Deconstruction of an Obama Puff Piece

From our friends at Reuters...

Well... at least it's labeled "analysis"... 

President Barack Obama starts his second term in office facing unprecedented budget constraints that will challenge his ability to implement his economic vision. 

What "budget constraints...?" He got everything he asked for! Remember his first few days in office... the "stimulus"... aka "Porkubus" package...?

ObamaCare...? (You remember that, right? It was supposed to help balance the budget while decreasing our individual healthcare costs...)

Solyndra...??? The rest of Obama's "green" debacle...???

Folks... bottom line... after two years of Democratic control of both Houses of Congress (2007 & 2008) the feds were borrowing 43-cents out of every dollar squandered at the end of the bad ol' Bush days; now... the feds (under Obama, Reid, and Boehner) are borrowing 46-cents out of every dollar squandered! 

Spending caps that Obama signed into law in 2011 will make it difficult to boost investment in education, scientific research, transportation and other areas that he says will help the country retool for heightened global competition and rapid technological change, budget experts say. 

"Investment," huh? (Reuters idea of "analysis" is obviously following the Obama/Democrat script...)

Oh... and notice... first "he said" - meaning Obama - and then the fine folks at Reuters end with "budget experts say" - as if to equate what Obama says with what budget experts say.

Folks... if Obama's "budget experts" were so expert... wouldn't budgets be balanced...??? 

Because those caps won't keep pace with inflation and population growth, the government will effectively have 16% less to spend in these areas by the time Obama leaves office in 2017, according to White House estimates. 

(*SNORT*)

Folks... geezus... give the man credit for having balls the size of cantaloupes! 

That could constrain college loans, preschool education, job training and other programs that Obama says will boost national competitiveness. 

Too many people are paying too much for too little real education now and Obama and the Democrats and (sadly) most Republicans cry "full speed ahead" while heading straight for the icebergs ahead. Job training...? What the hell's that...? Isn't that what school is supposedly for? 

"Pre-school?" We can't afford K-12... we can't afford the massive bureaucratic nightmare we've created which presently exists... and yet all they call for is more and more and more spending and yet when it comes to examining the results... the critique is that schooling is too "test intensive." 

"Under the caps as they are currently constructed, we're going to see pretty significant diminishment of investment in all of those things," said Scott Lilly, who spent decades writing spending bills as a Democratic staffer in the House of Representatives. 

Folks... there are no caps... spending goes up every year! Deficits grow... debt grows... and yet unemployment remains where it was five years ago... while today almost 50 million Americans (and non-Americans) are on food stamps...

(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD IN DISGUST*)

Since taking office in 2009, Obama has tried to balance his belief in an active government with concerns that the nation's finances are on an unsustainable course. 

No he hasn't! That's a straight out lie! That's propaganda at a level that Joseph Goebbels would have smiled at! 

Even as he has pushed through more than $1 trillion in spending increases and tax cuts to fight the deepest recession in 80 years, he has floated deficit-reduction plans that would trim costs over the medium term. 

Ah... "to fight the deepest recession in 80 years." So his intentions are above reproach, huh? 

Folks... Obama entered into office and started doing the exact opposite of everything Reagan did when he first entered office in 1981 and began to reverse the disaster caused by Carternomics. (You folks my age know this!) Reagan's policies were successful. Obama's polices haven't been. You simply can't argue that simple fact! 

As part of a deal that allowed the government to avert a first-ever debt default in August 2011, Obama and his Republican adversaries agreed to spending limits that would slow government spending growth by $1 trillion over 10 years. 

Another bald-faced lie. We never faced default. Never. As to what Obama and the Republicrats agreed to... it was the sequester... which they delayed last week and which will no doubt be delayed again next month and ultimately never go into effect.

Folks... aren't you sick of the lies? Whatever your priorities, shouldn't government - or at least the media - be honest with us about where things actually stand and what's being done vs. what's not being done? 

Those caps in the 2011 Budget Control Act do not apply to popular benefits like the Social Security retirement program and Medicare, the health plan for retirees. Obama and fellow Democrats have so far blocked Republican proposals to scale back these programs, which are projected to grow at the same rate as the economy for the next four years before expanding as aging "baby boomers" drive up costs. 

Folks... Social Security has been upside down. Medicare and Medicaid are in crisis and it's only going to get worse absent reforms. (And by reforms I mean either less "benefits" or higher taxes!) 

Instead, the caps cover the 36% of government spending that is set annually by Congress. Known as discretionary spending, this category covers everything from the Defense Department to the National Endowment for the Arts. 

Folks... what's 100% minus 36%...? What they're saying is that even if they went ahead and made real cuts to "discretionary" programs (like... er... National Defense...) we'd still have 64% of government expenditures growing and growing and growing year after year after year...

(*SIGH*) 

It also includes social programs that Obama allies say are crucial for his agenda of broadening opportunity and expanding the middle class. 

Obama is destroying the middle class! 

"If you were looking into all the corners of the budget to find those programs that helped to promote the economic mobility of disadvantaged people, many, if not most, would be there," said Jared Bernstein, a former economic adviser to Vice President Joe Biden.

