A Master Politician ...

President Barack Obama

And gifted orator ... yet a fiscal fool.  His 2013 budget proposal is so ludicrous it should have been written with crayons on shirt cardboards and floated into Congress affixed to helium balloons tied to hyenas's tails.  Even the liberals are laughing (see: The Atlantic Story).   It cynically would produce at minimum a $1.3 trillion deficit for our next fiscal year ... a suicide note.  And yet Obama has backed the Republicans into a corner politically so that they cannot force the Democrats to cut spending to pay for the payroll tax cuts ... in order to try to keep the Social Security program solvent for our children. 

Silly Democrat Harry Reid brought last year's Presidential budget submission to a vote in the Senate.  It lost 97-0.  He won't make the same mistake this year ... it won't even be brought up for a vote.  Yet the President will say this is another instance of a do-nothing Congress.  And the American people won't understand this inane and dangerous jester-prank.

In fact this is a good way to differentiate good policy from good politics.  Good policy is a statesman's attempt to do right by the country ... whereas good politics is the demagogue's attempt to push any agenda no matter how damaging if it is beyond the comprehension of the American public.  And the media will cooperate to make it sound like good policy.  Unfortunately we have a consummate politician at our helm ...

Great Idea ...

Wrong person.  The Barry, in an election-year U-turn is proposing measures that would make our federal government leaner and meaner.  See: Earthlink Article.  Three measures he has proposed are:

1) merging six major trade and commerce agencies into one and eliminating the Commerce Department, 2) tax incentives to bring jobs back to the U.S., and 3) eliminating corporate tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas (does this include G.E.?).

Now this would be a giant HOORAY if Obama's track record indicated that he was trustworthy on such matters.  Unfortunately, he pulled a trillion dollar scam on the American people with the stimulus package in 2009 that did little more than siphon federal tax dollars into public service unions and produced very few "shovel-ready jobs" as promised.  So one has to look sideways at this new proposal and expect that, if Congress were to approve it as is (note the corporate tax increases ... most every large company has foreign affiliates), Administration magicians would find some way to augment the Democrat re-election war chest with more resources.

Or, if Congress were not to endorse this pig-in-a-poke proposal, then The Barry would have one more bullet-point to decry in his re-election campaign ... which seems to be pointing toward his running against a "do-nothing" Congress.  So the U.S. legislature is boxed in and will probably have to pass such a measure.  But, the House of Representatives should take this opportunity to expand this law even further into significant government downsizing and include so many caveats that Obama can't find his way into reversing its effect.  Then, if Harry Reid does Obama's dirty work and kills this proposal in the Senate (more do-nothing evidence) ... or, if The Barry wouldn't ink such a measure, then the real purpose of this election-year grandstanding would be revealed ... which, hopefully, would then be communicated to the American public (ha ha).