‘Impatient’ on budget? Obama has no idea
I have a feeling this line from President Obama’s press conference Tuesday is one he won’t live down:
“You guys are pretty impatient. If something doesn’t happen today, then the assumption is it isn’t going to happen.”
“Impatient”? You bet we are.
The “you guys” actually referred to the Washington press corps, and the topic was the federal budget — specifically, the reforms for the tax code and entitlements that members of Obama’s bipartisan commission recommended in December. The president mentioned those reforms as steps necessary to “meet our long-term fiscal challenges,” and that’s true as far as it goes.
You have to wonder, though, how patient all Americans are supposed to be about the totality of Obama’s deficits. The budget Obama presented Monday was his third as president — he only gets one more crack at it without winning re-election — and it’s the third time he’s budgeted a deficit of more than $1 trillion.
Asking for more patience from Americans looks even worse now. Within hours of Obama’s press conference, the House Republican leadership said it would include entitlement reform in its budget for the coming fiscal year, 2012.
What kind of reform? We’ll have to wait and see. But the Budget chairman, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, who has already produced one “roadmap” for fixing entitlements and the rest of the federal fisc, is likely to lead the charge.
A reform plan for entitlements that moves the needle even a little bit will be very politically risky. But I think it is smart of Republicans to seize the initiative on this vital issue from a president who talks but doesn’t act about not “kicking the can down the road” any longer — not to mention these lines:
- “Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time.” — Barack Obama, Feb. 5, 2008
- “If you’re headed for a cliff, you have to change direction. That’s what the American people called for in November, and that’s what we intend to deliver.” — Barack Obama, Feb. 5, 2009
- “Since I’m the president and Democrats have controlled the House and the Senate, it’s understandable that people are saying, you know, ‘What have you done?’ ” — Barack Obama, Sept. 10, 2010
Americans know entitlement reform won’t be easy. What people are really getting “impatient” about is Obama’s failure to rein in the record budget deficits he has created in the short term. Twenty months after the technical end of the recession, the president is calling for yet another year of trillion-dollar borrowing.
Even as his administration projects revenues well above the historical average for eight straight years (from fiscal 2014 through fiscal 2021), it anticipates adding $6.2 trillion in new debt during those same years. And almost all of that debt, $5.5 trillion, will be borrowed to make interest payments on the debt he is racking up or will rack up.
As hard as the Bush years were on the nation’s solvency — more than doubling the debt held by the public, from $3.3 trillion to $7.5 trillion — Obama’s own budget estimates show that he would double it again if he were to serve two terms, from $7.5 trillion to $15.1 trillion. (These figures exclude borrowings by one federal agency from another, which would each of them up by trillions more.)
So, when we are borrowing from our children again over the coming decades to pay interest on the money we’ve already borrowed from them, Obama will indeed shoulder a very large share of the blame.
Of course, we could cut spending now and sustain those cuts into the future, so that those interest payments aren’t as great, and so that we don’t have to borrow more money to make them.
Even if we were to agree on Obama’s spending in fiscal 2012 and 2013 and add 3 percent per year after that to account for inflation and population growth, meaning we wouldn’t balance the budget until 2019 — even if we acted that cautiously, we could still reduce federal spending by almost $4 trillion over eight years.
Even then, we’d have a lot to answer to our children for; I’d prefer stronger action. But if Obama were to make even that modest a proposal, a lot of us might be a little less impatient.
– By Kyle Wingfield
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68 comments Add your comment
CJ
February 16th, 2011
1:08 pm
Kyle: “But the Budget chairman, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, who has already produced one “roadmap” for fixing entitlements and the rest of the federal fisc, is likely to lead the charge.”
Ryan’s roadmap doesn’t fix Social Security and Medicare; it eviscerates them.
This “roadmap” cuts taxes on the rich, raises taxes on the poor and middle class through a Value Added Tax, privatizes Social Security, replaces Medicare with vouchers for private insurance with the value of the vouchers not tied to the cost of private health insurance premiums, and doesn’t even purport to balance the budget for decades.
