Yesterday's Wall Street Journal Online ran an editorial by Michael Boskin, a professor of economics at Stanford University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, explaining how President Obama's budget will impact American families. It is a rather complex article, complete with charts, but I will attempt to highlight it here.
President Obama's characterization of the budge is misleading. According to the editorial:
"He claims to reduce the deficit by half, to shave $2 trillion off the debt (the cumulative deficit over his 10-year budget horizon), and not to raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year. While in a Clintonian sense correct (depends on what the definition of "is" is), it is far more accurate to describe Mr. Obama's budget as almost tripling the deficit. It adds $6.5 trillion to the national debt, and leaves future U.S. taxpayers (many of whom will make far less than $250,000) with the tab. And all this before dealing with the looming Medicare and Social Security cost explosion."
The impact of the debt being incurred by the government will not be felt until President Obama leaves office (isn't that convenient?), but theoretically, the cost will be $34,000 per family in tax increases. Mr. Boskin describes the level of peacetime debt as three times above what he considers the safety limit. I hope this budget will be changed in the coming years by voting in a new congress that will do away with the unnecessary expansion of the federal government.
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