Pretty sneaky, sis - The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (h/t Mankiw) has discovered that the Obama administration is calling temporary stimulus programs "baseline" (read: permanent) to hide the cost: "Over ten years, we estimate these baseline adjustments to cost $266 billion, including interest."
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Nice find! I haven't seen that commercial since I was about five years old.
It's also a budget that includes the cost of the Iraq and Afghan Wars. It also doesn't teleport $2 trillion of the prescription drug plan two decades into the future. It also doesn't minimize the cost of Medicare reimbursements. It also includes prospective expenditures for natural disasters which have yet to occur. Also, the Obama administration didn't summon reporters months ago to "project" that the total deficit would be 140% of the eventual number, so that they could later congratulate themselves for having taken bold steps to "cut" it.
It's amazing what diligent scrimpers and deficit hawks the Republicans have turned into over the last 1 year, 19 days and oh, about 15 hours.
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MjU4N2I0NjRlYzk1MTI1ZjI4MzQyZDU5YjI1NjYxMGE=
Megan McArdle: "Whatever George W. Bush did or did not do, he's no longer in office, and doesn't have the power to do a damn thing about the budget. Obama is the one who is president with the really humongous deficits. Deficits of the size Bush ran are basically sustainable indefinitely; deficits of the size that Obama is apparently planning to run, aren't. If he doesn't change those plans, he will be the one who led the government into fiscal crisis, even if changing them would be [sob!] politically difficult."
"Deficits of the size Bush ran are basically sustainable indefinitely"
So all that stuff about rapidly mounting Chinese debt and a day of reckoning, that was just kidding around?
And all that stuff about Bush being unfairly saddled with the blame for an economic slowdown that really began on Bill Clinton's clock, that was just insincere whining?
This past fall, conservatives including Megan McArdle tried to float the idea that the mortgage collapse had its roots in Jimmy Carter's policy. Yet now, McArdle says there's no need to dwell on the forgotten, will o' the wisp financial details of "whatever George W. Bush did or did not do." Laughable.
Well if blaming the previous administration is a crutch, Obama has used up a warehouse of wheelchairs.
If blaming the previous administration is a crutch, blaming the previous previous previous PREVIOUS administration is for the legless.
That's a good one. OK, you got me there.
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