the most embarrassing part of this whole thing for the administration is that the aforementioned media blitz - personal, online, televised, radioed, phone called, and for all I know, messenger pigeoned - didn’t have a better than a margin-of-error effect on the American public’s awareness of the issue. Admittedly, they were already pretty aware, but the Obama administration was looking for a win here, not a no-decision.

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These are very difficult times in the life of our nation.

I’ve seen the impact of this recession firsthand, meeting with farmers and small business owners throughout my district. They are practicing the kind of fiscal restraint necessary to get through these difficult times. And they want Washington to do the same.

Americans are working hard to preserve a secure and prosperous future, but the President’s budget would add nearly $1 trillion to the national debt every year for the next 10 years—for a total of $9.3 trillion. Instead of controlling spending, this Administration seems intent on spending money we don’t have and piling massive debt on our children and grandchildren.

Americans deserve better. That is why House Republicans laid out our blueprint yesterday for economic recovery that curbs spending, creates jobs, lowers taxes, controls debt and is built on principles of growth.

The “Republican Road to Recovery ” is a blueprint for a substantive, comprehensive budget alternative that will be introduced on the floor of the House of Representatives next week. The Republican budget will be built on the values Americans nationwide are practicing every day.

As a substantive debate about how to get our economy growing again begins to unfold, Republicans will continue to offer better solutions that are built on the time-honored principles of fiscal responsibility and growth. Let the debate begin.