Even RedState.com’s Erick Erickson and National Review’s Ramesh Ponnur dismiss this Roadmap as a serious effort to do something about the deficit. In short, when it comes to balancing the budget, Ryan can’t be taken seriously.
I know I sound like a broken record, but we won’t be able to balance the budget for the long run until we figure out how to control health care inflation.
Andy
February 16th, 2011
1:16 pm
Where is most of that deficit coming from in the next ten years? Medicare and medicaid. What are republicans doing to rein in medical costs? Nothing. They have already repealed health care reform without offering any alternative that would get health care costs under control. They have gutted the community health care system, which delivers medicaid care efficiently. Other than blindly cutting government costs without even bothering to ask themselves whether a program is cost effective or not, they have done nothing. Oh wait, they are very good at making powerpoint presentations.
joe
February 16th, 2011
1:43 pm
Americans are impatient cause we’re tired of seeing out tax dollars allocated to unions, illegal immigrants, foreign dictators, unnecessary projects like high speed rail, etc while our president just continues his spending. He says he wants to cut, but fails when the rubber meets the road. He needs to be voted out, along with other members of congress who follow him around like a new puppy and vote for his spending projects. Grow a pair and vote NO on his spending and entitlements.
Halftrack
February 16th, 2011
1:47 pm
When our economy is unsustainable; it is very apparent that a change must come. The idea is to let the change be on something that we decide on, rather than something that is forced upon us by circumstances or ignorant decision making that didn’t look ahead far enough. Great challenges must be met by ordinary people with good decisions.
Real Conservative
February 16th, 2011
1:49 pm
What do you know? It looks like Obama’s been paying attention. Yesterday, he said (emphasis mine)…
“The truth is Social Security is not the huge contributor to the deficit that the other two entitlements are. I’m confident we can get Social Security done in the same way that Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill were able to get it done, by parties coming together, making some modest adjustments…
Medicare and Medicaid are HUGE problems because health care costs are rising even as the population is getting older. And so what I’ve said is that I’m prepared to work with Democrats and Republicans to start dealing with that in a serious way.”
Health care costs. Outstanding! Where are Republicans on this?
TheNextBogeyman?
February 16th, 2011
2:09 pm
Kyle has dug really deep to find the nation’s next bogeyman to frighten us. It’s called “impatience”. Come on Kyle, get real.
Common Sense
February 16th, 2011
2:34 pm
Why not just come out and say you are going to give Obama 8 years before holding him accountable for anything?
Obama and the rest of them were not in a box, unaware of what was going on in America. They had plenty of time to formulate a strategy if they wanted to make the necessary changes.
While cramming health care down our unconstitutional throats at ramming speed, we cannot address the deficit for a decade?
It would be more honest to say we are giving him eight years, no matter how bad things look.
Of course that is 7 more years than you gave Bush before demanding change, isn’t it?
Rafe Hollister
February 16th, 2011
2:41 pm
Speaking of lack of patience, ole Barry’s butt had not made contact with the leather of his oval office chair for the first time, before he began spending us into oblivion. Good article, Kyle.
No More Progressives!
February 16th, 2011
3:44 pm
“…………..the clear thinking of President Obama is a breath of fresh air.”
Now there’s some prophetic bilge for the ages.
Jefferson
February 16th, 2011
3:55 pm
Oh how the T-Reps have been played, what are they to do now ?
Tychus Findlay
February 16th, 2011
4:55 pm
Politicians in general don’t want to endorse needed spending cuts because it’s unpopular with their constituent, and their perceived job is re-election. We are no longer represented by individuals that have popular interest at heart, because the majority of politicians are career politicians- those straight from college with no real world working experience.
