Playing Games with the Budget

President Obama’s budget for 2012 was released earlier today, and like many others in the blogosphere, I’m unimpressed and frankly a little offended and disappointed. How could the man who created the Simpson-Bowles Commission propose a budget that flies in the face of everything that commission stood for?

Maybe it’s not so hard to imagine that the President would leave defense and entitlement spending untouched. After all, who would be so courageous? I’ve learned enough by this point to know that Pres. Obama will not stand up for the long-term causes that truly matter, that might make him hated in the present but revered in the long term.

But why did he have to, yet again, stick a finger in the eye of his more liberal supporters? Minor cuts to the Pell Grant program? A big thank you to his young, college-age backers who so ardently voiced their support for Hope and Change.

Larger (and more painful) cuts to energy assistance for the poor, and other adjustments that will directly affect working- and middle-class families? How could that possibly be a good move, even if, as some are saying, this budget is a purely political move? Why alienate such a broad spectrum of supporters?

The list goes on, but the point is that this is not the budget Pres. Obama needed to release. At a time when he has little to no sway over Congress, why introduce a budget that has little chance of getting passed, but a very high chance of causing popular backlash? You will not win over the House Republicans with these cuts, Mr. President. You will only create resentment in your own ranks, and for what? I see very little political upside to this budget plan.

I can only hope that these cuts do not get approved, because they are a painful yet insignificant part of the government’s overall spending. If Pres. Obama was truly serious about cutting the deficit and the debt, he would be well-inclined to read over Ezra Klein’s description of the situation:

If you look at how the federal government spends our money, it’s an insurance conglomerate protected by a large, standing army.

We need large, targeted and careful cuts to the bloated defense budget, and serious entitlement reform. It can be done, and Pres. Obama has the rhetorical power to get it started, but instead he’s playing games.

EDIT: Turns out Pres. Obama inserted language into the budget calling for Congress to begin talking about Social Security reform.

The President believes that we should come together now, in bipartisan fashion, to strengthen Social Security for the future. He calls on the Congress to follow the example of great party leaders in the past — such as Speaker Thomas P. O’Neill, Jr. and President Ronald Reagan — and work in a bipartisan fashion to strengthen Social Security for years to come.

If he continues to push for these talks, that will be a positive sign that he’s at least somewhat serious.