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President Obama has talked about tough choices and balanced approaches in his speeches about the country's fiscal challenges, but his budgets have never lived up to the hype. His latest budget proposal is no different. The savings are mostly bogus -- he includes $2 trillion in savings from the debt deal and makes dubious assumptions about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan -- and no major structural changes to entitlements are even contemplated.

Now, these presidential budgets aren't even worth the paper they are printed on. Obama's first budget projected a $581 billion deficit for this year; we are actually $1.33 trillion in the red. But this budget barely touches Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid. It leaves most of the Bush tax cuts intact, with some populist tax increases on investment for high income earners. The "Buffett rule" won't be sufficient to pay for our current spending commitments.

Here's the bottom line: the president's $3.8 trillion in spending for the next fiscal year is actually $230 billion above the Congressional Budget Office's most recent baseline. Spending over the next decade is $2.7 trillion higher than the CBO baseline. The $6.7 trillion in deficits over that period is more than double the CBO's estimates. The national debt will also be nearly $4 trillion higher in 2022 under Obama's budget than the CBO projects.

And all this is despite the fact that Obama relies on much more optimistic economic growth assumptions than the CBO. Obama also jacks up the dividends tax rate from 15 percent to 43.4 percent next year. Capital gains taxes will rise from 15 percent to 23.8 percent. The effective tax rates will be even higher. More taxes, more spending, more borrowing, and more politics.

View all comments (5) | Leave a comment

Bill| 2.13.12 @ 1:27PM

It's just another gimmick, adding more debt, more spending, more borrowing, more money for his liberal base: SEIU, ACORN, NAACP, and DNC.
Taxpayers are screwed!

Floyd Looney| 2.13.12 @ 3:06PM

Obama still is nothing but a lying communist. Fake savings match the fake unemployment rate

WB| 2.13.12 @ 3:42PM

Of course Hopeychange is lying ... his lips are moving, aren't they?

fckewe| 2.14.12 @ 12:25AM

Let's go back to pre Reagan tax rates until America is in the BLACK again. Then you can have your $0 deficit joy all over again. If you continue with the RED party ignorance of subsidies for the most profitable businesses, 13% taxes for the richest of Americans (I paid 14.2% @ $58,600 for 2011) endless deductions and credits for business NEEDS like stripers and $16,000 and hour bonuses for the top .001% of corporate employees, then you spit in the face of the 99.999% of the workers by claiming that they do NOT deserve the Social Security they have invested in Faithfully for their entire working lives... Then I guess you will just have to whimper quietly in the corner of American politics until the Iraq war debt is paid off. HALF the deficit is war costs and tax cuts for the few and the interest on the borrowed money the RED party obligated this Nation to with the 1% prime rate for 4 years and the blind oversight of Wall Street and the financial industry.

fckewe| 2.14.12 @ 12:26AM

Bill, how much did you pay in taxes?

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More Blog Posts by W. James Antle, III

http://spectator.org/blog/2012/02/13/the-latest-obama-budget

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