The White House released its budget for fiscal year 2012 on Valentine’s Day, which is appropriate since the Media’s love affair with the President shielded him from any real criticism of the budget. 

President Obama delivered some remarks on his budget at a middle school in Baltimore; an audience of like-minded seventh and eighth graders is safe ground.  Within those remarks, the word “investment” was used by the President eleven times in a ten-minute speech. By investment, Obama means wasteful spending on high-speed rail, high-speed internet, education and innovation.

The United States already spends more on education, per head, than any other nation. The President’s desire to add 10,000 new math and science teachers is really a veiled attempt to add 10,000 new union workers to government payrolls. Our teacher to student ratio, on average, has never been better. If President Obama is serious about competing with the rest of the world in technology, it would cost very little to simply transition currently existing teachers to math and science from the Left’s educational sacred cows, like Multi-cultural studies.

High-speed internet is already a reality and America competes very well in the communication industry. High-speed rail is a Leftist’s pipe dream than will fail to amount to anything more than a boondoggle in anywhere but the densely populated Northeast part of the U.S. Investment in high-speed rail is nothing more than another payback to Barack Obama’s labor union friends.

Making an investment in innovation? Who can argue with cultivating innovation? Only Obama did not say which innovations he chooses to invest in. He did state however, that oil and gas, and defense technology; two critical segments of our economy will not be the beneficiaries of his “investment.” In fact, Obama is proposing to increase taxes on Oil and Gas companies. This leads one to believe that so-called green technology will continue to be the recipient of large government grants.

The President has stated that Oil is the “energy source of the past.” While this may be true someday in the distant future, the Obama administration is doing its best to make it a reality today. While any sensible person knows that a transition from an oil-driven economy cannot happen without a viable replacement for oil, the current administration fails to see the downside to forcing the issue. It is reasonable to assume that Obama and the academic theoreticians, who serve him, will not be satisfied until oil reaches $200 - $300 per barrel, which would expedite a move from the oil-based economy. In emblematic Liberal fashion, the collateral damage to the U.S. economy would be devastating – a depression like none seen in American history, only to satisfy the unyielding Socialists who use any changes in weather patterns as their Trojan horse.

The current long-term moratorium on oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, issued by the Obama administration, in the face of a federal court order and contempt finding, has served to stall oil exploration in and around the U.S. while China, now the world’s #2 economy, and Russia continue to explore for oil in the Gulf of Mexico off the Cuban coast.

Offshore oil production makes economic sense. It creates jobs and helps satisfy America’s vast energy needs. It contributes to the GDP in many ways and does not increase America’s trade deficit. Higher domestic oil supply keeps prices from rising, and gives the United States more influence over the global market while reducing its dependence on oil-rich countries in the Middle East. While Russia establishes a new presence in the Western Hemisphere by claiming oil from its deep water drilling platforms in the Gulf, a result of President Carter giving the rights to that part of the Gulf of Mexico to Cuba, who in turn, leased them to Russia, the United States retreats and withdraws.

The President spoke of sacrifice; his idea of sacrifice is freezing his spending at the highest level in history while adding a whopping $1.65 trillion to our national debt. Obama spoke of the Bush-era tax rates as if they were his own tax cuts, while he seeks to raise taxes on the job producers – corporations and the so-called rich. A man, who pledged to cut a less than one trillion-dollar deficit in half within four years, has actually doubled that deficit while piling on almost $5 trillion to the national debt. Yet when he states that his $3.7 trillion budget will accomplish the 50% deficit cut, the Obama-crazed media doesn’t even blink.

Though, perhaps the most offensive attack on our sensibility is the President using the word “investment” when he means spending and using the term “unjustifiable spending” when he means tax cuts.

Sadly, the U.S. economy may never fully recover from the lack of economic knowledge and experience of this president and his staff.