Obama releases 2013 budget

Same old Obama smoke-and-mirrors

If there was ever any doubt as to the key issue in the next election, Mr. Obama’s new budget, released today, highlights where the two sides stand. Obama’s $3.8 trillion budget for 2013 takes the tax-and-spend penchant of the left-wing to a new level not by reducing spending, but by shifting the tax burden to the group they call “wealthy” Americans. Since these nasty rich folks already pay the lion’s share of taxes the only shifting going on is more slight-of-hand by the Democrats.

Obama forecasts his budget will result in a $4 trillion reduction in the deficit over the next decade; however the majority of supposed reduction comes from not spending what “might” have been spent. Mr. Obama’s deficit reduction estimate is based on savings on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Just imagine how much money you could save by not buying that Ferrari you were dreaming about.

Obama’s 2013 budget received negative reviews by Republicans in both houses of Congress setting up a major budget battle in the 2012 Presidential election campaign.

Mr. Obama said that the GOP accusations of class warfare were false, “This is not about class warfare. This is about the nation’s welfare.”

Once again Mr. Obama trotted out the tired old message of “balanced approach” and “shared responsibility,” never mentioning that nearly half of all Americans are not paying anything.  Guess zero is considered a fair share for some.

“This is about making fair choices that benefit not just the people who have done fantastically well over the last few decades but that also benefit the middle class, those fighting to get into the middle class and the economy as a whole,” Obama said.

In an appearance at a Washington Area community college Obama announced an $8 billion proposal aimed at specialized training programs at the nation’s community colleges focusing on the jobs of the future. Those must the type of jobs that used to be at Solyndra.

While Obama promised in 2009 to cut in half by the end of his first term, the 2013 budget deficit is far in excess of where it stood when he took office. Once again failing to address the key ingredient to the deficit, social programs, Mr. Obama took the politically cowardly approach of pointing fingers at those who have been successful.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said, “This isn’t really a budget at all. It’s a campaign document. The president is shirking his responsibility to lead and using this budget to divide.”

Deficit hawk Paul Ryan (R-WI) is working to formulate an alternative to Obama’s budget which is expected to be quite similar to the budget passed by the House last year and never came up for a vote in the Senate.

“We do not intend on backing off on anything,” Ryan said in an interview. “We intend on giving the country an alternative and a solution to our biggest problems.”

The budget debate will be a major issue in the upcoming presidential and congressional elections. Democrats will be heavily using three terms: fair, balanced and shared.

Obama’s budget forecasts a deficit for the current year of $1.33 trillion, scoring the president the honor of a perfect four-year record of annual deficits in excess of $1 trillion; something never accomplished by any other president in our history. The Obama budget stays within the caps on annual appropriations approved in the August budget deal, purportedly saving $1 trillion over the next decade, but only achieves debt reductions through higher taxes and allowing the Bush-era tax cuts to expire at the end of this year for families making $250,000 or more per year.

Mr. Obama’s budget also proposes eliminating tax deductions the wealthy receive and imposes the Buffett Rule insuring that households making more than $1 million annually pay at least 30 percent of their income in taxes.

While Mr. Obama may not call it “class warfare,” it would seem that only one class is being targeted. Nothing in the president’s budget addresses the need for a minimum tax for all wage-earning Americans. Nothing in either the president’s rhetoric or budget suggests increasing income tax for anyone other than the evil rich.  Once against the president has shied away from his responsibility to lead by neglecting to address the bulk of the deficit and debt issue: the entitlement programs.

In addition to the rich Mr. Obama imposes a new $61 billion tax on big banks aimed at recovering the costs of the financial bailout and providing money to help homeowners facing foreclosure. Obama also projects to net $41 billion over 10 years by eliminating tax breaks and subsidies for oil, gas and coal companies; but the number one source of income in the president’s budget is something that doesn’t even exist: saving money by not waging war. What will Mr. Obama do should things go bad in Iran?

For the first time the president has put into his budget the elimination of Saturday mail delivery and suggests additional savings from the Postal Service, while that organization is already suffering from the inability to fund its operations.

Mr. Obama isn’t only looking for savings, he’s also attempting to mask another stimulus package in his budget by proposing things such as increased spending on transportation projects, including $476 billion to expand inner-city rail services. Immediate “investments” include spending $50 billion on transportation, $30 billion to modernize schools and $30 billion to aid states in hiring public employees.

The Obama budget seeks $360 billion in savings in Medicare and Medicaid primarily through reduced payments to health care providers which will likely cause many doctors to abandon providing services to the elderly and poor.

Obama Chief-of-Staff misleads public

White House Chief-of-Staff Jack Lew went on the Sunday programs this week to blame the Republicans in the Senate for the failure of the Senate to pass a budget in more than one thousand days, claiming that, “You can’t pass a budget in the Senate of the United States without 60 votes and you can’t get 60 votes without bipartisan support.” Mr. Lew’s statement is an absolute falsehood. While one might say that Mr. Lew misspoke, he made the same statement on several shows and Mr. Lew has twice been the White House Budget Director. Jack Lew surely knows that it only takes a majority, 51 votes, to pass appropriations in the Senate and the Democrats have held more than the needed majority for Mr. Obama’s entire term. Did a representative of the president lie to the American public? You decide. The Obama White House is all about blaming Republicans for their failures and not a single person in the press challenged Mr. Lew on his misleading statement.

It’s not surprising that what we’re seeing from Mr. Obama is much of the same-old-same-old phantom spending restraints paired up with political payoffs at taxpayer expense. Nothing in Mr. Obama’s budget addresses the number one issue the country is facing today: our annual deficit is in excess of our Gross National Product (GDP) and our annual debt service (the interest we pay on the debt,) is over $1 trillion dollars. The nation’s debt at the end of the Mr. Obama’s 10-year budget period will grow from the current $15.5 trillion to more than $22 trillion. We simply cannot survive more of the same and that’s all we’ll see while Obama remains in office.