Today the Obama administration unveils its fiscal year 2011 budget, so I'll be heading to different briefings from OMB staffers, Treasury people, and outside experts. Here's a useful preview from the Post, and one from OMB Director Peter Orszag. Here is the budget itself. Matt Yglesias urges everybody to relax -- but that's no fun, is it.
Some quick hits:
- The 2010 and 2011 deficits will be about $100 billion to $200 billion higher than projected earlier this year
- There will be a focus on both spending money to combat unemployment (about $100 billion) and cutting costs in other areas
- The dread deficit cutting commission -- which is an empty political gesture, a trick to go after Social Security, or potentially a good idea -- is getting the Obama team headlines like "In $3.8 Trillion Budget, Obama Pivots to Trim Future Deficits" and making Ohio Republican Sen. George Voinovich criticize his party for not supporting the president's deficit-cutting efforts, which is exactly what David Axelrod wanted.
And yes, there are already some weird analysis errors. For instance, you're going to hear this:
Republicans are more likely to highlight the fact that a jobs bill would drive this year's budget deficit even higher than the record $1.4 trillion recorded in 2009, according to White House projections. On Sunday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) called on Democrats instead to focus solely on cutting taxes, including extending tax cuts for the wealthy enacted during the Bush administration, and abandon the health-care bill.
Well, given that the health-care bill is deficit neutral and that solely cutting taxes will increase the deficit, it doesn't seem like that's a very serious agenda, does it? Look out for more crazy, and hopefully not-so-crazy, responses to this budget from every imaginable stakeholder in the next 24 hours.
-- Tim Fernholz
