Obama Unveils Whopping $3.6 Trillion Budget, Sets Aside $634 Billion for Health Care "Down Payment"

Fox News reports: President Obama on Thursday unveiled a $3.55 trillion budget for next year, a spending plan that sets aside billions for health care and the ailing financial industry and keeps the federal deficit north of $1 trillion... Obama said "we must add to our deficits in the short-term to provide immediate relief to families and get our economy moving"... In addition to next year's spending, Obama proposed more immediate changes that would push spending to $3.94 trillion in the current year. That would result in a record deficit Obama projects will hit $1.75 trillion... Obama...pledged to make big investments in energy, education and health care. The fiscal 2010 budget sets aside a "reserve fund" of $634 billion as a "down payment" on the costs of universal health care coverage over 10 years. The budget, while not specifically calling for additional bank bail out funds, also creates a budget allocation of $750 billion for the Treasury Department to purchase financial assets of struggling banks. This amount is $50 billion larger than the first bank bailout."... The cost of the stimulus bill and the increased bailout support would push the deficit for this year to $1.75 trillion, nearly four times last year's record $455 billion and a percentage of the economy -- just over 12 percent -- not seen since World War II. The deficit would remain near $1 trillion over the next two years before dropping to $581 billion in 2012 and $533 billion in 2013, the year that Obama has pledged to cut the deficit he inherited in half.

Reuters described Obama's plans saying that "President Barack Obama forecast the biggest U.S. deficit since World War Two" and described the "eye-popping $1.75 trillion deficit for the 2009 fiscal year" that is projected in Obama's first budget. Reuters continues pointing out that this "is equal to 12.3 percent of U.S. gross domestic product -- the largest share since 1945 when the country ran a shortfall of 21.5 percent of GDP." The news report declares that "federal spending is skyrocketing."

Toby Harnden, the U.S. editor of the Telegraph, writes that "the US Census bureau estimates that the current US population is 304,059,724. Dividing the $3.552 trillion by that gives us close to the $11,833 that Drudge came up with. ABC's Jake Tapper reports that there wil be $989 billion in new taxes over the next decade. I'm an American taxpayer and the starkest figure is what this could cost me. The latest figure I could find for the number of US taxpayers is 138,893,908 returns in 2007 here. By my reckoning, that's $25, 573.48 each."

"I agree with the president that we need to make some tough decisions regarding how we spend taxpayer dollars. Unfortunately, at this juncture, while the American people are tightening their belts, Washington seems to be taking its belt off," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said in response. "This budget makes clear that the era of big government is back, and Democrats want you to pay for it," House Minority Leader John Boehner said in his statement.

Unbelievably, this is being labeled by the administration as the "New Era of Responsibility" budget.
Tweet