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Republican leaders are looking forward to the 2010 midterm congressional elections. Their case is that Obama is spending recklessly. It is true that George W. Bush and democratic congress contributed to our economic mess by excessive borrowing and expansion of entitlement, but at what point do the fiscal choices and excessive spending now become Obama’s responsibility?

“The reckless fiscal policies of the past have left us in a very deep hole,” Obama said last week. “And digging our way out of it will take time, patience and some tough choices.”

If the previous administration’s fiscal policies were reckless, then why is Obama’s spending policies (which are magnified from the previous administration) not being viewed as reckless? How do you dig one’s way out of the mess by doing more of the same?

During a town hall forum in New Mexico last month, Obama acknowledged that the “long-term deficit and debt that we have accumulated is unsustainable.” The statement followed several fiscal reform initiatives, including changes in defense procurement policy, that advisers say will save tens of billions of dollars a year.

Other measures proposed appear have an air of desperation. In April, he publicly instructed his Cabinet secretaries to find $100 million in savings, a fraction of the more than $3 trillion annual budget.

“Everything that the White House does concerning this deep recession contains an element of gambling because no one has been here before,” said Robert B. Reich, labor secretary under President Bill Clinton and a professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley. “There’s no formula that can be applied, and that’s why the president’s popularity and credibility are vitally important.”

Reich noted, “Very soon we’ll be in the gravitational pull of the midterm elections, and it seems clear that Republicans want to challenge Obama on the economy and will run on tax cuts, deficit reduction, and a much more scaled-down and privatized health-care plan.”

“If they can get their act together and come up with something that is halfway respectable, and if the public begins to lose patience by Election Day, Democrats could have some real problems,” he said. “And those problems, of course, could possibly extend through 2012.”

Obama’s spending plans reflects a fiscal philosophy that differs from that of the last Democratic administration.

I fear we are gambling with our country’s future. Nowhere in history has spending of this magnitude been a solution to long term economic expansion.

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