Intentions matter naught, it is his budget deeds that count

On the day the Obama administration releases a budget it claims will pare the deficit by $1.1 trillion over the next decade, Michael Medved defends the president’s good intentions in an op-ed piece in The Wall Street Journal. Unfortunate timing? Or planned by the WSJ?

Medved dismissed claims that Obama so hates America that he is an economic suicide bomber.

“One typical column appeared on Feb. 5 at the well-regarded American Thinker website, under the heading: ‘Obama Well Knows What Chaos He Has Unleashed,’” Medved writes. “Victor Sharpe solemnly declares: ‘My fear is that Obama is not naïve at all, but he instead knows only too well what he is doing, for he is eagerly promoting Islamic power in the world while diminishing the West.’"

Meanwhile, Obama’s budget projects a deficit for the current year of $1.65 trillion and $1.1 trillion in 2012 — a record four straight years of $1 trillion-plus deficits. And don’t tell me Bush started it, so it is his fault.

As The Associated Press reports, “The Obama plan would fall far short of the $4 trillion in deficit cuts recommended in a December report by his blue-ribbon deficit commission.”

Medved goes on to quote Dinesh D'Souza, Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin on Obama’s intention.

He concludes, “Regardless of the questionable pop psychology of this analysis, as a political strategy it qualifies as almost perfectly imbecilic. Republicans already face a formidable challenge in convincing a closely divided electorate that the president pursues wrong-headed policies. They will never succeed in arguing that those initiatives have been cunningly and purposefully designed to wound the republic.”

With a budget like this one, it matters little what the intent is.