Let’s hope not.
Barack Obama will quadruple the deficit this year.
Obama’s budget more than doubles the national debt held by the public, and adds more to the debt than all previous presidents — from George Washington to George W. Bush — combined. And, he’s planning on spending billions more on new entitlement programs, including cap and trade and nationalized health care, in the next few months.
Today, White House Budget Director Peter Orszag announced today that Obama’s healthcare reform won’t increase the already record budget deficit.
“We have always said health care reform has to be deficit-neutral over a five- or ten-year window,” Orszag said on CNN’s State of the Union when asked whether the White House might take on higher deficits in order to fund one of the president’s big domestic agenda items.
“And then much better than that over the long term. So we are very committed to making sure that health care reform is self-financing and also brings down costs over time both for families and for the federal government. So you are not going to see a deficit-increasing health care reform.”
Obama’s budget guru refused to say whether the president would sign a health care reform legislation that included a provision taxing employer-provided health care insurance benefits as one means of helping to finance health care reform.
The Politico has more on the coming tax:
It may not be President Barack Obama’s favorite idea, but the administration may support taxing health benefits to help pay for health-care reform, White House Budget Director Peter Orszag said Sunday
“It was not in the president’s campaign plan, it was not in our budget,” Orszag insisted on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Just two months ago Peter Orszag said elevated deficits were beneficial.
Maybe he’s having second thoughts.
