Maddening Hypocrisy

President Bush outlined a plan today to eliminate the budget deficit by 2012. The source article is here.

There are a lot of things that I could say about this article, but I can't help but focus on a single issue in this post.

From the article, a quote from the President:

"Congress needs to adopt real reform that requires full disclosure of the
sponsors, the costs, the recipients and the justifications for every earmark".

Apparently, an integral part of the President's budget plan is to curtail the pork laden budget practices that have become absurdly excessive in the Congress in recent years. This is a necessary step and I would be prepared to applaud the President publicly for it had he called for it at any point in the last six years when his fellow Republicans controlled both houses of Congress.

But to call for it now, though still good and necessary policy, is blatantly hypocritical. The fact that the President waited until the 7th year of his Presidency to press the issue of fiscal responsibility is an absolute failure of leadership. Particularly in a time of war, the President should have been more forceful in tightening the country's fiscal belt. Instead, our leadership has cut taxes and increased discretionary spending at one of the fastest rates in our entire history. The result, of course, has been record budget deficits.

At least Democrats typically do not cite fiscal responsibility as one of their strengths. As Americans, we can disagree on and debate methods and even certain values, but saying one thing and doing the exact opposite, particularly on this scale, is just unacceptable.

There are more issues worth discussing from the source article that led to this post. I will comment on a few of them in the coming days.