What the President Pointedly Did Not Address....

...is where the funding for all this new spending is going to come from? I lived in Baltimore when William Donald Schaefer was mayor and one thing I remember was that he was often asked if supported proposal xyz which would be of obvious benefit to the citizenry and his answer woulld often be "Sure, but where is the money going to come from?"

Baltimore, as a result this fiscal bullheadness, kept it's top notch bond rating (which is a gift that keeps on giving if you think about long term municipal bonds). At what point do tax cuts become counterintuitive to all these promises and commitments?

Well....

Karl Rove was talking about fiscal responsibility in a speech at the American Enterprise Institute today and according to Dana Milbank of the Washington Post...

David Corn of the liberal Nation magazine made the obligatory (and fruitless) attempt to draw Rove into a discussion about his role in the Plame affair. "My attorney, Mr. Luskin, made a statement on April 26th," the policymaker said. "I refer you to that statement. I have nothing more to add to it. Nice try, though."

What Rove had much to add to was the Bush economic record. As he described it, the administration has increased the tax burden on the wealthiest Americans and restrained the federal budget through frequent veto threats. These were difficult claims, but Rove was equal to the task.

For example, groups such as the Congressional Budget Office have reported that the Bush tax cuts have shifted the tax burden from the wealthy to the middle class. But Rove had another way to look at it: For the top 1 percent, "their share of income tax payments is up by 1.5 percent."

Likewise, federal spending has increased some 40 percent over the past five years, with discretionary spending jumping by more than 55 percent. But, again, Rove had a different view. "The president has reduced the growth of non-security discretionary spending every year in office," he said.

In a similar vein, Bush has not vetoed a single bill since he became president. But Rove said that it was "39 veto threats" that had the effect of "restraining spending to the levels proposed in the president's budget."

Well I guess we're just flush with money, eh? Forgive me for being a fiscal conservative.