The Hill News

It's fitting that President Obama announced his re-election campaign the same week House Republicans unveiled our 2012 budget plan. The two events are inextricably linked.

If President Obama were not facing re-election in 2012, his budget proposal for that year might have been quite different. It might have been serious. 

Instead of a substantive blueprint for steering the country out of a debt crisis, however, President Obama produced a budget document only a campaign consultant could love. A transparent exercise in political pandering and risk avoidance, the signature feature of Obama's budget is an unwavering commitment to avoid touching entitlements with a 10-foot pole. Even the recommendations of the president's own debt commission were largely shunned lest any key constituencies take offense.

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