by Rich Lowry
When President Barack Obama wanted to push an $800 billion "stimulus" or "recovery" bill through Congress a few weeks ago, he thought an atmosphere of economic crisis helped his cause. So he repeatedly warned of "catastrophe," of "a crisis that, at some point, we may not be able to reverse."
A little more than a week later, Obama moved onto his next priority, proposing a unbridled federal budget that will spend $3.6 trillion next year and $5.3 trillion more in the next 10 years than the Congressional Budget Office was projecting just last year. To get revenue for this budgetary explosion, Obama assumes the economy will be recovering at a nice clip next year, at a 3.2 percent annual rate.
What happened to the looming cataclysm?
The Obama team argues that the passage of the recovery package has suddenly brightened the economic future. But there's no way that $220 billion in extra government spending (the amount in the stimulus bill for 2010) can be the margin of difference between irreversible catastrophe and healthy growth in a $14 trillion economy.
Obama exaggerated the downside of the economy two weeks ago so he could get more spending, and now he's exaggerating its upside so he can get more spending. The fixed goal is more spending. The means - the rhetoric, the arguments, the assumptions - are flexible so long as they serve that ultimate goal.
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