Grim Fairy Tale

Headline from The Washington Post--"Obama's second--term agenda will be shadowed by budget woes."

Right off the bat, here's what Peter Wallsten and Zachary A. Goldfard have to say:

[Even if Obama gets a deal with the Republicans] the country’s grim budget realities will still cast a long shadow—limiting his ambitions as he begins plotting a second-term agenda.

Which grim budget realities are those?  The same ones he had four years ago, when we had an impossibly huge deficit and Obama thought he could spend his way out of it?

They go on:

Where Obama entered office four years ago planning to seize a moment of economic crisis as an opportunity for transformational policies such as the $800 billion stimulus and his health care overhaul, he begins his second four years with few, if any, similarly expansive or costly prospects.

Instead, any new spending programs will, by necessity, be small and narrow in scope: repairs to roads and bridges, airport renovations and other infrastructure upgrades, for example, or modest grants to help blighted city neighborhoods.

Obama supporters still complain we didn't spend enough (and, of course, didn't tax enough).  The only reason Obama doesn't have grand new spending plans--above the huge increases he plans as a matter of course--is that Republicans control the House and have a say in the Senate. In fact, the only reason he got most of what he got in his first term--really first two years--is that the opposing party had no say in anything, and even then he had trouble convincing Democrats to go along entirely with his agenda.