The Obama budget for FY 2012 was voted down in the Democrat-led Senate 97-0. So the Obama budget for FY 2012, just released last week, is obviously a sham, a political document based on spending cuts that are either accounting gimmicks or non-starters (defense cuts, the doctor "fix" for Medicare reimbursements), and based on rosy scenarios about future economic growth. Its whole purpose is simply to tee up the President's demogoguery for the fall, when he'll claim that he would have created millions of new jobs if only the Republicans had passed his budget, and the only reason the Republicans didn't agree was because they refused to raise taxes on billionaires like Warren Buffett. That's the campaign in a nutshell.
But the budget is truly a sham for a bigger reason -- it does nothing to tackle long-term entitlement spending that will bankrupt us. Indeed, Tim Geithner, the Treasury Secretary, admitted it yesterday in testimony in the Senate:
Let's get that quote right and highlight it:
"You are right... even if Congress were to enact this budget, we would still be left with, in the outer decades as millions of Americans retire, what are still unsustainable commitments in Medicare and Medicaid."
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