These are people that, for the most part, have had a silver spoon in their mouth since birth and do not have an appreciation for writing or maintaining a budget because it’s beyond their scope of comprehension. The average tax paying American understands simple concepts of not spending more than they earn, politicians and State sponsored sycophants do not.
True American
February 16th, 2011
6:33 pm
Thanks President for working harder then any President in the last 20 years: Despite we have about 40% bigots, 20% anti Americans in this country.
Thanks for pulling America out the gutter that Georgia W puts us in, even though you have no support from the hicks in Georiga.
Linda
February 16th, 2011
7:14 pm
There is no surprise here. Obama ran on this ticket. We are now borrowing over 40 cents of every dollar we spend. China is selling our debt. We are in a financial crisis, a tsunami.
We heard for 2 yrs. what this president said he would do during his campaign. We have watched what he has done as president for 2 yrs. Nothing that he has done has improved the economy. Everything he has done has worsened the economy, just like it did under FDR.
We heard the State of the Union speech with more spending & propping up the unions.
We have seen his budget.
He’s threatening to veto any Rep. attempt to rein in spending.
It’s obvious that he has no intention of reining in spending, that his intention is to bankrupt our country.
He is highly intelligent & knows exactly what he is doing.
God help us all.
Linda
February 16th, 2011
7:30 pm
True@6:33, What did George Bush do that put us in the gutter? I think that you are misinformed.
Eric
February 16th, 2011
8:24 pm
Health care costs are skewing the economy and the deficit. These costs must finally be controlled rather than raising insurance premiums for revenue year after year. It’s a losing battle right now.
get out much?
February 16th, 2011
10:42 pm
Sorry Kyle, but until the Republicans are willing to address the revenue side of the problem (like their patron saint Reagan), they have zero credibility on reducing the deficit.
independent thinker
February 17th, 2011
8:30 am
You Repub wingnuts make me sick, First of all the day of reckoning will come very soon and not when our children and grandchildren run the government. The states and federal government are bankrupt and our lenders are cutting off our credit -NOW not tomorrow, For over a year the Fed has been buying US debt to stimulate a market for our worthless IOUs Very soon our dollar will no longer be the primary world currency and will be devalued as inflation takes off. It may be worth 5 cents so everything will cost twenty times more and the government will spend most of its money on interest to repay the debt. The causes?? Both parties are at fault equally.The Repubs did it by deficit spending since WWII on unnecessary military toys to fund the military establishment and buy votes. Saint. Ronnie did it spending trillions we did not have on military toys that quickly were scrapped so he and the Repubs could claim they defeated the Soviets who decided wisely that spending on military toys while the country starved was not how freedom works. All so the Repubs could put behind them a long string of defeats under prior Repub presidents including Reagan -Korea, Vietnam and Lebanon to mention a few.Then we get GW who spent trillions like a drunk frat boy on two wars by deficit spending and cutting taxes. Then we have the unfunded mandates that Repubs love to pass to buy votes that snowball into huge expensive job killing programs and state requirements that have no funding– all passed by Repubs- EPA, EMTALA, ADA, No Child left Behind, etc. Why don’t you Repubs. talk about these facts Kyle?
How many of you Repub Obama haters even know what EMTALA is and why it caused a national healthcare crisis?????? ever wonder why those shiny new MARTA handicap buses drive around empty all day and how many tens of million dollars they cost while all the regular buses are handicap equipped????????
due to the ADA passed by Bush41. I am sure all this is Obama’s fault too.
and lets not forget how many billions that Goldman Sachs and other wealthy Wall Street bankers got in TARP funds under Bush while there execs raked in millions and got tax cuts. That was Obama’s fault too.
No More Progressives!
February 20th, 2011
12:35 pm
True American
February 16th, 2011
6:33 pm
Thanks for pulling America out the gutter that Georgia W puts us in, even though you have no support from the hicks in Georiga.
Gutter? What gutter? Everything was fine until you 300LB union goons starting moving here from NJ and the like.