Obama Rejects $2.7 Trillion In Bush-Era Budget Gimmicks

[ProSense]

Obama Rejects $2.7 Trillion In Bush-Era Budget Gimmicks

Yesterday, the New York Times reported that President Obama, in the budget he’s releasing next week, will not use “four accounting gimmicks that President George W. Bush used to make deficit projections look smaller.”

The changes: account for the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (”overseas military contingencies”) in the budget rather than through the use of “emergency” supplemental spending bills, assume the Alternative Minimum Tax will be indexed for inflation, account for the full costs of Medicare reimbursements, and anticipate the inevitable expenditures for natural disaster relief.



These changes would make the debt over ten years look $2.7 trillion larger than the distorted Bush baseline, but that debt was always there. It was just being hidden. President Bush’s budgets hid billions with elaborate budget gimmicks. They took war-spending off the books, tried to eliminate the costs of wildly expensive tax cuts for the wealthy, and claimed savings through unrealistic, unspecified future cuts in vital discretionary spending.

As Steve Benen wrote, “the smoke-and-mirrors approach to which we’ve grown accustomed was ridiculous. It was a problem policymakers recognized, but didn’t want to talk about, and had no interest in fixing. It’s not only heartening to see Obama bring some sanity to the process, it will also have key practical consequences — honest budgets lead to better policy making.”

[karynnj]

1. This is a very good thing - you can't fix a problem that you are hiding from

yourself. I hope that Obama's team will take the 2008-2009 numbers and add the actuals for these excluded expenditures in to provide a real comparison. It would also give the mainstream media and people like us the real comparison because we all know the republicans will compare the new budget to the previous years - ignoring the comparison is unfair.

[opihimoimoi]

2. Reality and Sanity Trumps Fantasy

Opi #21

[wiggs]

3. Good. Time for reality. Should also start giving accurate picture of inflation and

unemployment rates

[Median Democrat]

4. "Obama's Policies Lead To $2.7 Trillion Growth In Deficit!"

The Corporate Media Will Portray The Added Deficits As Obama's Fault. I am glad that Obama is being honest, because it was complete bullshit not to factor in the wars in Bush's budgets. Still, the Republicans will use this to suggests that the $2.7 trillion is due to Obama, while leaving out the fine print that it was always there to begin with, and that Obama simply stopped the policy of lying about it.

This is a great test of just how biased a news show is. Do they report the truth? Or, do they use my post title as the lead for their story?

[ProSense]

6. Then when it goes down, they'll claim it was never that high.

Republicans are assholes.

[Median Democrat]

7. Exactly

This reminds me of the predictions by Republicans that Bill Clinton's 1993 stimulus would lead to growing deficits and prolonged recessions.

[Cha]

5. A President who doesn't cheat, lie, or

steal..or kill for profit. I'm behind him all the way.

[Digit]

8. I am all for this...just make sure the public knows the difference

Go on TV if you have to, over and over again. You know CNN and MSNBC and the propaganda channel at Fox will not relate the stats willingly.