Obama's numbers start to unravel

Wow! It really did not take long. President Obama gave his budget cutting speech this afternoon, and the numbers he put forward are already unraveling. On FNC's special report, the head of the Office of Management and Budget in the White House was asked why Obama used a 12 year time line instead of the 10 year budget that all the other plans use. After some discussion, the head of OMB admitted that the deficit reduction in 10 years under the Obama "plan" was 3 trillion dollars. In other words, fully a quarter of the supposed deficit reduction comes in years eleven and twelve, so Obama's plan does not meet the target of the deficit reduction commission for a 4 trillion dollar cut in ten years. But it gets worse. The head of OMB also admitted that the numbers used by Obama are reductions from the budget projections used by Obama in his proposed 2011 budget. That confirms that Obama's numbers absolutely include the one trillion dollars in supposed reductions that result from the freeze in discretionery spending included in the old Obama proposal for 2012. As a result, the reductions are down to 2 trillion bucks. It also confirms that the 78 billion in cuts in the 2011 budget that was just finalized last week are also not considered in the Obama numbers. That means that about another half trillion dollars in cuts over ten years are in place, so the Obama reductions are now down to 1.5 trillion dollars. Since the tax increases are supposed to be one trillion dollars, that means that the Obama cuts are actually just half a trillion dollars.

So, Obama announces $4 trillion in cuts, but it is actually half a trillion in cuts. And that is being kind. As I previously wrote, Obama claims he will find half a trillion dollars in savings in Medicare, except that same half a trillion dollars was already used before to fund Obamacare.

The only proper conclusion to be reached about the president's speech is that it was written by someone who just does not understand the budget or how cuts to spending actually work.

I realize that Obama was speaking to his base in full campaign mode, but the president of the USA ought to at least try to be truthful when he addresses major policy matters. I do not think that truthfulness is too much to ask from the president.

Obama has got to go!