White House Budget Report Delayed: It Depends on What You Mean by Transparency?

With economic recovery nowhere in sight and its fiscal policies increasingly called into question, the Obama administration yesterday revealed that it would not be releasing its expected mid-year budget review until next month. Although the administration insisted this was a mere bureaucratic formality, critics were quick to note that the delay would help bury some politically unpalatable news about the budget, including its projected rise of the 2009 deficit...The CBO wastes little time getting to the bad news, noting that “Under current law, the federal budget is on an unsustainable path...as a result of those deficits, federal debt held by the public will soar from 41 percent of GDP at the end of fiscal year 2008 to 60 percent at the end of fiscal year 2010.”...Burying the Budget, Vasko Kohlmeyer, Front Page, 7/21/2009,

Cabinet appointees who don't pay taxes, taxes that aren't really taxes, stimulus that isn't really stimulus, and now a budget that's not really visible -- it looks like a government from the shadows, more of the Chicago style. When Congress goes on its break, raise hell in your constituent offices.

Luther