I love how the left is blaming the economy for the pending budget shorfalls. Take this article, for example:

President-elect Barack Obama on Tuesday braced Americans for the unparalleled prospect of “trillion-dollar deficits for years to come,” a stark assessment of the budgetary outlook that he said would force his administration to impose tighter fiscal discipline on the government.

Believe me, even if Obama had inherited the best economy ever, he’d still be pushing spending on this level (it’d probably be even higher). The bad economy is just his — and other liberals — excuse to spend like crazy.

Take these “tax cuts” he’s promising, for starters. They’re not really a tax cut at all, but — just as Joe the Plumber was concerned about — wealth redistribution. Businesses that lost money last year will be able to get most, if not all, of it back in the form of some kind of write-off. That means that you, the tax payer, get to subsidize failing businesses. Also, people who pay little or no taxes will receive a “rebate” (i.e., money they didn’t earn or pay in and shouldn’t receive). The feeling is that this will help stimulate the economy. Wrong.

I said last year, when Bush and the Democrats in Congress did the same thing (albeit on a less grand scale), that these rebates and the like will never prime the pump of an ailing economy, because people who get these rebates don’t use the money to buy anything in particular (which is what we want), they either put it back and save it for a rainy day or they use it to get caught up on bills. While those are great ways to use any extra income you receive, it’s not what will help the economy.

You prime the economy by giving actual tax relief to people who actually pay taxes and give them incentives to invest. When people keep more of their own money, they will eventually use it to buy things, which is what drives the economy. When they invest, they create new businesses and new jobs, which further drives the economy. When they’re locking their extra money up in the bank or under their mattresses, nothing is created and the economy slumps.

Another thing that’s been bugging me is how Obama says he’s going to get the economy going again by a massive infrastructure program. While that’s all fine and dandy that he wants to fix bridges and roads, that won’t keep the economy going. Oh, it will get it going in the short-term, yes. But what happens when the construction projects are over and these road crews or whatever move on? What happens when all the bridges and roads are fixed, and the people who worked on them are let go because there’s no longer enough work for them? Yeah, we’re right back to where we started. But at least we’ll have fixed that pothole in front of your driveway, eh?

To put it bluntly, the Democrats are going to use this recession as an excuse to return to the days of old, when they spent like drunken sailors at a whorehouse. Balancing the budget was never their intention, and the only way Clinton managed to do it is because a then-conservative Congressional majority made him do it (even though it was only a surplus on paper, not in reality). Had the economy not tanked, the Democrats were still planning on this kind of spending. In fact, it probably would have been even higher.

One thing’s for sure is that the Democrats have masterfully blamed this economy on Bush and the last eight years and voters believed it. But here’s the rub: what happens when the economy goes even further in the toilet, ala FDR, after Obama and his party tinker around? Who are they going to blame then? Because when they get this involved and it still turns to creamed s##t, it’s their fault. They’ll own it completely. And then, maybe, we can have an honest discussion on why the economy went south, who was to blame (if anyone), and what we can do to avoid it in the future.

My feeling? Government intervention is the culprit here. Rather than let the market run its course, government at all levels got involved in things it had no business getting involved in.