WE HAVE A BUDGET: IT'S NOT MONOPOLY MONEY

President Obama came out with his budget for 2011. We're spending $3.8 trillion, and only have about $2.2 trillion coming in this year. Hence the $1.6 trillion shortfall. As I noted a few posts back, $1.3 trillion of this amount was already on President Obama's desk before he arrived in Washington. The remainder is a product of the recession and the parasitic sociopaths on Wall Street damaging the economy far more than we thought.

Still, check out this cool budget expenditures interactive from the NY Times. This budget forecasting interactive tells what most of us already know: Projecting beyond two years is largely a futile endeavor. As an example, President Clinton's economic team failed to predict the level of their budget surpluses, while President Bush's economic team made surplus projections for fiscal year 2012 that will not materialize.

What's clear from this budget is that President Obama understands Vice President Cheney's pronouncement that "deficits don't matter" is both off the mark and - as if this needs to be said - is no way to approach a family's budget, let alone a nation's. Indeed, here's President Obama, speaking about our need to stop treating our budget process like we're playing with Monopoly money (which I wrote about two weeks ago).

“We simply cannot continue to spend as if deficits don’t have consequences, as if waste doesn’t matter, as if the hard-earned tax money of the American people can be treated like Monopoly money ...”

Unfortunately, if Republican extended comments are any indication, the Party of No seems prepared to continue their smoke & mirror games, as if the Monopoly Standard policies they initiated 30 years ago (i.e. supply-side tax cuts) hasn't undermined our nation's fiscal health enough. Whether America buys into the notion that the Republicans should be "rewarded" because President Obama hasn't cleaned up their economic mess fast enough will be one of the key issues this November.

Stay tuned.

- Mark