Obama to Shift Focus to Budget Deficit

[rexbo 104]

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Obama to Shift Focus to Budget Deficit

Obama to Shift Focus to Budget Deficit

Saturday, February 14, 2009

With a $787 billion stimulus package in hand, President Barack Obama will pivot quickly to address a budget deficit that could now approach $2 trillion this year.

He has scheduled a "fiscal-responsibility summit" on Feb. 23 and will unveil a budget blueprint three days later, crafted to put pressure on politicians to address the country's surging long-term debt crisis.

Speaking Friday to business leaders at the White House, the president defended the surge of spending in the stimulus plan, but he made sure to add: "It's important for us to think in the midterm and long term. And over that midterm and long term, we're going to have to have fiscal discipline. We are not going to be able to perpetually finance the levels of debt that the federal government is currently carrying."

Along those lines, White House budget director Peter R. Orszag has committed to instituting tougher budget-discipline rules -- once the economy turns around. Those include a mandate that any "nonemergency" spending increases be offset by equal spending cuts or tax increases.

Officials say the budget blueprint to be released this month will also attempt to make public the full extent of the dire fiscal situation, by not repeating some of the accounting used in crafting President George W. Bush's budgets.

Recent budget blueprints excluded from deficit projections the long-term costs of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Those budgets also didn't include the cost of preventing the alternative minimum tax -- instituted in 1969 to ensure the rich didn't escape taxation -- from hitting the middle class.

[bigsixfive 341]

Hypocritical in a way, isn't it?

[OldNewby 27]

And schizophrenic.

[autigeremt 7,545]

This guy is scary.

[DKW 86 8,217]

Hey, at the rate he is blowing cash at the moment we will all forget about Bush's ridiculous spending in another year or so.

I have officially started to refer to PBO as Obushma.

Washington DC is a freakin joke. It is sssooo obvious that this is a whole level or two above the ole 'sailor in a whorehouse' spending spree already. WASHINGTON is blindly, wildly, unrepently blowing wads of cash on naked pork barrel projects. So if they have zero intention of reining in any spending at all, the only thing 'left' to do is RAISE TAXES.

"Fiscal Resonsibilty"="Raising Taxes"

Raising Taxes during a recession? Welcome to Jimmy Carter Part Deux!

[Tigermike 4,251]

",,the president will host what the White House is billing as a “fiscal responsibility” summit on February 23. The goal of the summit is to begin weighing the impact of massive federal programs like Social Security and Medicare just days before the president plans to unveil his first annual budget to Congressional leaders."

Obama and dims hosting a summit on fiscal responsibility.

Budget? There’s nothing left to spend. Michael Ramirez has the best take on it.

My guess is this can will get kicked down the road and left for 45 or 46 to deal with. Which for years has been the dimocrats thinking on SS.