Monday, February 13, 2012

Obama's Budgetary Malpractice

It is really amazing how bad Obama's budgets are.  The last one was voted down 97-0 in the Senate, potentially one of the only times Democrats and Republicans acted in unison since Obama was elected (there hasn't been an official budget passed by Congress for over 1,000 days!).  The one released today is no better.  Federal government outlays are expected to go up again in 2013 compared to the previous year and up 27.5% since 2008!  I don't seem to remember government being particularly small back then, do we really need to keep spending at this rate?  Even more ludicrous is that he expects to increase taxes by a full 2% of GDP in 2013 without any impact on the economy.  The budget even assumes continuing 4.7% growth!  Obama's own former Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, Christina Romer, admits that the tax multiplier is 3, so if you raise taxes by 2% of GDP, the impact on the rest of the economy could be -6%!  If we don't double dip in 2012, you can be sure we will in 2013 (unless Obama pulls an October surprise and delays the tax increases, thereby also blowing up his deficit numbers).  Seriously, is there anything in this festering turd of a budget to even like?

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