PrintIs Obama's budget DOA on The Hill?
Florida senate candidate Marco Rubio writing in NRO:
The sheer numbers in the president's latest spending plan are jaw-dropping: a $1.6 trillion deficit this year, $1.3 trillion next year, and a ten-year deficit outlook of $8.5 trillion. The budget also calls for a permanent expansion of the federal government by 3 percent of GDP; a $2 trillion decades-long tax increase on every single American under the auspices of health-care reform and cap-and-trade energy policies; deficits of more than $1 trillion until 2020; and a doubling of the publicly held national debt to more than $18 trillion.
This budget is so bad even many Democrats can't stomach it. And as Jen Rubin writes at Commentary , Rubio's suggestion that the entire budget be tossed so that congress can start over may be the result:
His argument is simple: kill it and start over. Or as he puts it: "Those who care about our national security, our standing in the world, and the notion of leaving our children a better country than the one we were blessed to inherit must send a clear and unequivocal message to our leaders in Washington: Defeat the president's budget."In some ways, this is an eerie replay of the debate over health care, but in this case the Democrats don't even momentarily hold the high ground or enjoy the indulgence of the mainstream media. The Obama budget is, however, as Pete Wehner wrote yesterday, symptomatic of the problem facing Democrats: "The president's new budget - which projects a record-breaking, mind-blowing deficit of $1.56 trillion - is political kryptonite for Democrats; it reinforces the worst possible narrative about them (profligate, fiscally reckless, unprepared to govern)." It is, as Pete noted, another "weight around Democrats' ankles."
And it would seem to be smart politics and good policy for Republicans and moderate and conservative Democrats (at least those who aren't willing to be impaled on Nancy Pelosi's vaulting pole) to follow Rubio's lead.
It is impossible to grasp some of the numbers in that budget. The human mind was not meant to compute such large numbers and put them in the context of money. Not only that, when you add the fact that the level of debt is unprecedented, as is the level of spending, you have a recipe for a disaster that would throw the United States economy into a decades long tailspin that would make us little better than a third world banana republic.
"Kill the budget" sounds like a splendid battle cry to me.
Hat Tip: Ed Lasky
