Obama’s Lame Duck Budget
10th February 2016
Read it.
President Obama has unveiled his last budget proposal, which calls for $4.1 trillion in spending for FY 2017. In the final year of his presidency Obama is by definition a lame duck. With Republicans in control of Congress–even though it doesn’t always seem like it–he is the lamest possible duck. As always, Obama’s final budget purports to cover the next ten years. But since Obama will be gone in a mere eleven months, why should anyone care what he wants ten years from now?
Investor’s Business Daily points out that 70% of Obama’s budget consists of writing checks to individuals. It’s a sign of the times: the principal purpose of the federal government is one not found in the Constitution, redistributing wealth, most often from the young and middle-aged to the elderly.
Obama’s budget is a fantasy in several respects. It calls for programs that have no chance of being enacted. It relies on economic growth projections that will not be realized. It proclaims goals–stop the Earth’s climate from changing, as it has been doing for millions of years!–that cannot be achieved by any federal action. In one respect, however, it is not a fantasy: it would transfer trillions of dollars from those who earned the money to Democratic Party constituencies, like “green” energy scammers. At bottom, Democratic Party policies are motivated by a cold, hard realism.
And the chattering classes wonder why people are voting for Trump.