The Democrat controlled Senate Budget Committee just released the linked summary of the President's Jobs/Deficit plan showing that the plan involves, even assuming the plan will work out as advertised, no net spending reductions. The new stimulus is 110% paid for by new taxes. The plan also includes no entitlement reforms - other than reducing payments to doctors and hospitals which will only mean shortages of both for medicare and medicaid patients. Indeed, he has threatened to veto any bill that actually reforms entitlements unless he gets his big tax increases. No mention of the free trade agreements which he wants passed but has not sent to the Hill. No mention of the regulatory stranglehold on business. No mention, indeed, of anything that might actually help.
This is the most unhelpful hodgepodge of a proposal I can remember. Even from a Keynsian perspective it makes no sense whatsoever since it amounts to a net deficit decrease. It seems cobbled together from a bunch of policies that either poll well or are favorites of the base.
We know nobody with influence over at the White House has ever run a business. But one wonders, after hearing this, whether anyone over there even took an Econ 101 course.
And, of course, the "plan" is still not real legislation that can be scored by the CBO or taken up by Congress.
November 2012 cannot come soon enough.
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