Since Next Year’s An Election Year Obama’s Suddenly All About Deficit Reduction
Funny how that works, no? It’s not really about fiscal responsibility. It’s about giving his fellow liberals some political cover in what’s shaping up to be a tough election year.
President Barack Obama plans to announce in next year’s State of the Union address that he wants to focus extensively on cutting the federal deficit in 2010 – and will downplay other new domestic spending beyond jobs programs, according to top aides involved in the planning.
The president’s plan, which the officials said was under discussion before this month’s Democratic election setbacks, represents both a practical and a political calculation by this White House.
On the practical side, Obama has spent more money on new programs in nine months than Bill Clinton did in eight years, pushing the annual deficit to $1.4 trillion. This leaves little room for big spending initiatives.
On the political side, Obama can help moderate Democrats avoid some tough votes in an election year and, perhaps more importantly, calm the nerves of independent voters who are voicing big concerns with the big spending and deficits.
So given the spending binge Obamas been on in his first year in office, and given the spending binge Democrats have been on since 2006, are we really going to believe that they’ve turned over a new leaf and are now going to balance the budget?
And just how are they going to balance the budget? Are they going to cut some of the fat out of government that so desperately needs to be cut? Or, more likely, are they going to take more money out of our economy with higher taxes?
Obama is thinking of paying some of the deficit down with TARP money, but in that we’re talking about at most a couple of hundred billion. Not exactly chump change, but a drop in the bucket compared to our overall deficit and debt problems.
If Obama were serious about reducing deficits and stopping our national debt bleeding he’d be talking about spending cuts Because when it comes to taxes our economy is tapped out. And our debt and deficit problems are the result of too little taxation. They’re the result of too much spending.
