I guess now we know that President Obama is starting to sense that people are getting a bit tired of his plans for bottomless spending from the Federal coffers.  Like all good politicians who think they have a fiscal responsibility problem, Obama has once again started talking up PAYGO.

As a ruse to sound like you know what you’re talking about, being a champion for PAYGO is a pretty good trick.  It helps that the idea is more or less sound, at least at the level of broad sweeping policy.  It also helps that most people think about spending the way most people have to think about spending, as opposed to the way government actually does.  It sounds good that the President wants to turn PAYGO into law, even though that really doesn’t mean anything to Congress.

Of course, then there’s actual reality, which should leave all of us looking just a bit nervous.  It should be well known at this point that Congress never follows through on PAYGO, which is probably why Obama tells us that it should be law.  What never gets mentioned, though, is that Congress is not actually bound by law; they an always change or ignore their past pieces of legislation when they sit down to write the next one.  That doesn’t even count all of the exceptions that would likely be baked in, or the way every Democrat spending bill would somehow be covered by one of those exceptions, though equivalent Republican bills would not.

And then there’s the “negative PAYGO” effect that we would certainly come to discover.  How this basically works is, PAYGO says no new spending without budget cuts elsewhere.  Though it is fallacy to do so, is there any reason to doubt that Congress would construe PAYGO as also requiring budget cuts to be met with new or increased spending elsewhere?  Especially when a rule of fiscal responsibility could be used to lock in Obama’s fiscal irresponsibility?  Especially since, as we should all know by now, it won’t be Democrats who lift a finger to cut a cent from the bottom line.

If Obama is serious about PAYGO, I have a simple formula for him.  He should have Congress make it retroactive to the day he took office.  That way he could blame Bush for all of Bush’s “irresponsible” spending and say (with retroactive accuracy, if not full honesty) that he has kept spending under control for every day of his presidency.  He probably should at least talk that rhetoric up anyway; it isn’t like Congress is actually going to follow along.