Fumbling budget to score political points

Gene Sperling's sports metaphors collided so often during the White House budget rollout, it's a wonder the man didn't pull a hamstring.

The head of President Obama's National Economic Council suited up for a Monday news conference with a full lineup of athletic clichés. "We believe manufacturing punches above its weight economically," he said, and the administration's trade policy "will level the playing field against countries around the world."

Sperling, who held the same position under the less athletic Bill Clinton, said his basketball-loving boss' policies are "as complementary as good hitting, good pitching, and good fielding is for a baseball team - or, to seasonally adjust, good shooting, good rebounding, and good playmaking."

By the end of the session, Sperling was just running up the score. "So I think this president has very much stepped up to the plate," he concluded.

All the sports talk amounted to a head fake, or perhaps a quarterback sneak, because the real game the White House was playing was dodgeball: evading anything resembling a serious budget proposal.

The White House's budget for fiscal 2013 begins with a broken promise, adds some phony policy assumptions, throws in a few rosy forecasts, and omits all kinds of painful decisions. Even then, the proposal would add $1 trillion more to the national debt than Obama contemplated a few months ago - and it is a nonstarter on Capitol Hill, where even Senate Democrats have no plans to take it up. It is, in other words, exactly what it was supposed to be: a campaign document.

The opposition picked up Sperling's metaphor and ran with it. "He has punted again," said Paul Ryan (R., Wis.), the House Budget Committee chairman.

Actually, it was more of a kickoff, and Ryan opted to receive: He'll introduce his own budget in the coming weeks, and it is likely to include large tax cuts for the wealthy and deep cuts to entitlement programs - giving Obama exactly the foil he wants for the fall campaign.

But as a budget writer, Obama whiffed. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget offered a few kind words for the president's proposal, but it said the plan "would barely stabilize the debt - and at too high a level."

The budget calls for hundreds of billions of dollars in new spending. It shows deficits exceeding $600 billion in every year but one over the next decade, while the debt grows to $18.7 trillion.