By the Numbers

And they are daunting, says the WSJ:

Note, however, that federal spending remains at a new plateau of about $3.54 trillion, or some $800 billion more than the last pre-recession year of 2007. One way to think about this is that most of the $830 billion stimulus of 2009 has now become part of the federal budget baseline. The “emergency” spending of the stimulus has now become permanent, as we predicted it would.

Yeah, as I told Will Wilkinson (I think) during a very early PJTV segment way back when, “Wait’ll this [stimulus] stuff gets baselined. “Stuffing the beast” is the unofficial White House policy for just spending any damn amount on any damn thing to justify new and endless taxes.

Anyway, back to the Journal:

Even if Mr. Obama were to bludgeon Republicans into giving him all of the tax-rate increases he wants, the Joint Tax Committee estimates this would yield only $82 billion a year in extra revenue. But if growth is slower as a result of the higher tax rates, then the revenue will be lower too. So after Mr. Obama has humiliated House Republicans and punished the affluent for the sheer joy of it, he would still have a deficit of $1 trillion.

But it was never about growth. It was always about spreading the misery around.