One of the things that every politician learns at some point is words matter. Everything you say, especially in the midst of campaigning, can eventually be used against you. This becomes a huge issue when your rhetoric rarely matches your actions.
With that in mind, Barack Obama recently sat down for a fairly friendly interview with a Fox affiliate in Atlanta. At one point in the interview, the reporter gave the President a chance to explain a statement he made soon after coming into office. The statement was his infamous promise to “cut the deficit in half” by the end of his first term. That has clearly not happened.
President Obama used the question as an opportunity to deflect blame for his broken promise, instead explaining the fault lies with the fact that “this recession turned out to be a lot deeper than any of us realized”. This deflection of responsibility would make more sense if the facts matched up with the President’s claims.
In the first place, it seems unlikely that the recession was actually much worse than Obama imagined. Over a month before President Obama made the promise to cut the deficit in half in 2009, he proclaimed to ABC that the recession was the “worst since the Great Depression.”
How could Obama have simultaneously believed that it was the worst recession since the Great Depression and also been surprised by its depth? That recession actually ended just four months later, long before much of the new spending that Obama has implemented.
President Obama’s argument would also make more sense if the rising deficit was due mainly to reductions in revenue, not huge spending increases. However, the reality is spending has significantly gone up during this administration.
In fact, Obama’s recent budget proposes a 2.7 Trillion dollar increase in spending against the current Congressional Budget Office Baseline and adds 3.6 trillion dollars to the national debt. That is a stunning proposal for someone claiming to be concerned about cutting the deficit.
So much so, that liberal Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank reacted to the White House proposal by saying it was an evasion of “anything resembling a serious budget proposal.” The president has consistently talked tough on the deficit and yet made proposals that would only lead to a growing debt.
This dichotomy can best be explained by the conflict between Obama’s political instincts and his ideological commitment to more government. The problem is that, as Obama admits; this spending will “leave our children with a debt they cannot repay.” He has tried to get away with continuously increasing government spending while at the same time feigning concern for the deficit.
The real question is – Will Obama be judged on his empty rhetoric or continuous action come November?
