When Yogi Berra uttered that immortal phrase, I’ll bet he never anticipated how much it would apply to……well, everything.

In this case, it is certainly the kindest thing I can say about President Obama’s budget. This budget consists of the four “M”s:

More spending.

More taxes.

More deficits.

This of course leads us to that fourth and final ‘M:”

More of the same.

One thing is clear, this budget is certainly not going to pass. The question is whether it will do better than last years budget, which failed to garner a single vote in the Senate. That’s right. Not even the president’s fellow Democrats were willing to support his plan. The question during this election year is whether any incumbent Democrat is willing to follow the President into this budget battle.

Dana Milbank of the Washington Post:

The White House’s budget for fiscal 2013 begins with a broken promise, adds some phony policy assumptions, throws in a few rosy forecasts and omits all kinds of painful decisions. Even then, the proposal would add $1 trillion more to the national debt than Obama contemplated a few months ago — and it is a non-starter on Capitol Hill, where even Senate Democrats have no plans to take it up. It is, in other words, exactly what it was supposed to be: a campaign document.

Every budget introduced is sure to fall victim to partisan bickering. So what does the bi-partisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget think?

This:

This morning, President Obama released his FY 2013 budget, proposing $3.8 trillion in spending (24.3 percent of GDP) and $2.5 trillion of revenue (15.8 percent of GDP) in 2013, resulting in a $1.3 trillion (8.5 percent of GDP) deficit. Through 2022, deficits would total $6.7 trillion (3.3 percent of GDP), with debt reaching $19.5 trillion (76 percent of GDP). This budget would replace the $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts (the sequester) currently in place due to the Super Committee’s failure with a comprehensive set of policies that would hold the debt at about 76 percent of GDP between 2018 and 2022. We applaud the President’s focus on deficit reduction and encourage him to go further in order to put the long-term debt on a downward path. “The President is doing exactly the right thing by proposing to replace the mindless cuts of the sequester with health reforms, mandatory spending cuts, and new revenues,” said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. “At the same time, his proposals would barely stabilize the debt – and at too high a level. We need to go bigger if we want to get this debt monkey off our back.” In total, the budget proposals nearly $1.6 trillion in net new revenue, over $360 billion in health savings, and about $270 billion in other mandatory savings through 2022, along with $350 billion of jobs measures. It also claims about $850 billion in savings from unwinding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, $230 billion of which is used for highway funding. “There are a number of good policies in this budget, but the use of this war gimmick is quite troubling,” said MacGuineas. “Drawing down spending on wars that were already set to wind down and that were deficit financed in the first place should not be considered savings. When you finish college, you don’t suddenly have thousands of dollars a year to spend elsewhere – in fact, you have to find a way to pay back your loans.” “I also worry that this plan doesn’t contain enough deficit reduction or entitlement reform. It does stabilize the debt, but at too high a level and in a way that isn’t robust over the long-run. Still, this budget represents a positive step in the fiscal conversation, and I’m hopeful it will help to push for a broader debt deal this year.

I started with a sports reference, since Gene Sperling, the Director of the National Economic Council, used numerous sports metaphors to introduce the budget. However, the more I dwell on this topic, Einstein’s definition of insanity keeps coming to my mind; “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

I told you, ‘it’s deja vu all over again’ was the nicest thing I had to say.