“Last month,” writes Conn Carroll in the Washington Examiner,

. . . the CBO’s Budget and Economic Outlook showed federal spending would total $44.251 trillion through 2022. Obama’s budget released yesterday shows $46.959 trillion in spending through 2022. That is a $2.7 trillion spending increase. For 2012 alone, Obama’s budget increases spending by $195 billion.

No wonder then, as Carroll reports, that

Senate Budget Committee Ranking Member Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., challenged Office of Management and Budget Deputy Director Jeffrey Zients to resign this morning, unless he could substantiate his claim that President Obama’s budget does not increase spending.

“Do you propose to spend more money over the next ten years than what the Budget Control Act and current law would cause us to spend?” Sessions asked.

Via Instapundit.  So, the president plans to increase spending over the levels he and Congress agreed upon last summer.

Now, recall the “astounding” figure Bob Schieffer cited in the third presidential debate in 2008 of a federal deficit of $455.  The then-Democratic presidential nominee replied promising not only a “net spending cut”, but also saying that if we made investments then (i.e., increased government spending), then we would save “in the future“, adding

But what is absolutely true is that, once we get through this economic crisis and some of the specific proposals to get us out of this slump, that we’re not going to be able to go back to our profligate ways.

In other words, while he favors a temporary burst of spending to lift us out of the economic crisis, once it has passed, he envisioned a new era of fiscal responsibility.

Having studied the president’s budget proposal, Liz Peek finds, however, that the Democrat intends to extend our profligate ways far into the future:

Through certain spending cuts, some gimmickry (counting not spending on two wars as deficit reduction) and $1.5 trillion in tax hikes, the budget gap is projected to shrink to $575 billion in 2018, comfortably beyond the range of the country’s political telescope.

Via Instapundit.  Guess that means Obama thinks we’ll still be going through this economic crisis six years hence.  ($575 billion is greater than $455.)

Just to see how ill-suited the president is for the times, all you have to do is look at the budget the White House released yesterday.  Riots erupt in Greece as that debt-ridden nation’s government attempts to adopt an austerity plan to address its problems.  Moody’s downgrades the debt ratings of nine European countries.

Just shy of four years ago, candidate Barack Obama seemed aware of these risks.  In the third presidential debate in 2008, when Bob Schieffer asked Mr. Obama and his then-Republican rival about their spending plans, he noted that that year’s deficit would reach “an astounding record high $455 billion dollars“.  Even as he refused to back down from his “$750 billion dollar rescue package”, the then-Democratic nominee acknowledged that we had been “living beyond our means” and were “going to have to make some adjustments.”

Then, rhetorically at least, he acknowledged the then-emerging fiscal crisis.  Now, he seems oblivious to it.  His budget yesterday thus represented a step in precisely the wrong direction.

It forecasts deficits as far as the eye can see, with more than twice the red ink in FY2013 as as the “astounding” figure Schieffer cited. (more…)

Last night on Sean Hannity’s show, Dick Morris contended that the administration had “deliberately calculated“* the whole contraception kerfuffle in order to great the impression that the GOP wishes to ban contraception.  Obama, he opined, wants to run against the GOP on social issues.  He reminded viewers of the question former Clinton administration official, now ABC News reporter, George Stephanopolous asked at the New Hampshire Republican debate on January 7.

(Interesting how this issue comes to the fore just before the release of the administration’s debt-heavy federal budget.)

“Everyone,” writes law professor William A. Jacobson at Legal Insurrection,

. . . at least on our side of the aisle, shook their heads in disbelief as to why Stephanopoulos was bringing up the issue.  There was no active controversy over contraception, it wasn’t in the news, and there were far more pressing political issues, yet what seemed like an eternity of debate time was devoted to the subject at the insistence of Stephanopoulos.

. . . .

Well what do you know, about a month later the Obama administration proposes administrative rules under Obamacare which would require free contraception be provided even by religious institutions which oppose contraception on religious grounds.

Wonder if there’s been some coordination between the White House and Mr. Stephanopolous.  It’s happened before.  Just after Obama took office, John F. Harris reported on what he dubbed, “a street-corner bull session between four old friends who suddenly find themselves standing once more at the busiest intersection of politics and media in Washington“:

Carville calls White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel.

Emanuel calls ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent George Stephanopoulos.

Are Mr. Emanuel’s former colleagues and current successor (as White House chief of staff) still communicating with the ABC News reporter?

It’s time Mr. Stephanopolous subject himself to some questioning.

* (more…)

Last fall, a reader from the Bay Area was visiting Los Angeles joined me for a meal at a restaurant in LA’s Farmer’s Market. As we faulted the incumbent for his failed big government policies, a woman sitting at the next booth turned toward us and accused us of being racists in our criticism of the president.

It is odd how some can only see opposition to the president’s policies as rooted in racism or a desire to sabotage the economy. Some folks on the left can only see us as self-hating because, through their distorted lens, the GOP has been built on bigotry. “They cannot help,” as Christian Adams put it on Sunday in a piece on Andrew Breitbart, “but attribute any opposition to racism and bigotry.”

Via (Instapundit.)  Well, now there’s a video on how Breitbart is fighting back against such name-calling:

Just caught this on Yahoo!