I've said in previous blog posts that the United States fiscal situation was and is at the level of a national emergency, while our Nero-esque President fiddles as the nation burns.

Indeed, while many on the left and the right deemed George Bush clueless, I don't believe there has been a moment in recent history where a sitting President demonstrated astonishing cluelessness than when Barack Obama stood before the nation during his State of the Union speech and announced a set of fiscal policies that in total amounted to a budgetary bucket drop net change. 

The anonymous blogger economist who runs the site Flooding Up Economics laid out the case for this amazingly clueless folly shortly after Obama's SOTU speech. Ambitious new spending, offset by relatively meager savings and revenue raising, results in a near fiscal push when America is careening toward that iceberg dead ahead.

Since the Republicans won back the house, I have been complaining on and off that various conservative proposals to bring back fiscal common sense to Washington were tepid at best, and not what we desperately need to right the ship.  However, recent developments are encouraging, though I still say they are not enough.  I am not an economist by trade, so perhaps I speak out of turn relative to the economic realities of how the machinery of macro-economics work, but I really don't like these 10-year-plan deals which declare these high-sounding numbers until you start doing the math.  A 10 year plan is not enough in my opinion.   I want a balanced budget next year, not in ten years.  At least these proposals are better than those proposed earlier by Republicans, and are far far better than Obama's loopy plan for fiscal status quo and ultimately, doom.

None of the pundits I've read postulating on the whys and wherefores of how Obama regards the current fiscal situation have offered a plausible explanation for what the hell Obama is thinking, other than sheer stupidity.  Indeed, when I read Obama's comments on the fiscal current state, I can't help but think of the movie Forrest Gump and the line:

"Are you stupid or something?".

When businesses hit financial hard times, they slash their workforces, institute austerity plans like limit travel, and limit or eliminate non-essential spending and so forth.  In other words, when the economy contracts, so do the vast majority of businesses (that's why unemployment goes up during a contraction!).  However, Obama's response to economic contraction is to fill the economic 'void' by growing government at an exponential rate, despite loss of tax revenues and so forth.  Government must also contract during hard times.  The Keynesian model falls apart when the government tries to supplant private sector spending while carrying dangerous debt load. 

As America creeps closer and closer to the fiscal edge, it gets easier and easier for one or more of our enemies to push us over the precipice.  Why does Washington not understand this?

Damn the Democrats and the RINO's, balance the budget now.