What a difference a year can make. Last January, newly inaugurated President Obama stood outside the U.S. Capitol and pledged to “begin again the work of remaking America.”
In a 70-minute speech dominated by the struggling economy and merely sprinkled with foreign policy, Obama tried to hide his party’s usual big-government prescriptions to the nation’s problems. He pitched the idea of a new bipartisan panel to investigate ways to slow down the annual deficit, which, forecasted at nearly $1.4 trillion this year, has rocketed to its highest levels since World War II. But the Senate, in a bipartisan vote the day before Obama’s speech, had already voted down such a proposal—meaning Obama would likely have to go at this alone.
In what amounts to a nickel-and-dime gesture in today’s super-sized federal government, Obama also vowed to save $4 million next year by freezing the salaries of senior White...
