Obamanomics suffers from a misunderstanding of what the president is trying to achieve and what he’s up against. Into the breach come Republicans, tea partiers, nay-sayers, deficit vultures, and Raging-Dog Democrats, all viewing Obamanomics as more taxes and more spending. That’s nonsense. To see the big picture, keep your eye on three big things.

1. Government spending needed to offset the continued reluctance of consumers and businesses to spend. You don’t have to be an orthodox Keynesian to understand that as long as the private sector is deleveraging, the public sector has to borrow and spend in order to keep the economy moving forward.

The number the Obama team wants you to hear is $1.25 trillion, as in, there is $1.25 trillion worth of deficit reduction in this budget over the next 10 years. It comes largely from letting the upper-income Bush tax cuts expire ($700 billion in savings), the terribly framed non-security discretionary spending freeze ($250 billion in savings), the new bank tax ($90 billion), and various other tax and spending adjustments.

So the Department of Education is going to get a 6.2 percent increase in funding in the next budget, even though it is within the budget slice that is to be "frozen." As I explained yesterday, though, the budget "freeze" is simply a rhetorical gambit. The administration intends to go about its usual budget processes while attempting to keep the overall level of domestic discretionary spending at the same level. And it's not even likely to happen, since many members of Congress are skeptical of the White House's ideas.

My column today on the progressive argument over deficits and the national debt doesn't include a good chunk of wonky background research that might be of interest to nerds on the Internet (and really, is there anyone else out there?). Here are some good primary sources for learning more about this issue:

Barack Obama is trying once again for balance. On the one hand, he wants enough government spending to offset the timid spending of consumers and businesses. Otherwise, the jobs and wage recession could drag on for years. On the other hand, he doesn't want to set off more alarm bells about the budget deficit. Otherwise, conservative Democrats might join forces with Republicans to block heath care. So what does he do? A little bit more stimulus spending, but stimulus spending that doesn't look like more stimulus because it's not really adding to the deficit. It's coming out of savings from money already authorized to be spent on the bank bailout. Hmmm?

Like Tim Fernholz, I'm at the joint conference on "how progressives should think about the deficit," put on by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Center for American Progress. Tim notes that the presence of Franklin Raines, former president of Fannie Mae, and Bob Rubin, formerly of Treasury and Citigroup might "offend those both on the left and the right."