Dan Calabrese

When President Obama “gets the message,” he evidently feels the need to send a message in return, and all the better if the message takes the form of a completely meaningless gesture.

Perhaps you’ve heard that the federal government is running a budget deficit will in excess of $1 trillion, thanks to the fiscal malpractice of Obama and the congressional Democrats who got their clocks cleaned in the November mid-term elections for this very reason (among others).

Not even a little serious.

Since the voters sent Obama a message that $1 trillion deficits as far as the eye can see (as he himself proposes) may not be the best idea, Obama has decided to send back one of those “message received” gestures by freezing the pay of all federal workers for the next two years.

Remember I said the deficit is more than $1 trillion a year? Well, this pay-freezing stunt will save $5 billion a year, so the deficit will now be . . . er, still more than $1 trillion a year. Besides, the entire thing would be obliterated several times over by the Democrats’ latest effort to once again extend unemployment benefits well beyond their established expiration date.

If Obama wants to seriously cut into the deficit, even if he’s only willing to take politically painless steps, there’s a lot more he can do than this. For example, there is still $250 billion unspent from the Trouble Asset Relief Program. Since the nation is well past the mortgage meltdown that brought on a potential depression, and inspired TARP as the solution, why not cancel that spending immediately? That would cut the deficit a lot more than $5 billion, wouldn’t you think?

Ah, but if Obama did that, he would be admitting that excessive spending is actually the problem, and Obama doesn’t believe that, nor does he want you to believe that. Obama believes federal spending, which is currently approaching 25 percent of GDP, is exactly where it should be, and he wants the nation to finally accept this and come to terms with the massive tax increases that would be necessary to finance this kind of government largess on a permanent basis.

Of course, such tax increases would depress the economy, shrink the tax base and result in less revenue, but let’s not trouble ourselves with supply-side realities. The fact of the matter is that Obama has no interest in cutting spending, and has no interest in cutting the deficit unless and until the method of doing so is to bring tax revenue up, rather than bringing spending down, to make the ledger even.

That’s why any and all spending cuts – or in the case of the federal worker pay freeze, cancellation of spending increases – are tiny and meaningless. They match the president’s commitment to fiscal responsibility. Perfectly.

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One Response to “Hey, how about a meaningless gesture to pretend we care about the deficit?”