President Obama’s 2010 federal budget, released recently to Congress and the public, marks some important changes from former President George W. Bush’s budgets over the eight years of his presidency. The best of these changes, unfortunately, is that Obama’s budget has a sleeker and more visually appealing cover page. Obama’s public relations team used a deep, comforting blue color and that modern, exquisite font Obama so effectively used in his presidential campaign. It even features a catchy subtitle to entice readers: “Renewing America’s Promise.” Obama’s budget sounds pretty good for the first page, and his team does a moderate job defending it throughout the rest of the text. They attempt to mask the budget’s serious inadequacies and hypocritical aspects behind the broad, vague promises the American people have associated with the Obama administration, but their arguments still have serious flaws.
A month ago I condemned Democratic runaway-spending policies in the stimulus bill, acknowledging that hardly enough time had passed to assess the policies. While this is still largely true (Obama has only been in office two months), things don’t look any better.
The overall theme of Obama’s budget seems to be its claim to cut down government deficit spending by one half by the end of his first term. Obama spends a great deal of time condemning the “deep fiscal irresponsibility” of the last administration, citing frightening statistics about how much reckless deficit spending was carried out. Obama’s response to this reckless spending, you ask? He wants to increase deficit spending to pull us out of the economic crisis. Obama gives no reason that increased government spending might pull us out of a potential depression and touts in the rest of the budget — quite proudly — that he will eventually decrease the deficit. But in a tiny paragraph tucked away in his introduction, Obama tries to convince the reader that huge amounts of government spending are a necessary evil.
Obama’s budget totals $3.55 trillion. This figure doesn’t take into account the almost $1 trillion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and various other stimulus bills passed by the overwhelmingly Democratic Congress. On top of this, Obama is maintaining his tax cuts for middle class Americans, while drastically increasing taxes on higher-income Americans. I am all for cutting taxes for average American citizens — I believe that would have been more effective than a stimulus package — but broad tax cuts are totally inappropriate when Obama plans to actually increase the spending policies of the Bush administration. The federal deficit, with all these factors, is estimated to total about $1.75 trillion in 2010.. Our national debt, over the last 200-plus years of American history, totals around $10 trillion. In a single year, Obama plans to add $1.75 trillion more to this debt. He insists that the deficit will be cut in half by the end of his first term, but at what cost? The deficit proposed is unprecedented, and totally inappropriate in the wake of an economic crisis.
In response to criticism concerning the budget, Obama responds by asking members of Congress to propose alternative solutions to the problems facing the country. It almost sounds like he’s trying to humiliate members of Congress: If you could do better, let me know. What Obama assumes, however, is that the government should be taking action on the specific fronts he proposes. Call me a Jeffersonian, but I personally believe the government has no business spending $46.7 billion in a single year through the Department of Education. This is in addition to the $81.1 billion provided through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Primary education systems are one of the few areas of exclusive rights that the states retain, with some level of governmental control. Obama’s plans list education as a priority with energy and healthcare, totally taking for granted the relative independence states once retained in this aspect.
Obama’s administration would, no doubt, counter that his policies are a total change from the George Bush policies, claiming that the Obama budget is a more effective use of the tax dollars it takes in. Regardless of how well the Obama budget completes the initiatives it proposes, however, the question remains whether or not these policies should be initiated by the national government in the first place. Every administration uses propaganda to persuade the people that its policies are worthwhile. It’s important, though, to remember that Obama’s budget, while staggeringly huge, is not the only spending this administration will initiate. Congress continues to pass bail-out after bail-out; average citizens should understand that this kind of government action has never been undertaken in human history. Whether or not it will work remains to be seen. In the meantime, we should watch Obama’s actions with careful scrutiny, remembering that what may be a casual assumption for Obama could be unheard-of governmental action to the rest of the country.
Anthony Nobles’ column appears Fridays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at a.nobles@cavalierdaily.com.
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