An Economic Bender

Our so articulate president has his speeches still set in campaign mode but his actions reveal his double-talk. Libertarian Matt Welch, Reason, chronicles the Obama flip-flops, and his massive expansion of government--nowhere suggested during his bromide-filled change campaign (but indicated by his liberal voting record):

Spending? Candidate Obama promised “a net spending cut” in which “every dollar that I’ve proposed, I’ve proposed an additional cut so that it matches.” President Obama has proposed the largest net spending increase since World War II, even while holding summits on “fiscal responsibility” and vowing to live by the same “pay as you go” principles he’s already blown to smithereens.

Deficits? A president whose first budget will expand the deficit into uncharted territory (see Veronique de Rugy’s “When Do Deficits Matter?,” page 21) nonetheless promises to cut his shortfall in half within four years. This, he claimed in his speech to Congress, will be achieved partly through $2 trillion in “savings” that will come by “eliminat[ing] wasteful and ineffective programs.” Analysts noted within hours that around half of Obama’s “savings” actually come from letting Bush’s tax cuts expire after 2010. It takes a certain kind of mind-set to characterize Americans’ taking home their own money as a “wasteful and ineffective program,” let alone tax increases as “savings.”

Barack Obama reinvented himself for his presidential run, talking center-right but voting and now governing hard-left. The MSM has covered for him all along but it's harder to do now. There are a few reporters who ask good questions, but it's unusual for one from the old broadcast media troika of networks to be among them. At the last prime time press conference Jake Tapper again spoke up, and this time even CBS was stung into action. His handling of the economy seems to stir angst among moderates and even liberals, though their objectives differ. Moderate Clive Crook writes in the Financial Times of Obama's "delusional economics" and suggests Democrats will have to raise taxes on much lower incomes--the middle class is "seriously undertaxed". Mike Madden in the liberal Salon frets that deficits are a dirty word and might impede the liberal Obama agenda.

It's a little hard to bend the truth when we're looking at a graph like this. Keep in mind this red ink is based on rosy Obama scenarios. We can't pay this back.