Deficits: Apparently, President Obama never got around to reading the final report of his own deficit commission. How else to explain his belief that federal spending isn't the cause of the nation's debt crisis?
That's apparently what Obama told House Speaker John Boehner during their recent "fiscal cliff" negotiations.
"At one point several weeks ago," Boehner told the Wall Street Journal, "the president said to me, 'We don't have a spending problem.'"
That would be news to Obama's debt commission, which in its final report made clear that spending is the driving force behind the nation's debt crisis.
Here's what the report said: "Even after the economy recovers, federal spending is projected to increase faster than revenues, so the government will have to continue borrowing money to spend."
The panel added, "Over the long run, as the baby boomers retire and health care costs continue to grow, the situation will become far worse."
And it recommended: "We should cut all excess spending — including defense, domestic programs, entitlement spending, and spending in the tax code."
The commission was hardly breaking new ground here. Indeed, anyone who has looked at the federal budget can quickly see that out-of-control spending, not insufficient revenues, is the problem.
As the chart shows, even with the $620 billion in tax hikes Obama won during the fiscal cliff fight, plus the $500 billion in new ObamaCare taxes, spending will continue to outstrip revenues as far as the eye can see.
By 2022, federal revenues will top 19% of GDP, which is significantly higher than the post-World War II average. But spending will exceed 22%, and keep climbing.
Meanwhile, a Government Accountability Office report concluded that spending is "on an unsustainable long-term fiscal path" and blamed entitlements.
And countless Congressional Budget Office reports have documented how, left unchecked, federal entitlement programs will soon swamp the entire budget.
Apparently Obama didn't read any of those, either.
When it comes to federal spending, Obama is like the alcoholic who says that the only drinking problem he has is when he can't get a drink.