Back in the day

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Back in the day (you remember the day, right?) every time a president came forward with a budget, reporters would pore over the thing. And any line item or provision or assumption that wasn’t based on the most rock-solid accounting or didn’t take into account the most pessimistic prognosication was instantly given that most infamous of DC budgeting sobriquets: the dreaded “smoke and mirrors.”

Nowadays I guess you could say things have changed. How else can it be when an OMB Director can simply state that borrowing a trillion dollars doesn’t count as new debt?

“Transition financing does not represent new debt,” OMB chief Josh Bolten said yesterday.

And while we’re at it, it would be stingy not to recognize that the White House has now given new meaning to phrase ‘unified budgeting’. In the Bush White House lexicon that would refer to a budget that included not only the president’s ‘budget’ but also his major new spending proposals.

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