February 13, 2011
The NYT came up with the bizarre assertion that:
“With Republicans in charge of the House, Mr. Obama’s budget is more a statement of his priorities and philosophy than an actual template for federal spending and tax policy.”
It is not clear why the NYT would think that the budget proposed by President Obama has anything to do with “philosophy.” President Obama is a politician. He got elected president by virtue of the fact that he is a very effective politician. People who express philosophies are typically found in the philosophy departments of colleges and universities, they are not generally found in elected offices.
The article also asserted that:
“The point of Mr. Obama’s [budget] forecast is less to promise a specific result than to signal to voters and financial markets that he is serious about reducing annual deficits.”
This leaves out the important group of wealthy campaign contributors. It takes a substantial amount of money to run for president, which to date has only been raised by courting wealthy contributors. Since President Obama hopes to be re-elected it is reasonable to assume that his proposals are structured in a way that would matter to this group of people. It is strange that the NYT article would not mention this fact.
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