Obama’s budget plan is liberal Republican

Finally, President Obama has proposed a federal budget that hints at the optimistic promise of hope and change he rode to election victory in 2008. Still, his last budget does not call for the sweeping remake of priorities that many Americans, whether they voted for him or not, expected in his first budget blueprint.

The new plan recognizes the growing threat from cyber warfare as well as the huge future costs from our epidemic of child obesity and the crushing burden of college tuition. But as we have come to expect from Obama, who back in the day would have been called a liberal Republican, it offers modest spending increases to address monumental problems.

Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders would say Obama’s 2017 budget does not go far enough to shift taxpayer spending toward investing in people. But Obama’s offering is closer to the cautious vision of Clinton than to Sanders’ call for political revolution.

Obama proposes to modestly expand Pell Grants for college students. Sanders would impose a new tax on Wall Street trading to finance tuition-free college.

But while Sanders has a plan for spending changes to invest in America’s future, he has no plan to win over austerity-minded congressional Republicans.

Clinton says it makes no sense to promise what is politically impossible. Instead, she proposes aid to states that lower tuition enough that loans are not needed. She would also have students work 10 hours a week.

Though Obama’s proposal has no chance in the GOP-controlled Congress, it offers a way to focus on the America that could be and how government accounting creates a misleading impression.

His most significant proposal aims to end childhood hunger. Our nation has become so economically segregated, and participation in nutrition programs has grown so much, that many find it hard to believe hunger is anything but a minute problem. Applying a conservative approach to the official data, however, one in 10 households with kids does not always have enough to eat.

Too many children, many of them middle-class, eat foods drenched in fat, salt and sugar. Our epidemic of child obesity will lead to huge medical costs as heart disease, diabetes and other chronic illness slowly drain the vitality of far too many of tomorrow’s adults.

Providing kids who qualify for free or low-cost school lunches with about $45 a month for food when school is out of session would cost about $12 billion over 10 years. How much taxpayers would save in future medical, disability and other costs, and benefit in increased tax revenues, is something federal budgets don’t tell us. That’s why budgeting practices mislead.

When Uncle Sam spends more than he collects, it can actually contribute to economic growth and prosperity.

This election year, don’t expect to hear much about that, on the campaign trail or on Capitol Hill.

David Cay Johnston, a former Pulitzer Prize-winning New York

Times reporter, teaches business, tax and property law of the ancient world at the Syracuse University College of Law.