The Obama administration's fiscal mismanagement is a key
component of the recklessness that we [at Power Line] have
sought to highlight here. John's column brings much-needed
attention to Friday's surprise.
BAM'S $2 TRILLION FRIDAY SURPRISE
By JOHN HINDERAKER
NY Post
THE Obama administration did it again last week -- getting bad news out on a Friday evening to minimize press coverage. Within hours after President Obama left Washington for his vacation on Martha's Vineyard, the Office of Management and Budget leaked word that, sometime this week, it will revise its projection of the federal budget deficit over the next 10 years from $7 trillion to $9 trillion.
That $2 trillion upward revision will put the White House's numbers in line with the $9.1 trillion deficit that the Congressional Budget Office projected in June. Back then, the administration criticized CBO's analysis; now it's admitting that CBO was right after all. (Of course, CBO might yet revise its projection upward even more, in light of current economic realities.)
Even in an era when previously unheard-of amounts of money are tossed around in Washington with abandon, the administration's admission that its plans will put the nation another $2 trillion deeper in debt sent tremors through the capital.
Just a year ago, a claim that a politician's programs would double the national debt would have been an attack by his opponent. But under Obama, doubling the national debt has become a promise.
Worse, nearly everyone believes that the administration's projections are still too optimistic. They assume rates of economic growth that are nowhere in prospect and project that the federal government will -- somehow -- contain spending on health care even as it takes on ever-expanding responsibility for that sector and adds millions to the Medicaid rolls.
Fiscal bad news seems destined to continue. The New York Times reported Monday that in 2009 the federal government will auction off $8 trillion in Treasury securities -- up from $5.5 trillion in 2008 -- an average of $253,000 per second. And OMB now projects federal debt held by the public to skyrocket past 60 percent of gross domestic product -- a level last reached during World War II.
Does the rest of the world (principally China) have an unlimited appetite for American debt? The Obama administration intends to find out.
As summer draws to a close, it is easy to sympathize with Obama's desire to seek refuge at the beach. His administration's triumphant early days are a distant memory as he sinks in the polls. Among likely voters, those who "strongly disapprove" of the president now represent a plurality of around 40 percent.
It is much too early to say that the administration's stumbles on the budget, cap and trade and health-care "reform" represent the president's Waterloo. After all, presidents, unlike usurping emperors, get four-year terms. What does seem clear, however, is that the administration's "never let a crisis go to waste" strategy is dead.
President Obama tried to use an undoubted economic crisis as a pretext to reward the Democratic Party's constituencies and enact a broad range of liberal measures that have long been on the left's wish list. The result is a sea of red ink that has appalled most voters. Those who have turned out for tea parties and town halls, far from being "un-American," as some Democrats absurdly charge, are in fact the vocal tip of a very large iceberg.
Democrats, therefore, will reassemble in Washington in the fall with diminished expectations, recognizing that they can enact only as much liberalism as voters are willing to pay for -- or, more accurately, commit their children and grandchildren to paying for.
John Hinderaker writes for the Web site Power Line.
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