Patterico's Pontifications

2/2/2015

Obama Proposes $3.99 Trillion Budget

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 7:27 am



Well, thank God it’s not $4 trillion!

According to Heritage, federal spending approached $3.5 trillion in 2013 and 2014.* Why would we suddenly need to spend another half trillion dollars??

I have said it before and I’ll say it again: the GOP nominee needs to pick a budget from the recent past — like one of George W. Bush’s earlier budgets** — and declare that to be the proper size of today’s budget. If we went back to spending levels from ten years ago, for example, we’d be spending $2.47 trillion a year, instead of Obama’s proposed $4 trillion.

Plenty of us out here in the real world live on the same basic budget that we lived on during the Bush years — even with inflation. Is it really asking too much for the central government to do the same?

27 Responses to “Obama Proposes $3.99 Trillion Budget”

  1. *The numbers are different at Cato, coming in at $3.7 trillion for 2013 and $3.78 trillion for 2014. Even using these numbers, this proposed budget represents an increase of a quarter trillion dollars . . . and why? For what??

    Patterico (9c670f)

  2. **I say we should pick one of Bush’s earlier budgets because he exploded spending and created a precedent for Obama, according to the lefty Obama lovers at Cato.

    Patterico (9c670f)

  3. Couldn’t agree more. But I cannot begin to imagine the breathless outrage.

    Folks like that need to explain their own budget at home, and the government.

    In fact, that might be a good metric. Use your multiplier in conversation.

    Simon Jester (c8876d)

  4. The Republicans have the House and the Republicans have the Senate; let them pass the budget they want, and see what President Obama does with it.

    The solution is very simple: the budget must be broken up into much smaller pieces. It’s just insane to pass the appropriations through twelve huge annual bills, which give the President the ability to put pressure on Congress by vetoing bills that contain things people like, just to get something he wants. We ought to have fifty or sixty appropriations bills, each dealing with much smaller scetiuons of the government, so if there’s something the President doesn’t like, he can’t shut down whole sections of the government to get his way.

    Further, half of the government should be funded for two years this cycle, and then next year fund the other half for two years. That way, only half of the budget is up for approval and appropriation every year, and the Congress can spend more time on smaller details.

    The Dana who hopes that the Republicans don't approach this with deflated balls (f6a568)

  5. i don’t wanna take this clown or his silly budgets seriously anymore

    but you can bet Meghan’s coward brainwashed daddy is eager to join with food stamp to end the sequester do he can slop his pentagon piggy pals

    it’s not gonna be a good year for our pathetic little country

    the first rule of holes is out the effing window you see

    happyfeet (a037ad)

  6. *so* he can slop his pentagon piggy pals is what I meant

    happyfeet (a037ad)

  7. A George Bush budget? No thanks. There were those of us right wingers who were disgusted with Bush and Congress for their, No Child Left Behind crap and other stupidity. It would be back to Eisenhower for me!!!!!

    Ipso Fatso (10964d)

  8. Plenty of us out here in the real world live on the same basic budget that we lived on during the Bush years

    If only.

    Kevin M (25bbee)

  9. My understanding is Obama seeks to add $500 billion because he wants to roll back sequestration.

    DRJ (a83b8b)

  10. which he came up with,

    narciso (ee1f88)

  11. “America can’t afford to be short-sighted…” said President Obama, as he watched Mr. Irony walk out the door…

    Colonel Haiku (39259d)

  12. He cut the deficit by 2/3 beeyotches !!!!

    JD (bba46c)

  13. One often hears “We should go back to the Clinton tax rates, the economy did well then”. I always reply “We’ll go back to the Clinton tax rates when we go back to the Clinton spending levels”

    mer (2d74b6)

  14. R.I.P. Suzette Haden Elgin, science fiction author

    Icy (e4bec0)

  15. Clearly we know this president man does not prepare his budgets–or go over them “line by line” as he once promised. He has too many other things on his plate, such as overseeing the brewing of craft beer in the White House and working on his NCAA brackets. So who does actually work on the budget these days? What does this Shaun Donovan guy at OMB know about budgets? Anything?

    elissa (2e819b)

  16. Even at the lower figure of a quarter-trillion ($250 B) increase we’re still looking at a budget increase of 6.67% over last year. Heck, the White House is acknowledging that this budget would increase the deficit from last year’s figure, so Obama is in essence saying that he is totally cool with running $500 billion deficits for the rest of his Presidency, a deficit level that he called “unpatriotic” when it was his predecessor who was proposing it. So much for fiscal discipline.

    JVW (60ca93)

  17. It is asking way too much to expect the present GOP hierarchy to act fiscally responsible in any way, shape or manner.

    seeRpea (181740)

  18. btw: when is the last time that Congress sent a total Federal budget bill to the White House?

    seeRpea (181740)

  19. The solution is very simple: the budget must be broken up into much smaller pieces.

    Correct. Pass appropriations for each department. That reduces the gamesmanship opportunities and may add some D allies.

    Mike K (90dfdc)

  20. failmerica needs to keep the sequester in place

    remember the sequester is not a cut, it just slows down the rate at which the whore bleeds out in the ditch

    The sequester lowers spending by a total of approximately $1.1 trillion versus pre-sequester levels over the approximately 8 year period from 2013 to 2021.

    happyfeet (a037ad)

  21. The sequester isn’t magic; it’s just a number. Now that the Republicans control both Houses of Congress, they can pass appropriations which match the sequester targets, without the sequester itself being in place.

    And they could do something really radical like set the total number at the sequester targets, but change the mix of appropriations within those targets.

    They could even lower the domestic spending target, and raise the military spending number. This Congress has the power to do everything right; I just don’t have a lot of confidence that it will.

    The realistic Dana (1b79fa)

  22. Sunset legislation would also help. Make each agency account for and justify itself, and sunset it if it can’t.

    DRJ (a83b8b)

  23. JD (sarcastically?) wrote:

    He cut the deficit by 2/3 beeyotches !!!!

    Well, no, the sequester, which the President wanted cancelled, cut spending, thus cutting the deficit. But he notion that he has achieved something by cutting a deficit that he had tripled — with the help of a Democrat-controlled Congress — doesn’t seem like a great accomplishment.

    The number crunching Dana (1b79fa)

  24. the sequester did not cut spending

    happyfeet (831175)

  25. Look up, look down, look over there, look anywhere but here-

    http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/01/obama_is_openly_colluding_with_the_enemy.html?

    DNF (fc27ea)

  26. A George Bush budget? No thanks. There were those of us right wingers who were disgusted with Bush and Congress for their, No Child Left Behind crap and other stupidity.

    His “compassionate conservatism” apparently meant rolling over when Congress placed bloated budgets before him, including — and most certainly — when that involved a defense department budget larded with pork (otherwise known as bipartisan spendthriftism).

    The idiocy of all this can be laid at the doorstep of the “American people” (which is a term I tend to despise since it’s overly generalized—ie, there are leftwing Americans, rightwing Americans, etc), in light of opinion polls that have shown a majority of the populace expressing more sympathy towards berserk-o Obama during the sequester than towards the mean, old Republicans in the Congress.

    From this are the origins of the US catching a healthy dose of Euro-sclerosis.

    Mark (c160ec)

  27. The sequester did not cut spending. It was in no way austerity. The English language has no meaning any longer.

    JD (86a5eb)


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