Crooks and Liars: Opinion: Richard RJ Eskow: Is the "Era of Austerity" Really Over?: The Purpose of a Government Budget

Crooks and Liars: Opinion: Richard RJ Eskow: The Next Obama Budget: Is the "Era of Austerity" Really Over

A governmental budget, whatever the level of government, is the official blueprint of the administration's priorities, and at the Federal level, in addition to the administration's budget, you also have congressional budgets, with the majority party in both the House and Senate laying out their official budgetary priorities for that year as well. So this gives the party or parties in power an official opportunity to lay out what they want to see funded and completed for the next fiscal year.

So that is what President Obama and his administration will have the opportunity to do in the next few weeks. We are already seeing Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, with his proposed defense budget in the next coming year, proposing defense cuts, but in areas of the budget that we can afford to cut, perhaps Afghanistan and Iraq, since we'll no longer be occupying those countries, but also in the Cold War budget and weapon systems.

Because of the Republican House of Representatives and President Obama's low approval rating somewhere in the low forties, there might be a better shot at seeing a July blizzard in Miami, Florida, than President Obama getting his budget through Congress this year, because he would need the Republican House along with the Democratic Senate to approve it. But since it is an election year, the President will have the opportunity to lay out in his budget where he and the Democratic Party stand, especially as it relates to the economy.

The term political budget might sound, I don't know, dirty to clean up when it comes to government and politics. But that is exactly what President Obama should be proposing; this is where we Democrats stand and we are prepared to rebuild this country with a new national infrastructure and manufacturing plan and we will bring good American jobs back home. We are creating new jobs in the country as well and we are going to have a national energy policy by investing in all of America's natural resources. And we will encourage businesses, foreign and domestic, to invest in America with lower taxes and elimination of costly loopholes.

President Obama's 2015 budget should be both a governing blueprint and a political message. This is what Democrats will do if you, the American voters, only give us the power to do these things and put Republicans, especially the House Republican leadership on the spot and give them something to respond to and let the American voters decide which plan they prefer.