I’ll kick the habit tomorrow.  I promise.  I need to get ready, get my mind right, build up to the effort.

That’s what Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama said last Sunday about his spending addiction.  Speaking through his senior campaign advisor, David Axelrod, on “Fox News Sunday,” he said,

You can’t balance the budget in the short term, because to do that would be to ratchet down the economy.

What an awesome display of economic ignorance, even for someone who’s never worked in a real economy in his life.

The economy isn’t already ratcheted down?  With 23 million Americans still out of work or actively underemployed (as in, scratching with part-time jobs, but wanting full-time work)?  With fewer Americans employed today than at the start of his term?  With unemployment above 8% for his entire term?  With a “recovery” since that Panic’s definitional end in early 2009 the worst in American history?  With the Obama tax increases and the rest of his “taxmageddon” set to hammer us in a shade over three months?  With three years of trillion-dollar-plus deficits?  With the nation’s debt $5 trillion larger—one-third larger—than at the start of his term?

Then Obama insisted, again using Axelrod’s mouth, that he’s created 4.3 million jobs since the Panic.  Never mind that while accepting that figure there remain those fewer Americans employed today than then.  Never mind that Obama continues to decline to offer any evidence that he’s responsible for those “added” jobs, that they were not added by what would otherwise be an ordinary business cycle recovery, suppressed by his policies.

Obama insisted, also (through Axelrod, again), that our auto industry was “saved” by his bailout.  Never mind that of the seven major car companies in the American auto industry (GM, Chrysler, Ford, Toyota, Hyundai, Honda, Nissan—all of which import their constituent parts from overseas, and all of which assemble those parts in their plants in the US), only two took his bailout money, and those two are still suffering under significant government ownership.  The other five car companies—albeit generally without significant union employment, and so not in league with Obama—didn’t need “help” at all; the industry was never at risk.  And never mind that had GM and Chrysler been allowed to go through bankruptcy, they would have recovered much faster, without government encumbrances, and without stiffing senior creditors in favor of Obama’s unions.

If the time to balance the budget isn’t now, then when will it be time?  Oh, yeah.  Tomorrow.  I just need another day.