Given these realities, everyone in this chamber -- Democrats and Republicans -- will have to sacrifice some worthy priorities for which there are no dollars, and that includes me.

-President Barack Obama, on his largest in history budget, February 24, 2009.

According to Barack Obama, our current economic downturn is a time for shared sacrifice. We will all have to sacrifice in the form of higher taxes on the economy to pay for a continuing series of bailouts and stimulus plans. We will all have to sacrifice in the form of higher energy costs to pay for environmental initiatives designed to fight forecasted warming. We will all have to sacrifice (especially future generations) to repay the exponentially escalating debt obligations that are being daily auctioned by the Treasury to finance the expansion of a government that we already cannot afford. Businesses will have to sacrifice freedoms. Healthcare companies will have to sacrifice profits. Consumers will have to sacrifice choices.

And if you believe Obama, even he is joining in the sacrifice. But seeing as his inaugural budget proposal is a record-smashing $3.6 trillion behemoth, I’m not sure what of his ambitions he’s sacrificing. This budget is so large and so unbalanced that it will more than double the entire national debt of the United States.

In his first 100 days in office, Obama will commit to borrow more money than every President before him combined. There are, apparently, very few “worthy priorities” for which Obama cannot find dollars – be they taxed, borrowed or newly printed. And it is not just the scale of the budget that is striking, but its composition. In one of the most remarkable coincidences in all of human history, it turns out that the solution for our current financial crisis is – to do everything that Obama wanted to do before the crisis even existed.

To fix an economic meltdown born of a burst housing bubble, it turns out that we must make medical records paperless. Huh?

To fix a culture of under-regulated risk taking on Wall Street, we must build solar panels and windmills. Okay…

To address issues of financial liquidity, we must ensure that every American will “commit to at least one year or more of higher education or career training” – paid for by a new government entitlement. Well, I didn’t see the connection until it was pointed out, but I suppose…

To combat a cycle of international investor de-leveraging and deflation, we must, ah, let’s look at the list here…Oh, we must not walk away from the challenge of comprehensive health care reform. Or perhaps that’s why we need to “lay down thousands of miles of power lines.” Nope, wait, de-leveraging is why we must hire more teachers. Or is that why we must withdraw from Iraq? Subsidize tuitions? Build more schools? Oh it’s all so confusing.

The point is that to stimulate the economy, we must raise taxes. Not because that makes any sense to any economist living or dead, but because Obama has wanted to raise taxes for some time now. And he has apparently decided that, under the guise of crisis, he can enact pretty much every program and pipedream he’s ever imagined.

Finding America pinned under a heavy object, the newly powerful president sees only an opportunity to hurriedly renegotiate the contract between the people and their government, under duress. Once that is done, he’ll set about lifting the burden.

One by one, the unveiling of the Obama administration’s plans “for the crisis” have led to panic among investors. This is because it has become increasingly obvious that, while the administration has many plans, none of them are really for the crisis. They’re just old plans, unrelated to our current reality, that are being relabeled for quick sale and shoved down the throat of America at a time when she is already choking on quite a bit of bad news.

Far from the expected Obama rally in the stock market driven by hope for a new direction, we’ve had instead the worst two months in the history of the stock market.

Perhaps this is the sacrifice we are all to share? Regardless, one thing seems certain, Obama will not voluntarily be sacrificing any of his pet plans, preconceived notions, or (most importantly) any of his long-standing ambitions during this crisis. In fact, this crisis, and the power it has handed him, seems only to have added to his ambition.

Even in good times, his plans would be hard to afford. In times such as these, the costs could be devastating.