Obama's Budget Shows That Liberals Don't Come Cheap

Obama's recent budget proves one thing: liberals are not purchased cheaply. The White House's budget is an obvious political document targeted at the upcoming midterm elections. As such, it gives great insight into what liberal priorities are and, if given free rein, just how much they would cost.

Obama's latest budget would significantly increase federal revenues and spending - not just in comparison to current projections, but compared to his own budget from last year.

Over ten years, the administration estimates its budget would produce $3.145 trillion more in revenues than the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicts would be raised under current law. While helped somewhat by more generous economic assumptions, it is helped far more by changes in law it is proposing, which would raise almost $2 trillion more in revenues.

Its revenue totals are not simply far greater than CBO's totals though. They are also far greater than Obama's - $2.465 trillion greater than his last year's budget proposed over its first ten years.

Spending is a similar story, though a less straightforward one. Because this budget does not include last year's proposal to use chained-CPI to calculate increases to federal entitlement programs (which would reduce their cost), it spends $2.2 trillion more in its first ten years than Obama's budget did last year.

However, simply looking at the numbers, Obama's budget appears to spend only $171 billion more than CBO's estimated current spending over the next ten years. Looking inside the numbers tells a different story: spending grows by about $1 trillion.

The administration covers its higher outlays by claiming $700 billion in lower spending on overseas military operations (which CBO by law must carry at current levels). It also does not contain Medicare spending for policies it claims to support - thus shaving another $250 billion from what its total otherwise would have been.

Spending is not only hidden, but frontloaded too. For 2015 and 2016, the last two years of this administration, spending is considerably higher. Over these two years, the current White House budget surpasses its previous budget's spending in these years by $128 billion and it exceeds CBO's estimated spending by $197 billion.

Such higher taxing and spending makes this appear to be the White House's wish list. However, if Obama wanted to raise taxes this much, why did he not do it when he was first in office? He had the political ability to do it then - and it would have been far easier than passing ObamaCare.

He could have used the Senate budget procedure known as "reconciliation," which would have allowed these tax hikes by a simple majority vote - not the 60 he later needed to pass ObamaCare. Instead, Obama agreed to extend the Bush tax cuts.

Last year the administration insisted on a large tax hike on the wealthy and the economy responded with anemic 1.9% real GDP growth. Yet the high tax, slow growth connection did not scare the White House away from proposing another huge hike in this budget - a hike so big that income taxes as a percentage of the economy would reach 9.9% of GDP in 2024, a level only reached once in the previous 40 years.

The economy does not provide a justification for this year's spending increase either. Certainly many on the left will claim it would be "stimulative." However were that true, why does the economy continue to mope along despite high federal spending? From 2007 to 2009, federal spending increased by 29% and there it has essentially stayed for the last four years. But while federal spending grew greatly, the economy has grown feebly.

The political reason for these tax and spending levels is more far more convincing than any policy reasons. They were included to inspire the liberal base in the upcoming elections - to rally this most loyal of this administration's supporters for one last election. While such tax and spending levels have not produced economic benefits, they are hoped to produce political ones.

For the liberal base, such figures are an ideal they would like to see pursued - regardless of any economic justification. The fact that they do not work, does not outweigh liberals' desire that they should.

This budget was not written for the White House's economic priorities as much as for the left's political ones. For its first two years, the White House had time and power to put these priorities into law. Now, fast approaching its last two years in office, the White House can no longer hope to enact them. It can only print them and hope the left will read them.