Dems lack credibility on deficit reduction

The NTU report found Democratic spending proposals introduced during their first year with a congressional majority totaled $1.58 trillion in new spending in the House and $958 billion in new spending in the Senate. At the same time, Democrats only proposed $44.9 billion in cost reductions in the House and $61 billion in the Senate.

Democratic fiscal policies have converted the improved budgetary forecasts from the last GOP-controlled budget in 2006 into a fiscal nightmare scenario.

That year, CBO foresaw a $222 billion budget deficit for 2010 instead of the current $1.35 trillion deficit that Democratic fiscal policies have given us since 2007.

The same projection also foresaw a $38 billion surplus in 2012 instead of the $650 billion deficit being currently projected for that same year under current CBO data.

The 2006 CBO projection also foresaw a $259 billion deficit for 2008 instead of the $455 billion deficit that materialized at the end of the 2008 fiscal year—the first budgetary year Democrats had control of since they passed the budget for the 1995 fiscal year in 1994.

Congress, not the president, controls spending. And the president is barred by Supreme Court precedent dating back to the Nixon administration in the 1970s from not spending the money Congress allocates, so George W. Bush could not have prevented a single dollar appropriated by Congress from being spent even if had he wanted to.

Consequently, last year’s $1.4 trillion deficit had as much to do with the Democratic majority’s mismanagement of the federal budget as it had to do with the bad economy and Bush’s signing their spending proposals into law.

Democrats also share responsibility with the Bush administration for passing the unpopular $700 billion TARP bailouts, which most Republicans and many Democrats opposed, because they pushed it through Congress together with the president.

According to the Bureau of the Public Debt, the national debt mushroomed under the Democratic majority’s watch during the 110th Congress from $8.6 trillion in January 2007 to $10.6 trillion in January 2009—adding $2 trillion to the national debt.

When Barack Obama scolds the Bush administration for the state of the federal budget when he came into office, it rings hollow because he voted for both budgets Democrats passed during the 110th Congress, and he never went on record opposing his party’s spending orgy.

Now that Democrats hold both the White House and Congress, they have nowhere to hide the blame for their runaway spending, which was exemplified by last year’s $787 billion stimulus, $410 billion omnibus spending bill and tens of billions in additional bailouts for GM, Chrysler and others.

All of this has added $1.73 trillion to the national debt since Obama’s inauguration. If Obama and the Democrats think they can paper over their track record since taking over Congress in 2007 with a cosmetic deficit reduction panel and spending freeze starting next year they are mistaken.

Voters want real spending reductions and fiscal discipline, not smoke and mirrors.

John Rossomando is an experienced journalist whose work has been featured in numerous publications such as CNSNews.com, Newsmax and Crisis Magazine. He also served as senior managing editor of The Bulletin, a 100,000-circulation daily newspaper in Philadelphia and received the Pennsylvania Associated Press Managing Editors first-place award in 2008 for his reporting.