Eating the seed corn

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke speaks favorably of reexamining mark to market in remarks this morning, though not total suspension. Citi shows a profit. That is helpful, but as our president is poised to sign yet another massively porky budget bill, Who's Obama Kidding? Brian Wesbury and Robert Stein, Forbes:

In 2007, the federal budget deficit was $162 billion (1.2% of gross domestic product). For 2009, the budget deficit is projected to be 11 times larger: $1.752 trillion.

Some of this is inherited, but what's the impact of President Obama's actions so far?

Nonetheless, contrary to the spin of big-government types, these deficits are not just temporary. In fact, the Obama administration uses every trick in the book to convert an understandable and potentially temporary budget lapse this year into a structural lack of fiscal responsibility.

Despite the rosiest economic projections we have possibly ever seen, as well as one of the largest tax hikes in history, President Obama's budget fails to achieve balance at any time in the next decade. The smallest deficit (at least as far as the eye can see) will be $533 billion in 2013. This is amazing, especially when the economic growth forecast is considered. Team Obama suggests that real GDP will grow significantly faster in the years ahead than it has in the past.

This is not credible:

The forecast is rosy from the get-go. The budget forecasters assumed that the economy would grow at a 3% annual rate starting in April and that real GDP would fall just 1.2% in 2009 from 2008. Then, from 2010 through 2013, the administration assumes that real GDP will grow at a 4% annual rate. To put this in perspective, that is twice as fast as the economy's 2% annual rate of growth between 2004 and 2008. This is not impossible, but the only other periods that came close to this 4% growth rate for such a prolonged period of time were in the late-1990s and mid-1980s. Forgive us for pointing this out, but both of these periods followed major shifts toward freer markets and tax cuts, not bigger government and tax hikes.

And President Obama's irresponsible and unsustainable spending will choke off any recovery longterm, plunging our country into crushing debt for generations. The president's policies are forcing us to eat the seed corn--squandering resources we have nurtured and husbanded over the course of our lives, and jeopardizing our children's and grandchildren's future in the most selfish and cruel way.