All Blog Posts from Political Hotsheet

So rapid is the pace of deficit spending by the federal government, that the National Debt has increased over a trillion dollars since President Obama took office.

On Inauguration Day, the Debt stood at $10.626 trillion. The latest posting from the Treasury Department shows that as of July 31st, the debt hit $11.669 trillion.

During the last administration, it took over 2 ½ years for the National Debt to increase a trillion dollars. But by the time former president George W. Bush left office, he had run up the deficit by a record amount: $4.9-trillion over eight years.

A great deal of current deficit spending was already in the pipeline from the Bush administration and Mr. Obama, anticipating this day, said that increases have to be kept in perspective.

"They basically handed me a bill for $1.3 trillion and said, 'Here, fix it,'" insisted the president last week at a Town Hall Meeting in Bristol, VA. "And now they're on TV saying, why haven't you fixed it yet -- in the middle of the greatest recession since the Great Depression."

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Even as politicians decry pork barrel politics and complain of wasteful federal spending, both Democrats and Republicans have requested to insert billions of dollars in earmarks into a defense spending bill for companies that gave them millions in campaign contributions.

Yesterday, the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense approved (PDF) the fiscal-year 2010 defense appropriations bill. The bill includes 1,080 earmarks worth $2.7 billion dollars requested from the full House of Representatives.

Before the subcommittee approved the bill, its members specifically requested more than $1.6 billion in earmarks for their campaign contributors, according to the nonpartisan watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense.

The group reports that all 18 members of the subcommittee requested funds for companies and organizations that donated money, either through employees or a political action committee, to their campaigns. Those entities donated nearly $1 million to the members.

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Since President Obama signed the $787 billion stimulus package in February, more than two million jobs have been lost and unemployment has hit its highest rate in a quarter century, 9.5 percent.

For Republicans, who have been seeking a message that will help the party regain some momentum, that's the sort of bad news that comes with a silver lining. Members of the GOP have been harshly attacking the opposition party as wasteful spenders whose expensive programs have had little positive impact.

"The administration promised the stimulus would keep unemployment below 8 percent, and they promised the stimulus would create jobs immediately," House Minority leader John Boehner said Thursday. (Officials actually predicted it would stay below 8.5 percent.)

"It's pretty clear now that the administration was wrong. The bottom line is this: The stimulus isn't creating enough jobs," Boehner said.

Defenders of the stimulus package say the situation would have been even worse without the legislation – and they note that nearly 90 percent of the stimulus money has not yet been spent. (The latter fact cuts both ways, of course: Stimulus defenders can point to it as evidence that the bill should be given more time to work, while critics can raise questions about why the money hasn't gone out faster.)

The Obama administration has dispatched Vice President Joe Biden to try to convince Americans that the stimulus is indeed making a difference. On Thursday, he went to Ohio and upstate New York to say he sees its impact everywhere he goes.

"Communities being rebuilt, factories being reopened, workers rehired — teachers in their classrooms, cops on the streets, families better able to live a quality life," he said in New York.

But voters are skeptical. In that crucial swing state of Ohio, one poll has puts the president's approval rating below 50 percent. And an important voting bloc appears to be shying away from the president – independents, who, Politico reports, "seem to be responding to Republican complaints of excessive spending and government control."

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As a budget policy, PAYGO sounds more like a public toilet that requires two quarters to enter.

Actually, it’s short for pay-as-you-go, a policy which, if enacted by Congress as President Obama today implored, would set what he calls a “simple” standard.

“Congress can only spend a dollar if it saves a dollar elsewhere,” he explained.

With his first two federal budgets projecting the largest deficits in U.S. history, each above a trillion dollars, Mr. Obama wants to be seen speaking the gospel of fiscal discipline and distancing himself from the free-spending ways of Congress, of which he was a member for four years.

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Imagine you were shopping for a $50,000 car, and the dealer offered to slash the price by a dollar? Would you be bowled over? Scramble for your checkbook? Leap to sign the sales agreement?

Probably not. That's why there's cynicism as President Obama announced he directed the members of his Cabinet today to come up with $100-million in spending cuts in 90 days.

