The Administration's 2011 Budget

This week's release of the administration's budget seems to indicate how cynical Wonderboy is when it comes to the American electorate.

You can read or listen to the many pundits who believe that the president purposely backed away from any significant budget cutting in order to play a straight political game of 'gotcha' with House GOP leaders and any/the potential Republican nominee for the White House in 2012. This line of thinking goes that, rather than be first to actually cut entitlement spending, Wonderboy punted, waiting for the GOP to do so. Then he'll have the predictable budget tussle with Boehner's House members and dare him to shut down the federal government over the impasse.

If it worked for Bubba with Newt, why not try it again?

Maybe because Bubba hadn't just borrowed and spent more in two years than all presidents prior to him, cumulatively? And maybe because Newt didn't have a Paul Ryan or Eric Cantor on his team? Yes, I like and admire Dick Armey, but somehow these new guys seem more in earnest.

And they have such a huge target at which to shoot. The details of Wonderboy's pathetic budget are easily available from various sources. Consider some of the more indefensible elements:

- balanced budgets are promised by mid-decade, but only by excluding interest costs
- government revenues from new taxes of roughly $300B actually outweigh cuts in discretionary spending of only $280B over the period of the budget forecast
- despite promises prior to election, and his own deficit commission's recommendations, Wonderboy's budget fails to tackle entitlements at all
- the 2012 deficit remains huge, at $1.3T, a record only approached by the 1945 budget.

It's instructive to recall that Newt's era, beginning in 1994, is now nearly 20 years ago. No high-speed internet back then of serious size. No social networking, blogs, or much in the way of cable news. No smart phones, iPads or texting.

All that is changed now. Those who wish to be are completely plugged into breaking news and communicating about it with kindred voters.

Further, last November's elections were a complete rebuke to the excessive spending of this administration and the Democratic Congress. To behave as he is doing now, Wonderboy is making a huge gamble that voters weren't really serious about deficits and spending.

I suppose that he figures whereas the House power change came from 435 independent races, he only has to beat one Republican. And as an incumbent, and the first black president, he has built-in advantages which will let him win without much trouble.

Then again, Gerry Ford, Jimmy Carter, and George H.W. Bush all had the incumbency and still lost. And that's in just the past 35 years. Ford pardoned Nixon, Carter performed badly on all fronts, and Bush lost the luster of retaking Kuwait as the US economy spiraled into recession.

Wonderboy has spent too much on a useless stimulus, angered most voters with a sweeping, expensive health care bill they didn't want, while making a mockery of legislative rules to get it passed, while performing badly on the international front, as well.

Don't you think he'll have to answer for "losing Egypt?" And how his vaunted 'I'm not W' and 'I'm a Muslim like them' spiels haven't worked anywhere in the Mideast?

While some pundits view the First Rookie as simply, yet shrewdly, engaging in time-tested incumbent politics for re-election, I think he's just being himself- clueless, arrogant and detached. I think we're seeing less intelligent calculation and more solipsistic inward smugness and insularity.

So, to me, this budget, technically for the year of the next election, leaves Wonderboy vulnerable on the one front Americans always understand- domestic economic issues.

I think this is a huge miscalculation on his part, and will ultimately lead to his defeat in 2012.