Excellent post -- I too hope he takes Benen's advice to heart.
Otherwise it will lend a great deal of credence to Republican
complaints that we begin to get the debt down -- just at the moment
when 1) we need cash to create jobs and restore confidence; 2)
bickering over the costs of restoring our economy has become a great
game for the republicans to play while they watched the nation burn up
cash for the last 8 years.

Obama will begin a series of talks with democrats and republicans on a
plan to begin to pay down debt -- but until he wants to get into the
FDR cycle of taking care of debt "too soon" (1938-39) then it should
be a plan for the "future."



On Feb 21, 7:14 am, "Sumerian.." <[email protected]> wrote:
> 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:
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