Obama's New Budget: Burden of Government Spending Rises More than Twice as Fast as Inflation

Daniel J. Mitchell The President’s new budget has been unveiled. There are lots of provisions that deserve detailed attention, but I always look first at the overall trends. Most specifically, I want to see what’s happening with the burden of government spending. And you probably won’t be surprised to see that Obama isn’t imposing any fiscal restraint. He wants spending to increase more than twice as fast as needed to keep pace with inflation. What makes these numbers so disappointing is that we learned last month that even a modest bit of spending discipline is all that’s needed to balance the budget. By the way, you probably won’t be surprised to learn that the President also wants a $651 billion net tax hike. That’s in addition to the big fiscal cliff tax hike from early last and the (thankfully small) tax increase in the Ryan-Murray budget that was approved late last year. P.S. Since we’re talking about government spending, I may as well add some more bad news. I’ve shared some really outrageous examples of government waste, but here’s a new example that has me foaming at the mouth. Government bureaucrats are flying in luxury and sticking taxpayers with big costs. Here are some of the odious details from the Washington Examiner. What can $4,367 buy? For one NASA employee, it bought a business-class flight from Frankfurt, Germany, to Vienna, Austria. Coach-class fare for the same flight was $39. The federal gov...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Source Type: blogs