If You Cannot Handle The Heat…

Budget Director Peter Orszag has announced that he will be the first senior member of the Obama administration to step down this July. According to Reuters, Orszag never intended to stay more than two years at his post. Though there also lies some curious foreshadowing of this in a March 2009 quote from Orszag where he stated, “[deficits] in the 5 percent of GDP range would lead to [an unsustainable] debt-to-GDP ratio.” As it stands now, federal public debt, which was $6.3 trillion when Mr. Obama entered office, totals $8.2 trillion today. According to CBO projections, it is headed toward $20.3 trillion in 2020. That figure would equal 90 percent of GDP in 2020, up from 40 percent at the end of fiscal 2008. Orzag, who helped usher in the $787 billion stimulus bill, will leave the US with a deficit of $1.3 trillion this year. I doubt anyone will want the Budget Director’s job next, particularly since the president recently established a fiscal commission to propose actions to reach his goal of balancing the budget by 2015. As it stands, CBO projections speculate a generated $793 billion deficit in 2015. The same projections claim that the federal budget deficit is expected to grow from 4.1 percent of GDP in 2014 to 5.6 percent in 2020. As Paul Ryan (R. Wis) continually notes, having no budget means having no restraints or priorities, rendering the government uncontrollable. It seems Mr. Orszag has an aversion to handling circumstances he would regard as “unsustainable.”

Speaking of holes in the Obama administration, The Daily Telegraph and John Fund of the Wall Street Journal report that Rahm Emanuel is likely the next departure from the White House. As Fund writes, “[differences] in style between the cerebral Mr. Obama and the confrontational Mr. Emanuel are said to have played a role. In addition, Mr. Emanuel is reported to be frustrated at the inability of the White House to ‘knock heads together’ to fashion political compromises.” The resignations of two important cabinet members will not do any favors for President Obama’s sinking popularity.