EDITORIAL: Obama's Promises Of Prudence Go Unmet
The Town Talk (excerpt)

It is abundantly clear that President Barack Obama believes he can achieve something resembling fiscal responsibility simply by talking about it. For proof, look no further than this week's budget pronouncement and the context in which it was made. On Monday, the Democrat president proposed a record-high $3.8 trillion spending plan for 2011, which starts Oct. 1, with a deficit of $1.3 trillion and perhaps $1.6 trillion. There is only one way to construe this as being fiscally responsible, and it requires that you believe a friendly world will allow you to feed your spending addiction forever.

Even as he introduced this budget -- which, in a best-case scenario, carries implications of trillion-dollar deficits every year for 10 years -- Obama recited the words that belie his actions: "We simply cannot continue to spend as if deficits don't have consequences, as if waste doesn't matter, as if the hard-earned tax money of the American people can be treated like Monopoly money. " In the long term, we cannot have sustainable and durable economic growth without getting our fiscal house in order."

If that sounds familiar, it is because the empty words tumble out reflexively. Recall, for example, his "fiscal responsibility" summit from a year ago, a gathering of 130 hand-picked participants brought together to discuss how to put the nation on a sound fiscal footing.