Deficit too Big to Cut?

With his big budget debut just a day away, President Obama is starting to sound the alarms about out-of-control spending and is promising to cut our national deficit in half by the end of his first term. (His notes on the urgency of fixing Social Security sound like echoes of President Bush.) To deliver on any of his economizing promises, Obama is going to have to do an awful lot of arm-twisting with the big-spenders in Congress.

Just today, the House Democrats unveiled an ominous -- oops! omnibus -- spending bill that would add $410 billion to the fiscal 2009 federal budget. (Fiscal 2009 ends Sept. 30.) That's 8 percent more than they tried to pass last fall but gave up because they knew Bush would veto it. House Speaker Pelosi calls it "unfinished business."

We see all these tickers out there about how much the Iraq war is costing. But is anyone tracking how much the 111th Congress is costing us? According to one ticker (http://gooznews.com/), we've spent more than $599 billion on the war as of 8 p.m. EST Monday. The war has been going on for about seven years. The 111th Congress, which hasn't been in session yet for two months, is starting to make that look like a drop in the bucket with its unending bailouts, stimulus, omnibus, junkets, etc.

Oh, and remember, these overzealous overspenders who know just what to do with your money have been in the majority for more than four years now. A lot of what's wrong with the economy falls at their feet.