The folks over at the Heritage Foundation have done a great job putting together a incredible resource that makes it easy to understand our federal budget, taxes, national debt and the spending that has made it all possible (so to speak).

They've got a new "Budget Book" section available with simple-simon, interactive charts and graphs, so there's not excuse not to understand what's going on.  And they make it easy to share with others as well...which means there's no reason for you not to spread the word and help educate others.

Here's their video explaining the new resource.

If deficit spending is the way out of an economic downturn, as leftist economists like Paul Krugman keep telling us, then one way to characterize President Obama’s approach to reviving the ailing economy is “killing it with kindness.”

Another is “tough love”—not the kind where you force hard choices and self-discipline, but the kind where you shoot the poor beast to put it out of its misery.

James Clyburn, House Majority Whip, recently crystallized the Democrats’ position on fiscal responsibility when he announced, “We’re not going to save our way out of this recession.  We’ve got to spend our way out of this recession, and I think most economists know that.”

Here are some fun facts about Obama’s proposed federal budgets over the next decade:

•    The projected deficit for Obama’s 2010 budget is $1.6 trillion, which is 10% larger than the 2009 deficit, which was three times as big as the record 2008 deficit under President Bush.

•    The projected 2010 deficit is 10 times as large as the deficit for Bush’s 2007 budget, the latter of which included funding for the troop surge that won the war in Iraq.  Nearly matching our accomplishment in Iraq, the White House Travel Office has approved a trip for Obama to go to Cambridge, Massachusetts in November to get a Democratic dogcatcher elected in Harvard Square.

•    The projected 2010 deficit will render our national debt 13% bigger on the last day of this year than it is today.  Projected 2010-11 deficits will cause the debt to swell 23% bigger than it is now.  By 2020, the debt will be twice as big as it is today.  read more »

Obama's attempt this week to recast himself as some kind of budget-cutter is laughable if it weren't so cynical and calculated to fool people who are not paying attention.  I could try to analyze it, but Cato has done it well already.  Although I recommend reading the whole article in full, here's a good bit:

it’s only down in the fifth paragraph where the [New York] Times notes that “The estimated $250 billion in savings over 10 years would be less than 3 percent of the roughly $9 trillion in additional deficits the government is expected to accumulate over that time.”

The way this stuff is reported is downright criminal.  Author Jason Kuznicki points out:

Spending increases that were planned all along aren’t considered increases at all and do not make the news. Unplanned increases, those over and above the planned ones, are reported as though only the unplanned parts were increases. Large spending increases get extra praise for boldness. Reductions in the rate of spending growth are called “spending cuts.” Real though tiny cuts are described as draconian measures.