Is President Obama killing the recovery that he needs?

President Barack Obama – and the country along with him – is in an interesting situation. His budget outline submitted to Congress recently is drowning in red ink that is both inherited and premeditated. The deficits going forward – even if his administration’s assumptions and calculations are totally correct – are what one prominent Democratic senator labeled as “unsustainable.”

Some of those assumptions are pure fiction.

For example, Team Obama’s biggest element of “savings” in the budget outline comes from assuming that our military presence in Iraq would have continued at current “surge” levels for a decade. The president then “captures” $1.6 billion of savings by cancelling involvement at those levels. In a recent column, George Will lampooned that sleight of hand: “Why, one wonders, not ‘save’ $5 trillion by proposing to spend that amount to cover the moon with yogurt, and then canceling the proposal?”

The most telling element of the president’s budget outline is the assumption that the economic growth rates for the next three years will be 3.2 percent, 4.0 percent, and 4.2 percent-rates at or above the growth in the economy before the economic downturn.

Even with such rosy estimates, the budget is expected to carry forward huge deficits for the next 10 years.

Beyond the fact and fiction in President Obama’s budget, one thing is certain: without economic growth at a level much higher than existed before the current recession, the financial stability of the federal government will be in grave peril. It would seem then that the president and his team would be working night and day to come up with legislation and programs that would incentivize business to increase investment and employment.

Sadly, just the opposite is true.

The Obama administration is dead set on vastly expanding unionization, significantly increasing litigation, and greatly increasing taxes on businesses.

President Obama is a strong supporter of “card check” legislation that will give the unions a clear advantage in organizing attempts by eliminating the secret ballot in union certification elections.

He also supported and eagerly signed a bill that will greatly increase wage discrimination lawsuits against employers by expanding the class of plaintiffs eligible, thus eliminating the statute of limitations for filing such lawsuits.

On the taxation front, the president’s budget outline calls for a $31.5 billion tax increase on the oil and gas industry. While this set of taxes will be onerous to all segments of the industry, it will be particularly harmful to the independent operators who produce most of the onshore oil and gas in America.

Louisiana will be slammed especially hard by this set of tax increases. (Many energy companies are moving their headquarters to Switzerland in an attempt to escape the tax onslaught they see coming from the Obama administration.)

The largest tax increase on businesses will come from the “cap and trade” legislation. Under the guise of fighting global warming, it will impose a not-so-hidden tax on carbon emissions that will increase energy costs to business and consumers and make American companies less competitive with their foreign competition.

The president’s budget outline just doesn’t square with reality. He can’t have it both ways. He can’t try to mask the dire fiscal consequences of his huge spending increases by attempting to paper them over with rosy economic forecasts that are not likely to materialize.

One of the major reasons they won’t materialize is the anti-business agenda being pushed by his administration and the leadership of the House and Senate. Once the goose is cooked, there will be no more golden eggs.