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.