Category — budget

President-elect Obama’s promises to create budgetary savings by eliminating waste.  Let me start out by saying this goal conflicts with the earlier hints coming from his team that we need a huge FDR style budget busting stimulus.  Additionally, it looks a lot like Deval Patrick’s promises when he became governor, and like his friend Governor Patrick, it’ll go nowhere when the rubber meets the legislature.  The Pelosi/Reid Congress couldn’t even get the origional TARP done without a hefty load of earmarks and that bill was supposedly needed to avoid a financial Pearl Harbor.

I’ll remind the president-elect, as John McCain should have during the debates, that he doesn’t have a line item veto.  Therefore, I wish him loads of luck in finding the wasted billions, but it won’t do him much good since Congress controls the purse strings.  There’s not a snowballs chance in hell that he gets his party to comply with its 2006 promise to cut earmarks and pork.

Here’s a surprise—Governor Patrick says tax increases are on the table.  Looking at his massive new programs, fiscal restraint certainly never was.  His spending spree is all the more embarrassing given everyone knew the slowing economy meant tax revenues would be shrinking this year.  Yet the governor didn’t have the stomach to make any hard decisions when it came to spending priorities.

Ultimately, this probably matters very little to him.  If Barack is elected in November, he’ll be picking new curtains and desks for his DC office anyway.  Why not raise taxes on your way out the door when you won’t be around to feel the voter backlash?