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Politics : Sioux Nation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: altair19 who wrote (161828)	2/26/2009 9:54:14 PM
From: koan	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 362428

Between me, you, Rat and Sioux Pal, I think we can take them-lol.

To: altair19 who wrote (161828)	2/26/2009 11:48:10 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 362428

Reading the Budget: What the Numbers Mean opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com By Eric Etheridge February 26, 2009, 4:05 pm President Obama released his budget proposal this morning. The plan is available online in its entirety, and Peter Orszag publishes his first blog post as head of OMB, in which he says he’s “committed to ensuring that OMB’s work is accessible.” As for the budget, let’s let The Economist provide the basics: Details on president Barack Obama’s first budget are out today, and there is no shortage of eye-popping numbers. Total budgeted spending in fiscal 2009 (which began five months ago) will reach nearly $4 trillion, or nearly 30% of American GDP. The deficit for the year is expected to be about $1.75 trillion. As budgeted, the deficit will decline to just over $1.1 trillion in fiscal 2010, and to about $500 billion by the end of Mr Obama’s first term—close to, but still above, last year’s deficit of $459 billion. . . . [T]he budget is one of the most ambitious in recent history, both for the provisions addressing the immediate crisis and the committment to long-term priorities. At Portfolio, Felix Salmon tries to take in a deficit of $1.75 trillion: I was worried about Barack Obama’s plans to cut the budget deficit in half by the end of his first term: I thought they implied undue optimism about the economic future of this country. As it turns out, they just implied an almost unimaginably-large deficit at the beginning of his first term: $1.75 trillion. I should hope that’s cut in half by 2013. If it isn’t, then no politician will be able to save us. According to the Real Time Economics blog at the Wall Street Journal, “Rosy’s back”: The famed Rosy Scenario, coined in the early days of the Reagan White House when large tax cuts and higher defense spending were assumed to be paid for in part by strong economic growth, is a cornerstone of the Obama administration’s first multiyear budget. After contracting at a 1.2% rate in 2009, a more modest drop than the Congressional Budget Office and Blue Chip Consensus forecasts assume, the White House sees growth domestic product growth snapping back by 3.2% next year and then 4% or higher the three years after that. The last time the economy preformed that well was the New Economy heyday of the late 1990s. Ezra Klein at Tapped says the news is in the education numbers: “[T]he big surprise is the size and seriousness of the commitment to education. Health wonks expected their portion of the budget. The emphasis on energy isn’t a surprise — more a return to the priorities that Obama was naming in the campaign. But according to folks in the educational community, even they didn’t anticipate such aggressive action on their issues. Dana Goldstein at Tapped has highlights of the education section, including Obama’s push for national testing standards and his charter school stradddle. John Cole at Balloon Juice says the “bitterest fighting . . will not be over health care, but cap and trade (even though the two are connected, as one is allegedly paying for the other).” I just sense the public has shifted on health care, and the old forces that aligned to fight it back in the Clinton years are exhausted and spent, while the public mood (in part because no one has job security anymore, and in part because the cost of health care keeps jacking up) has changed. Jay Yarrow at Clusterstock says one of the biggest risks is the OMB assumption that a cap-and-trade system will soon generate billions annually for the government: While that sounds all well and good, cap and trade is no done deal. This is an issue that divides Senators along regional lines, making it tougher for any party to get legislation approved. Additionally, there are still technical hurdles to clear, like how to measure the carbon emissions and where (or if) to sell carbon credits and at what price. Regardless of these problems, the administration clearly thinks it’s going to get cap and trade legislation passed soon. For the sake of its budget, it better be right.