As part of the one-two-three punch delivered to reeling Americans, President Obama today unveiled his version of the $3.6 trillion 2010 budget. While its 144 pages aren’t quite as intimidating as that porker of a $787 billion 1,073 page stimulus bill, it’s interesting that he needed 43 pages simply to “introduce” it.
Reading the introduction does nothing to give me any warm, fuzzy feeling about the future. It’s mostly campaign rhetoric, the usual smoke & mirrors. What I get out of it is that I’m going to see my income – if I have one at all – spared from taxes in dribs and drabs of $13 here, which is $400 there, yet will watch my energy costs go up as producers – farmers included – pass their “cap and trade” costs back to me through increases in utility and food bills, while a “smart grid” is going to eventually control whether or not my home – if I still have one – is sent enough electricity to power lights, appliances, etc.
We’re going to double the amount spent to help those in foreign countries to $50 billion. It’s not that I don’t want to help others, nor that I do not understand the wisdom of providing aid for basic needs in order to help another country stabilize, but frankly, you have to have something to share in order to be able to share it with others. What is the difference between me and that foreigner if I can’t afford to put food on my own table either?
There is money for additional nuclear nonproliferation and counter-proliferation funding; though I suppose after Israel bombs Iran for us, we’ll be hearing about how much money we saved in this category.
The icing on this arsenic-laden cake is a whole section devoted to insistence of change in the way Washington does business. A sad testament to an Ivy League education, it contains this brilliant and profound statement: “Special interest driven-spending grew out of control.” It also claims – wrongly – that part of the Administration’s efforts towards creating “fiscal discipline” was to sign “an economic recovery bill that is free of all earmarks and by instituting a system whereby the public will be able to track how and where recovery funds are actually used.”
I’m now beginning to understand why the President spent Valentine’s Day weekend in Chicago instead of actually taking the time to read the stimulus bill. According to this introductory document, “the Administration has begun an exhaustive line-by-line review of the Federal Budget, the first stage of which will be partially reflected in the spring release of the full Fy 2010 Budget and will continue in subsequent years.” Apparently if you’re a slow reader it is “exhausting” to have to pay attention to any one thing for any length of time.
There’s an old saying in show business to “always leave ’em laughing”. This 2010 budget introduction certainly smacks of comedy as you near the end. “…in his first days in office, the President signed an executive order that…requires that Government hiring be based upon qualifications, competence, and experience—not political connections. The President has ordered every one of his appointees to sign a pledge abiding by these tough new rules as a down payment on the change he has promised to bring to Washington.”
That certainly explains Geithner, Daschle, and Killefer, doesn’t it?
The biggest problem with the $$$$ being spent is most goes to places that are run by despots whose friends and family suck up the money. Little if any ever gets to the folks that actually need it.
Which is why after all these years of sending money the folks are not a bit better off than before.