Barack Obama Doesn't Have a Clue When It Comes to Fiscal Responsibility

Barack today proved that he is the bigget showman. With our government now facing a budget deficit of almost 80% of GDP and on the culp of a "stress test" showing that all of this debt has been incurred to make banks stronger, he called a media event this morning where wanted to talk about the importance of removing excess government expenditures. He singled out two things to be cut. First, he wants to cut the US attache to UNESCO in Paris. He claimed that the government spends hundreds of thousands of dollars to employ a single person who interfaces with UNESCO and that expenditure in unnecessary. It seemed like an odd expense to single out, especially as the US has not been a full member of UNESCO since the early 1980's, and merely keeps a representative there to monitor how badly UNESCO appropriates UN funds, which in turn seems like a worthwhile thing to do as the US is still funding about a quarter of the UN's budget. Second, he wanted to cut a child literacy program which he says is not up to par. I am certainly not a liberal, but I think that is also an odd thing to cut.

While Barack singled out these expenses, they are both relatively minor in the big picture of government expenses. But, by singling out these two, he conveniently managed to avoid confronting any of the real pork barrel projects backed by the Democrats in Congress.

Just after the press conference, Jared Bernstein, who is Biden's Chief Economist, went on CNBC to explain that the government's policy is to increase expenditures dramatically to confront the economic crisis, and then cut them dramatically in later years. But, the Administration is going to need to be a whole lot more confrontational with Congress than Obama showed today if it is ever going to be fiscally responsible.

My bet is that we will not be fiscally responsible as long as the Democrats control both Houses and the Presidency. This will lead to massive inflation and financial displacement.

This is what we are getting for electing a President whose only experience was running a a UChicago graduate school class.