In February, President Obama unveiled his irresponsible deficit-inflating 2012 proposed budget. By April, Obama hastily said “never mind,” scrapped that proposal and offered a vague Budget 2.0 speech after Congressman Paul Ryan (R – Wisconsin) embarrassed him by unveiling his debt-cutting budget roadmap.
The problem is that the so-called leader of the Free World was too afraid to offer any specificity whatsoever, focusing on his reelection instead of the nation’s intensifying fiscal emergency. At a House Budget Committee hearing last week, Rep. Ryan asked Congressional Budget Office (CBO) chief Douglas Elmendorf whether the CBO had yet been able to estimate Obama’s latest “budget.” Elmendorf’s not-so-subtle reply:
We don’t estimate speeches. We need much more specificity than was provided in that speech for us to do our analysis.”
Come to think of it, a lot of voters probably think back to the 2008 presidential campaign and say the same thing.