Reality Not in Obama's $4 Trillion Budget

The best news an ailing country has received in weeks was Obama’s announcement that the age of “mindless austerity” is over. And it came not a moment too soon.

It will be be such a relief to make a left turn in the Washington, D.C. metro area without cautiously edging your car past a herd of miserable wretches, huddled on the median, holding signs that read, “Federal Employee, Please Help.” Although it will be more difficult to know when you’re the CIA because signs there were redacted " . . . Please Help.”

Certainly the end of  mindless austerity is a boon for columnists given its rich capacity for hyperbole and ridicule. The only true austerity in the past few years took place in the private sector. That was caused by foolish government policies. Austerity for the rational means cutting back, trying to pay down debt ,and saving money.

It’s hard to know what the term means for Obama.  I’m reminded of a snipe hunt the left conducted in connection with the Reagan administration. When it was announced that Reagan was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease a great deal of pointless effort was expended trying to find the exact date when his decision making was first affected by the disease.

Was it when Reagan missed the beginning of the Iran–Contra scandal? Adopted supply–side economics? Accepted the role in “Bedtime for Bozo?”

Now that Obama is confidently announcing the end of imaginary calamities, I think it’s only fair conservatives look for the date in the Obama administration when The One cut the last tether to reality. When did Obama bid farewell to mental health and enter the bunker, a rare environment where Obamacare saves money, the stimulus creates jobs and welfare doesn’t create dependency?

Everyone has known that Obama hears voices completely detached from reality, but we just assumed it was Valerie Jarrett. Obama’s claim of fiscal prudence in regard to his $4 trillion budget is certainly cause to question his stability. He terms the budget “fiscally responsible” describing an almost half trillion dollar deficit as “sustainable.”

More than anything, I’m reminded of the woman who angrily told her bank she couldn’t be overdrawn because she still had checks. Specifically the deficit in 2016 would be $474 billion, which is $109 billion less than last year’s but still more than Russia’s entire budget for 2011, the latest year for which we have figures. The Washington Post optimistically terms this incredible level of spenditude a favorable development stabilizing the deficit at 2.5 percent.

This is termed good news because the 2.5 percent is in line with the average deficit big government spenders have run up over the decades. This cheery news ignores the gigantic debt Obama racked up during his first six years. It’s the equivalent of a boxing manager telling a fighter who has been pounded for the first 10 rounds that his performance is improving, because in the last round he only absorbed 2.5 head shots, ignoring the fact the damage, like the deficit, is cumulative.

The country is paying in interest on all the debt, not just last year’s sustainable debt.
The Wall Street Journal reports Uncle Sam paid a bit over $200 billion in interest last year. That figure is not static. The Journal predicts it will continue to rise until in 2021, “the government will be spending more on interest than on all national defense. And one year later, interest costs will exceed non-defense discretionary spending — essentially every other domestic and international government program funded annually through congressional appropriations.”

Furthermore, how does one describe a government that is setting monthly and yearly records for revenue collected as austere?

According to CNS News, “The $3.176 trillion in tax revenues the White House estimates the federal government will bring in this year is a record in both current and inflation-adjusted dollars.”

What year might you ask held the previous record? Why it was last year, the one characterized by all that mindless austerity. If you don’t believe me, ask Tom Brady about tax collection vacuuming up your money.

When he finished winning the Super Bowl Brady wasn’t met by the Disney man with tickets to the Measles Kingdom, instead he got hit with a tax bill for $60,500. The IRS thinks he’s an MVP, too.

Two consecutive record–setting years for tax collection, yet Obama still managed to add another trillion dollars to the debt. It bears repeating that the U.S. doesn’t have a revenue problem, it has a spending problem.

That’s why even conservatives like me are worried about the president’s connection with reality. It may be time to check the passenger manifest to see if Obama was on that helicopter with Brian Williams.