shersy17 wrote:
Obama Beats Down Another Big Bush 
Lie
By Steve Benen, Washington Monthly
Posted on 
February 20, 2009,
President Obama has only been in office for a 
month, and I'm already tired of the phrase "change you can believe in." When he 
does something great, his supporters use it ("That's change we can 
believe in!"). When he does something misguided, his detractors use it 
("Whatever this is, it's not chance we can believe in"). This has become rather 
tiresome.


That said, the whole point of "change you can believe in," when it was used 
during the presidential campaign, was to highlight Obama's commitment to 
changing the way the system works. Americans had been misled so often about so 
many aspects of government over the last eight years, Obama wanted to return 
some integrity and intellectual honesty to the political process. The cliche 
was 
practically intended to be literal -- he would change the system, so that 
we could believe in it again.


And with that in mind, this 
is exactly the kind of change Obama promised to deliver.



  For his first annual budget next week, President Obama has banned four 
  accounting gimmicks that President George W. Bush used to make deficit 
  projections look smaller. The price of more honest bookkeeping: A budget that 
  is $2.7 trillion deeper in the red over the next decade than it would 
  otherwise appear, according to administration officials.



  
  The new accounting involves spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, 
  Medicare reimbursements to physicians and the cost of disaster 
responses.



  But the biggest adjustment will deal with revenues from the alternative 
  minimum tax, a parallel tax system enacted in 1969 to prevent the wealthy 
from 
  using tax shelters to avoid paying any income tax.




While budget sleight of hand and "magic asterisks" had become the norm, OMB 
Director Peter Orszag explained, "The president prefers to tell the truth, 
rather than make the numbers look better by pretending."



It's about damn time. The smoke-and-mirrors approach to which we've grown 
accustomed was ridiculous. It was a problem policymakers recognized, but didn't 
want to talk about, and had no interest in fixing. It's not only heartening to 
see Obama bring some sanity to the process, it will also have key practical 
consequences -- honest budgets lead to better policy making.



Noam 
Scheiber added that it will be "kinda helpful to have a budget that actually 
means something when you're debating public policy," and added the political 
upside to using honest budget numbers for a change: "Why not make the long-term 
deficit look as large as possible at the beginning of your term? Not only can 
you fairly blame your predecessor at that point; the bigger the deficit looks, 
the easier it is to show progress, which Obama will need to do as he runs for 
re-election. To take one example, you can't claim savings from drawing down in 
Iraq if you don't put Iraq spending on the budget in the first place (which 
Bush 
mostly didn't)."



I think that's largely right, but the politics might be more complicated than 
that. By bringing some integrity to the budget, Obama will also show some 
steep deficits, which will likely cause a major-league trantrum on the 
Hill.


John Cole offers the administration some excellent advice:



  The very first thing I would do if I were Peter Orszag and company, and 
  this is one of the very few times I actually hope someone in government 
  listens to me, is to go back and re-score the last decade or so of budgets 
  using the new accounting system, so when they roll this out they can say 
"Here 
  is what this year's budget would have looked like under the old system. Here 
  is what it looks like under the new system. Here are the past ten years worth 
  of budgets under the old system. Here they are under the new system." For 
  political reasons, this simply has to be done.

Steve Benen is "blogger in chief" of the popular Washington Monthly online 
blog, Political Animal. His 
background includes publishing The Carpetbagger Report, and writing for a 
variety of publications, including Talking Points Memo, The American Prospect, 
the Huffington Post, and The Guardian. He has also appeared on NPR's "Talk of 
the Nation," MSNBC's "Rachel Maddow Show," Air America Radio's "Sam Seder 
Show," 
and XM Radio's "POTUS '08." 
© 2009 Washington Monthly All rights 
reserved.
View this story online at: 
http://www.alternet .org/bloggers/ http://www. washingtonmonthl y.com/128032/

=======
  S1000+ 
  =======



--- On Sat, 2/21/09, [email protected] < wrote:


         
        
        








        


        
        


      
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"World-thread" group.
To post to this group, send email to [email protected]
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to 
[email protected]
For more options, visit this group at 
http://groups.google.com/group/world-thread?hl=en
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---

Reply via email to