Obama’s budget disregards will of American voters

Ray Kolander, Las Vegas

Saturday, Feb. 19, 2011 | 2:03 a.m.

Recently President Barack Obama presented a budget that called for modest 5 percent cuts in government spending, despite the fact that he has greatly increased government spending the past two years. He has also set aside $53 billion for light-rail construction and increased funding for the Education Department. He refers to this additional spending as “investments.”

Excuse me, but the president is ignoring the results of the November elections. Unless I am mistaken, the American people gave the GOP a clear mandate to cut government spending, which the president’s budget does not do in a significant and meaningful way.

The GOP has addressed this issue with its proposals, but so far the president has been reluctant to adopt and support them. Amtrak, created in 1970 by the federal government, has never made a profit and continually bleeds the taxpayer dry in the form of government subsidies. All of the funding given to the Education Department, needlessly formed by Jimmy Carter in a payoff to the unions in 1979, has not generated higher test scores for students. Talk about taking America back to the past.

The president’s so-called investments are nothing more than needless, reckless, out-of-control spending, identical to his “stimulus act,” which did not lower unemployment or create the millions of “shovel ready” jobs he promised it would.

To put it more precisely, his budget is DOA (dead on arrival).