President Obama is boasting about coming in under budget on one of his spending plans. He doesn’t bother to point out that all the money he spent is money the government doesn’t have. He is bragging about the few dollars that he won’t spend. This is like me bragging to my wife that I only spent $99,000 more than I made this year instead of the $100,000 that I planned to spend. For me a thousand bucks is not pocket change but what’s more important is the $99,000 that I did spend. And what’s more important for the country are the trillions of dollars that Obama is spending beyond what the government will “earn”.
But Obama knows that probably half the people who heard his comment will think he is talking about achieving a balanced budget — that is, no deficit spending. His team probably budgeted more than they meant to spend so that he could make this boast.
Based on a discussion I heard on Morning Joe this morning Obama apparently used the word “privacy” instead of “piracy” in making some remarks on the rescue of the ship captain taken hostage by pirates. He reportedly said something like: We have to take steps to eradicate privacy. Most likely he was reading from a teleprompter and the teleprompter had it wrong. Will this be Obama’s “misunderestimate” moment? Don’t count on it.