Obama on Spending: Iraq Funding "Wasteful and Low-Priority"

Barack Obama has over-promised on various campaign spending proposals, and as president he'll either break his pledges or break the budget, the Los Angeles Times reports:

In more than a year of campaigning, Barack Obama has made a long list of promises for new federal programs costing tens of billions of dollars, many of them aimed at protecting people from the pain of a souring economy.

But if he wins the presidency, Obama will be hard-pressed to keep his blueprint intact. A variety of budget analysts are skeptical that the Democrat's agenda could survive in the face of large federal budget deficits and the difficulty of making good on his plan to raise new revenue by closing tax loopholes, ending the Iraq war and cutting spending that is deemed low-priority.

Like predecessors who also had to square far-reaching promises with inescapable budget realities, they say, a President Obama might need to jettison pieces of Obama-ism.

"I don't think it all adds up," Isabel Sawhill, an official in President Clinton's Office of Management and Budget, said of Obama's spending plans....

"In remarks he had intended to deliver in North Carolina, Obama said his plan would "not only ensure the economic security of middle-class families in the long term, but also the need to give them a chance for some relief in the short term, to make sure that Americans aren't just getting by but getting ahead."

Among other proposals during the course of the campaign, Obama has said he would strengthen the nation's bridges and dams ($6 billion a year), help make men better fathers ($50 million a year) and aid Iraqis displaced by the war ($2 billion in one-time spending). Last week, he pledged to give religious and community groups $500 million a year to provide summer education to low-income children.

Other proposals are more costly. Obama wants to extend health insurance to more people (part of a $65-billion-a-year health plan), develop cleaner energy sources ($15 billion a year), curb home foreclosures ($10 billion in one-time spending) and add $18 billion a year to education spending.

It is a far different blueprint than McCain is offering. The senator from Arizona has proposed relatively little new spending, arguing that tax cuts and private business are more effective means of solving problems.

The total price tag of Obama's plans, according to his campaign, is $130 billion a year. On top of that, Obama is proposing a middle-class tax cut of about $80 billion a year.

Obama's campaign says the new spending would be more than offset by cuts to existing federal programs and other savings.

I've highlighted that last sentence in bold.

One of those "federal programs" is the war in Iraq. Obama's economic policy director, Jason Furman, lumps in Iraq funding with other "wasteful and low-priority government programs."

Here's the quote, in bold:

"His plan reallocates what we're spending today on the war in Iraq and wasteful and low-priority government programs into higher-priority investments in our future," said Jason Furman, Obama's economic policy director.

For all the talk of Obama moving to the center, the truth is that within the campaign oganization - in planning and top-level talking points - the Obama camp clearly demonstrates no real committment to funding our troops in the field, or to the long-term security of the Iraqi people: Iraq funding is not a"high-priority" item.

The bottom line: Don't believe the hype. Barack Obama is nothing special. He's got no "hope and change," just more of the same campaign bluster, policy legerdemain, and left-wing interest group favoritism.

Americans will get a traditional tax-and-spend liberal taking the office next January in the event of a Democratic victory. The added bonus will be the White House's open-door policy to the most radical elements on the poltical spectrum, groups that will continue to pull Obama's administration toward out-of-control policy largesse and unprincipled diplomatic appeasement internationally.

Obama's budget may not add up, but the potential shape of Washington politics in 2009 is clear as a bell.

Graphic Credit: Los Angeles Times