Obama Beats Down Another Big Bush Lie

President Obama has only been in office for a month, and I'm already tired of the phrase "change you can believe in." When he does something great, his supporters use it ("That's change we can believe in!"). When he does something misguided, his detractors use it ("Whatever this is, it's not chance we can believe in"). This has become rather tiresome.

That said, the whole point of "change you can believe in," when it was used during the presidential campaign, was to highlight Obama's commitment to changing the way the system works. Americans had been misled so often about so many aspects of government over the last eight years, Obama wanted to return some integrity and intellectual honesty to the political process. The cliche was practically intended to be literal -- he would change the system, so that we could believe in it again.

And with that in mind, this is exactly the kind of change Obama promised to deliver.

For his first annual budget next week, President Obama has banned four accounting gimmicks that President George W. Bush used to make deficit projections look smaller. The price of more honest bookkeeping: A budget that is $2.7 trillion deeper in the red over the next decade than it would otherwise appear, according to administration officials.

The new accounting involves spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Medicare reimbursements to physicians and the cost of disaster responses.

But the biggest adjustment will deal with revenues from the alternative minimum tax, a parallel tax system enacted in 1969 to prevent the wealthy from using tax shelters to avoid paying any income tax.

While budget sleight of hand and "magic asterisks" had become the norm, OMB Director Peter Orszag explained, "The president prefers to tell the truth, rather than make the numbers look better by pretending."