Obama’s Budget Transparency Hands Republicans A Cannon

February 21, 2009

The Facts

Next week President Obama will release his first annual budget and it will project the largest deficit in US history at $2.7 trillion dollars over the next 10 years, with the biggest portion coming in the next physical year. Of course, no one should have expected anything different in view of our current financial crisis and other on-going debt obligations. But the amount of money is not the only thing that’s important here; the fact that Obama’s budget will reflect the true expected spending instead of the “slight of hand” budgets we’ve seen over previous years is what we should be focused on. The American public will know for the first time in decades exactly what the cost of government is expected to be.

My View

Despite knowing that over the next 3 years and 10 months his enemies will use this issue against him, President Obama is determined to be honest and open about what the taxpayers will be saddled with. And we can rest assured his enemies will do just that. I fully expect to reference this post on many occasions in my future post.

As Jackie Calmes of The New York Times pointed out in this article, Obama is not going to use four accounting gimmicks that George W. Bush used during his tenure to make deficit projections look smaller. These are the two wars we are currently fighting, disaster response cost, Medicare reimbursements, and the income from the alternative minimum tax (ATM). The article points to the ATM as the biggest transparency adjustment, in that previous revenue projection’s from this tax was much higher than what other administrations knew they would collect.

Since we now live in the age of “the end justifies the means” news reporting, we should be watching with great interest over the next few weeks to the reaction of the new budget. Pay close attention to the pro & con reporting of the budget, but be smart enough to use an open mind. Our individual reaction, once privately evaluated, is going to tell us something about ourselves. And that is whether we want honesty from our government regardless of who it comes from or dishonesty as long as it comes from the party we want in power. Which person are you?