You got that right, ladies and gents. Obama was asked about his OMB projections on deficit and debt ($1.5 trillion a year into eternity), and he said thus:
"What I want to do is be completely agnostic in terms of solutions".
Bush laid out $800 billion in TARP payments in September 2008- in response to a situation that both sides regarded as monstrous: a market so volatile that lenders were in the process of freezing the credit market. Not slowing, folks- freezing it until further notice. Even this conservative made a note of the moment as one of necessary government action.
This TARP payment ballooned the 2008 deficit from @$400 billion to $1.3 trillion. Obama is running with that as a baseline, and touting the deficit level as something he "inherited from Bush". I won't bother going into what a lying sack of s**t you have to be to believe yourself saying something like that.
I'll instead go into what I would do to announce that I was now to make it clear that I was trying to renormalize: over $500 billion of the "stimulus" money has not been spent yet- give it back. Second, return all the repaid TARP money to the Treasury.
That is a trillion dollars left unspent. Adjusting the 2009 budget with that would do amazing things to all the small companies out there hoarding cash because they don't know what kind of regulatory world they will be living in next year.
Obama won't do that. He has created a baseline where he needs (at least) an extra trillion a year to get by, and is posing a special "bi-partisan" commission to address the issue. What will come out of that, folks, is whatever may be left in your wallet.
Reagan cut taxes in 1981, and used the deficits to drag Congress into cutting spending. Obama is raising spending, and is about to drop the hammer on taxes to make up the difference.
I raised my fears about Obama during the presidential campaign in 2008. I was laughed at. I guessed at them again after he took office, and I was told I wasn't "seeing the bigger picture".
Well I think by now I can see the whole picture, and it scares the hell out of me. The only good thing he is doing for himself right now is that he is acting like such a hallucinatory nightmare with the budget that I am temporarily distracted to what a disaster the man is on the War on Terrorism.
So, the promise to not raise taxes on anybody below $250k in income, "not one thin dime" is about to be history. It's your money, folks. If you hold it open and he takes it, it's your own damned fault.