One
of the President's more amusing fiscal sleights-of-hand is his claim
that the federal government has been enduring "austerity." Taxpayers
should be so lucky. The nearby table shows the arc of tax revenues and
spending during the Obama Presidency, and you can see they are both up.
Washington has rarely had it so good.
The feds spent $2.98 trillion in 2008 and
Mr. Obama is proposing to spend $1 trillion more than that in fiscal
2015. The Pelosi-Obama stimulus blew out the bank in 2009-2011, the GOP
House imposed a modicum of restraint in the next two years, but Mr.
Obama is going back to the Pelosi future from here on out.
His
budget would increase outlays by nearly $450 billion from fiscal 2013,
and almost none of it for defense. Spending in 2015 would hit 21.4% of
GDP, up from 20.8% in 2013. Outlays would rise by another $1 trillion by
2020, much of it fueled by the exploding costs of ObamaCare,
and would reach an astonishing $6 trillion by 2024. If Democrats do
take the House and Senate, you can bet spending will rise even faster.
Mr.
Obama's budget nonetheless says that the deficit will fall to $564
billion in 2015, or 3.1% of GDP. How would that happen? Well, because
tax revenues are booming. Revenues hit $2.77 trillion in 2013—a new
federal record—and the Obama budget foresees them growing another 20%,
to $3.33 trillion in fiscal 2015. Receipts will hit 18.3% of GDP in
2015, well above the 40-year average of 17.4%, and they'll keep rising
to 19.9% a decade from now. But Mr. Obama says the government is starved
for revenue and thus any tax reform must raise another $1 trillion on
top of all this.
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