I Hope Obama's Scalpel is Sharp

During the election campaign, Candidate Obama repeatedly stated that he would go through the federal budget line-by-line, item by item, and cut wasteful spending. When John McCain suggested a spending-freeze for non-essential items, Obama bristled - saying we needed a scalpel, not an axe.

It now looks like Obama's tool of choice is a shovel, as he is prepared to pile more onto an already bloated federal budget. The new estimate: 1 trillion dollar deficits per year for the next ten years, according to the Congressional Budget Office (Obama's much more conservative estimates show only a seven trillion dollar increase in the national debt in the next decade).

Considering his lack of focus on any one matter before him at the time, I wonder how long it's going to take him to go through the budget line-by-line. On maybe, that's the campaign promise he's going to break - obviously the huge entitlement promises aren't going away, even in this economy.