Ouch!

The President, today rolled out "the most austere budget of his presidency, challenging congressional Republicans to cut domestic discretionary spending and politically sensitive entitlement programs such as Medicaid..."(from CQ's Midday Update)

This brings fruition the grand plan of conservatives to starve the federal government by cutting taxes, then pushing to cut spending dramatically to keep from going too deeply into debt. The proposed cuts to important social, economic, and environmnetal programs are deep, painful, and unbalanced.

At one of the briefings to announce the different pieces of the budget, private citizens (including nonprofit groups) were not given a copy of the budget briefing book like members of the press and government officials were. After the presentation, and the question and answer session ended, outside groups had to ask again for extra copies to be found. Does that sound like an open and balanced approach to dealing with the public?