AMERICA'S federal budget is less an exercise in accountancy and more a piece of political showmanship, especially when, as now, opposing parties control the presidency and Congress. This year's budget, released on February 2nd, was no different. President Barack Obama presented a long financial wish-list to Congress, calling for higher domestic and military spending, paid for by raising taxes on the wealthy and by borrowing more. It is time to "replace mindless austerity with smart investments that strengthen America", Mr Obama proudly declared. The budget also includes plans to tax companies' overseas profits in order to plough $478 billion into repairing America's crumbling roads and bridges.

Little of this has gone down well with the Republicans who control Congress. Mr Obama's plans to raise taxes and raise spending by 7% above the limits Mr Obama agreed with them in 2011 went down particularly badly. Mitch McConnell, the leader of the Republican majority in the Senate, called it, "Another top-down, backward-looking document that caters to powerful political bosses on the left and never balances—ever." And one leading Republican in the House of Representatives compared the proposals to an ill-advised gambit that had cost Seattle Seahawks the Super Bowl a few days earlier. But even if the proposals are unlikely to be enacted, thanks to Republican opposition, do they make sense economically?

With a deteriorating economic backdrop, easing up on austerity does make sense. The IMF has downgraded global growth forecasts for 2015 several times over the past year, and many of America's trading partners, such as Japan and the euro zone, are suffering from slow growth. Keeping the American economy on track will therefore require domestic demand to remain strong, something that the Federal Reserve cannot provide on its own with interest rates so near zero and with quantitative easing at an end. There should also be little worry about the inflationary consequences of keeping the deficit around 3% of GDP. Lower oil prices and a strong dollar have helped inflation to fall from 2% in July to just 0.8% by December.

Mr Obama's spending priorities are also quite sensible, particularly in terms of trying to find more money for infrastructure. As we pointed out last year, with borrowing so cheap, it is daft that America’s public infrastructure spending is at a 20-year low. Spending more on programmes such as free pre-school for four-year-olds and subsidised community college for grown-ups will also boost growth in the long run. And with Russian aggression and instability in the Middle East to worry about, reversing some of the military spending cuts imposed in 2011 seems a good idea too.

The proposals' tax reforms, however, have less to recommend them. The 14% one-off tax on corporate earnings overseas was a figure probably chosen to cover roughly half of the cost of Mr Obama's $438 billion infrastructure programme (that tax is supposed to raise about $240 billion), rather than really encourage firms to invest more at home. The budget also proposes that following the 14% hit, firms will pay a 19% tax on future overseas earnings. That will probably make up the rest of the infrastructure programme. But 19% is still much less than the 28% corporate-tax rate that he proposes for domestic earnings. Corporations may shift even more cash abroad as a result. The proposal would also increase costs for American multinationals relative to their competitors (most non-American firms will pay much less than 19% on foreign earnings) making them less competitive.

A more comprehensive package of reforms is also needed for personal taxes as well as for corporate ones. Although Mr Obama proposes to axe some tax loopholes used by trust funds, his plans will hardly make a scratch on the tax expenditures, worth 7% of GDP, that are given away each year, often to ill-effect.

Most glaring is the president's failure to take on "entitlements", including Social Security, America's national pension scheme, and Medicare, which provides free health care to the elderly. If he and the Republicans do not get to grips with these, America's deficits will soon begin to swell again, whatever happens to the rest of the budget.