Considering his budget this year calls for over $3.9-trillion in spending, $100-million is the same percentage of reduction as taking a buck off the price of a $50,000 car.

And Mr. Obama didn't take issue with a reporter's assertion that the spending cuts he wants are just a drop in a bucket.

"None of these things alone are going to make a difference," he said. "But cumulatively they would make an extraordinary difference because they start setting a tone."

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House Republicans released the full version of their alternative budget plan on Wednesday after critics called their March 26 release vague and lacking hard numbers.

When the first version of the Republicans’ alternative to the Obama administration’s budget was released, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs quipped, "It took me several minutes to read it."

He also dismissed the budget as coming from “the party of 'no new ideas.'"

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), who drafted the GOP proposal, says he is alarmed at how much the Obama administration plans to spend. In a Wall Street Journal opinion piece, he said that Democrats "are attempting to bring about the third and final great wave of progressivism, building on top of the New Deal and the Great Society.

He added that if the president's budget passes, "it will mark this period in history as the moment America turned European."

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On his fifty-first day in office, President Obama signed the $410 omnibus spending bill that came under fire because it came with potentially-unnecessary earmarks.

Despite ordering a review of his predecessor’s use of signing statements, the president issued a signing statement with the bill saying certain provisions “raise constitutional concerns” and may not be followed.

He also discussed earmarks, noting that they can be useful but also “have been used as a vehicle for waste, fraud, and abuse.” He vowed to reform the earmarking process and said the administration will eliminate earmarks determined to have “no legitimate public purpose.”

The president also created a council on women and girls. He noted lingering inequality between men and women and said that ““when any of our citizens cannot fulfill their potential because of factors that have nothing to do with their talent, their character, their work ethic, that says something about the state of our democracy.”

Below, check out Chip Reid’s CBS Evening News report on the president’s signing of the bill and comments on earmarks.

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President Obama this afternoon privately signed the $410 billion omnibus spending bill passed by Congress, which he has acknowledged is “imperfect” because of potentially-unnecessary earmarks. (Read more about the bill here.)

In announcing his signing of the bill, the president issued a signing statement saying the Department of Justice has advised him that the bill includes provisions that “raise constitutional concerns” and that he thus may not follow them.

“The signing statement on the Omnibus bill very much resembles the kind that President Bush was criticized for,” notes CBS News White House Correspondent Mark Knoller.

Mr. Obama outlined five objections in the statement. The first is that certain provisions “would unduly interfere with my constitutional authority in the area of foreign affairs by effectively directing the Executive on how to proceed or not proceed in negotiations or discussions with international organizations and foreign governments.”

“I will not treat these provisions as limiting my ability to negotiate and enter into agreements with foreign nations,” the president said.

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At an event this morning, President Obama again demanded that the government he now heads “turn the tide on an era of fiscal irresponsibility.”

But his credibility on the issue is at risk if he goes ahead with plans to sign the $410 billion spending bill now making its way to final passage in Congress.

The measure is rife with earmarks – special spending provisions attached by members of Congress, usually to benefit a home district project. There are 8,570 earmarks on this bill that if enacted will cost taxpayers $7.7 billion.

The White House says the legislation is leftover from last year and that President Obama will work to reduce future wasteful spending.

In other words, the White House says the president will really get tough on spending right after he looks the other way and green lights $410 billion in spending for the current fiscal year.

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Sen. John McCain harshly criticized President Obama on the Senator floor today, reports CBS News’ John Nolen.

McCain noted his former opponent’s campaign promise to reduce pork barrel spending and then pointed to the omnibus spending bill signed by the president and now before Congress, which he said is loaded with earmarks.

“So much for the promise of change,” McCain said. “During the campaign President Obama said he would work to limit earmarks and make them more transparent.”

“It is the president of the United States' business to do what he said,” McCain added, specifically citing a September presidential debate where Mr. Obama said he would eliminate earmarks.

McCain quoted President Obama saying this: "We need earmark reform. And when I'm president, I will go line by line to make sure we're not spending money unwisely."

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