Wonderboy's Fiscal Sleights of Hand

Karl Rove wrote a succinct, fact-based piece in the Wall Street Journal a few weeks ago entitled "Obama's Fiscal Fantasy World."

Apparently, this piece was the first shot fired in Rove's recent explicit on-air war with Wonderboy chief political adviser David Axelrod. The latter has, of course, attempted to blame all spending on the prior administration.

Rove's piece from January 7 shows that won't wash.

What was really eye-opening was Rove's focus on how Wonderboy, under the guise of all sorts of emergency spending, as Rove notes, pumped up various expenditures,

"He did that by increasing discretionary domestic spending for the last half of fiscal year 2009 by 8% and then increasing it another 12% for fiscal year 2010.

So discretionary domestic spending now stands at $536 billion, up nearly 24% from President George W. Bush's last fully year budget in fiscal 2008 of $433.6 billion."

Rove then points out that our First Rookie plans to raid the $240B of repaid TARP funds, which were never meant to be spending, but, rather, temporary investments into then-troubled banks.

According to Rove's analysis, Wonderboy's administration is going to ratchet federal spending up to 24% of GDP, far above the long term post-WWII average of 20%.

Elsewhere, Rove has subsequently noted that the modest 2-3% domestic discretionary spending cuts now floated by Wonderboy's minions amounts to pocket change, in the wake of the 24% increase already swelling such spending.

One hopes Congressional Republicans heed Rove's caution in being sucked into the Democrat-dominated, prospective 'deficit reduction commission.' Rove, along with New Gingrich, worries that this is simply cover for Democrats to call for higher taxes to reduce deficits, rather than reduce spending.

Rove can be counted on to provide a cold, clear-eyed view of the reckless spending being perpetrated by Wonderboy, no matter what sorts of games his administration's lackey's try to play with the numbers.