Wednesday, 27 January 2010 17:24
President Obama is expected to announce a spending "freeze" at tonight's State of the Union address. What he will not tell us is that this "freeze" only applies to 17% of the national budget and only after a 22% spending increase to that portion of the budget over the last 2 years. If this is Obama's attempt to move to the middle, it is a small first step indeed.
There are some in the "take what you can get camp" that will applaud the President's gesture. I find the move an insult to our intelligence. There remains north of $500 billion of unspent stimulus funds and another $200 billion of repaid TARP funds that are presently destined to be recycled by the President. If the President were serious about the deficit and curbing expenditures, why not announce an immediate paydown of the national debt by $700 billion?
The Wall Street Journal reports, based on figures from the CBO, that "the federal government will borrow an estimated $3.7 trillion over the first three years of the Obama Presidency, more than the entire accumulated national debt for the first 225 years of U.S. history. By 2019, the interest payments on this debt will be larger than the budget for education, roads and all other nondefense discretionary spending."
I am reminded of my "conversation" (see yesterday's post "Logic from the Left") with the protester who had difficulty with the question of how to pay for Obama's health care reform. Remember, the above deficit figures do not include any increase that is likely to result from nationalized health care. I wonder if our protester from yesterday is aware of these numbers and aware that spending on important programs such as education will suffer at the expense of debt service. Not very likely.