Monday, May 11, 2009

Obama's Budget "Cuts"

Let’s say I make $50K/year, and I lay out a budget for next year that spends, let’s say, $50 Million. Then I trim $5K from that proposed spending. Can I claim to be a budget cutter?

According to the hardly conservative New York Times on Monday May 11th, the president’s estimated budget deficit for fiscal 2010 is $1.26 trillion, up from a prior estimate of $1.17 trillion. Just the upward revision is nearly five times the $17 Billion of “cuts” referred to in your editorial. Please explain for me how this can in any comprehensible way be defined as a “budget cut”.

The difference between my personal analogy and what the government is doing is the fact that I have limited ability to “enhance my revenues”. I can’t go into the basement and print money, and I can’t get into my neighbor’s revenues because I know better how to spend his money than he does.

And before you quote the administration talking points blaming the past administration and referring to the horrible mess they “inherited”, remember two things. It occurs to me that they ran long and hard for that privilege, and Article One, Sections Seven and Eight of the Constitution – to the degree that they still pay any attention to it – lay all fiscal power on the doorstep of the Congress, not the White House.

No comments:

Post a Comment