Folks... look around you... what have four-plus years of Barack Obama and Joseph Biden wrought? Again... the welfare state has grown... deficits have grown... debt has grown... dependency upon government has grown...

(*HEADACHE*) 

The White House estimates that non-military discretionary spending will shrink from 4.3% of the economy in the fiscal year that ended on September 30, 2011 to 2.8% when he leaves office in January 2017. That would be the lowest level since the government began keeping track in 1962. 

Ha! Ha! Ha! Folks... have you been keeping track of Obama's "estimates" on spending... on unemployment... on anything...?!?! The man just throws out "estimates" and when they don't come to pass his response is to throw out new estimates... which also turn out to be wrong! 

An automatic cut due to take effect in March, known as the "sequester," will slash discretionary spending another 8% unless Democrats and Republicans agree on a way to head it off. 

Folks... you know the sequester is never gonna happen! 

Obama frequently invokes the spending caps to rebut Republican charges that he does not care about reducing trillion-dollar deficits. He proposed another $100 billion in non-military discretionary cuts during his fiscal-cliff talks last month with Republican House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner. But he also warns that deep program cuts will undermine future competitiveness. "The cuts we've already made ... mean that we spend less as a share of our economy than has been true for a generation," he said at a news conference on Monday. "And that's not a recipe for growth." 

Folks... he's full of shit! And Reuters and the rest of the media cover this bullshit as if it's reality as opposed to empty rhetoric. Again... we've just lived through four years of Obama's stewardship of the economy from the commanding heights of government; we've just seen four years of Obama's economic policies. It's been a disaster and he'll continue to double-down as long as he's in office... as long as Democrats control the Senate. 

The White House says it will be able to work within the spending caps to prioritize the areas it cares about most. 

Folks... Obama's budget proposals are regularly rejected unanimously or near-unanimously by BOTH Houses of Congress... (meaning Democrats as well as Republicans)... and Harry Reid's Democrat Senate doesn't even propose budgets anymore! 

But experts with experience in federal allocations say it will be exceedingly difficult to carve out room from other budget areas. 

In other words... Obama is full of shit. (As are his experts.) 

The Census Bureau predicts the U.S. population will grow by 12.5 million over the coming four years. That will place increased demands on the government, requiring many agencies to boost staffing to avoid a performance downgrade, Lilly said. The FBI, for example, will need more crime fighters, and the IRS will need more tax examiners. Increased highway traffic will degrade roads more quickly, and increased air traffic will require more air traffic controllers. 

Oh, yeah... give Eric Holder and Janet Napolitano more money and more personnel... great...

Folks... notice the "trend" is to grow and grow and grow and grow government - particularly the federal government. 

The Bureau of Prisons will face greater costs as it expects the federal inmate population to rise 8% in the next four years, while the Veterans Administration will see mounting health-care costs with an aging veterans population.

Folks... what percentage of federal prison inmates are non-citizens? (Google it!) How'bout state prisoners? And aside from who we're paying for, why must costs per convict be so high? 

As to our veterans... of course they're a priority... but we're talking costs that if they weren't being covered by the VA they'd be covered by Medicare/Medicaid... so to a large extent aren't we talking about which "pocket" of government the costs are being paid for out of rather than straight increases in governmental financing per se? 

Some technology-intensive agencies like the National Weather Service may save money through automation, said Joe Minarik, a top budget official under former President Bill Clinton. But others, like the Social Security Administration, will find that more powerful computers won't necessarily boost productivity. "You've just doubled the speed of the computer behind me, but the elderly person on the other side of the desk is not speaking any faster," Minarik said. 

Er... if you hadn't screwed something up then that elderly person wouldn't need to be there on the "other side" of the desk! 

The Obama administration last year proposed $5.2 billion in discretionary spending cuts, and another $3.3 billion from defense. Because Congress has not passed any spending bills for the fiscal year that started last October, those cuts have not had a chance to become law. But many of them have already been rejected by Obama's Senate allies. 

Uh... folks... it's the Senate that refuses to even submit a budget proposal. (And as the author admits, "Obama's Senate allies" tend to oppose even the smoke and mirrors cuts that Obama proposes as he's also proposing add-ons far in excess of any proposed "cuts!")

The White House also tried to shift some highway programs out of the discretionary category, which would have freed up $44.5 billion over a 10-year period. Congress also rejected that idea and opted to fund highway spending with discretionary funds for at least another two years. 

As opposed to...??? 

Folks... putting aside what needs to be done with regard to infrastructure upkeep, repair, and expansion, we all know that the Highway Bills always have been and still are today some of the biggest pork vehicles politicians use to buy votes with our tax dollars! Waste, fraud, and indeed criminality are embedded within these Highway Bills! 

Many budget experts expect Congress will ultimately conclude that the spending caps are too severe to work. The drive to cut spending could abate in coming years as well if an expanding economy boosts tax revenues and narrows budget deficits.

Oh my friggin' God... what's "narrowing" mean...? We'll go from borrowing 46-cents out of every dollar the federal government squanders back down to a "mere" 43-cents out of every dollar of basic operating costs...?!?! (Not to mention piling further debt upon further debt upon further debt...)