Obama Tacking to the Right After Taxachusetts Defeat?

Last week's special election in Taxachusetts to replace the late Ted Kennedy in the US Senate served as a referendum on Obama's fascist health care plan, with its mandates, taxes, fines and prison sentences. A majority of voters in what's arguably the most liberal state in the republic came out and soundly defeated Democrat Martha Coakley and gave the seat to a Republican for the first time in decades. Scott Brown, the Republican victor, promised during the election to oppose Obama's fascist health care program.

A week later, according to liberal media outlet The New York Times, Obama plans to tack sharply to the right, pretending fiscal conservatism by proposing to freeze some discretionary domestic spending, while leaving defense spending and entitlements untouched. Since entitlement spending makes up the majority of (non-interest) spending in the budget, even Obama's wildly optimistic (some might say, "delusional" or "deceitful") show his alleged freeze reducing the projected $9 trillion in federal budget deficits by only $250 billion, or less than 3%. In the meantime, his budget for the coming fiscal year would actually increase spending even more with another $150 trillion of "stimulus" pork spending. Even the liberal New York Times admits in the story below that all of Obama's talk of freezing the budget would serve mostly as a symbol of fiscal conservatism--while leaving trillions of dollars of new pork on top of the trillions of dollars of continuing pork.

Keep in mind, too, that the federal government uses something called "baseline budgeting." Under baseline budgeting the Congressional Budget Office estimates next year's "need" for spending and then calls that the baseline. Somehow the "need" increases every single year, even after adjusting for inflation and population growth. So baseline federal spending increases every single year in real dollars per person. Obama's proposed "cuts," even if they did materialize, would simply represent reductions in the baseline projected rate of increase, not actual cuts in spending from one year to the next.

Worse still, Congress has shown repeatedly, particularly Democrat Congresses in the 1980s and early 1990s, that "spend more now, cut later" actually means "spend more now, spend even more later." Each time Democrats and mushy moderates like Bob Dole promised Reagan and the first Bush that they would "cut the budget" they actually authorized far more than even the baseline. I would expect Obama, who's first-year spending binge dwarfs anything under FDR or LBJ (or indeed the two combined) to accept let Congress get away with far more in spending increases than Reagan or even Bush did.

Still, while Obama's calls for a budget freeze probably consist of roughly have delusion and half deceit, it's good to see that despite some liberal media claims to the contrary, Scott Brown's victory does indeed signal that Americans are fed up with Obama's liberal policies of tax, spend, regulate and imprison.


http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/26/us/politics/26budget.html?th&emc=th

A Fix For DC Metro Traffic Congestion

I just got back from grocery shopping. I noticed on the way out that even at 6 AM the inbound lanes of I-66 were bumper to bumper. It's just insane! Many of the locals want to spend more tens of billions of your tax money extending the Metro "light rail" out to Dulles International Airport or building new lanes or both--both of which would tie up traffic even worse, if you can imagine that, for the next, oh, 5 to 10 years.

I have an easy solution to the DC metro area traffic congestion problem that will not only not require that the federal government spend tens of billions more of your money, but will actually save your money: cut the federal government.

I don't mean what liberals mean when they scream that Bush, who presided over the biggest spending binge (before Obama's) since LBJ's in the 1960s, "cut the budget." I don't mean reduction in the increases scheduled under the lie of baseline budgeting. I mean to actually CUT spending. We spent about $4 trillion last year (and will end up spending about $9 trillion this year of Obama and the congressional Democrats have their way), so next year let's spend $2 trillion. Cut out the Commerce Department (Department of Big Business Subsidies), the Labor Department (Department of Big Labor Subsidies), the Department of Education (Department of Leftist Indoctrination and Liberal Teacher Subsidies), Department of Energy (Department of Preventing Energy Growth), HUD (Congress' personal slumlord slush fund), and biggest of all HHS (Department of Slowing Medical Progress). Cut federal employment by half, and you'll clear the DC metro traffic congestion right up. :-D