In a story discussing President Obama’s FY2012 budget request, Rachel Jakubowitcz of CBS News mentions how that the budget proposal will reduce the deficit $1.1 trillion over ten years. Jakubowitcz also quotes Former Congressional budget analyst Stan Collender calling the deficit reduction “not an insignificant amount.” This may be true if the budget actually But, as Heritage research fellow Brian Riedl notes, much of the President’s proposed budget savings nonexistent and also will not be scorable by the Congressional Budget Office. Riedl explains,

It claims $315 billion saved from eliminating “certain tax expenditures” — but doesn’t list which ones. It claims to finance a $328 billion transportation trust fund without specifying what taxes would be raised. It takes credit for $321 billion in spending cuts to offset the Medicare “doc fix” from 2014 through 2021. What are the cuts? To be determined. It claims more than $150 billion in “program integrity” savings so vague that the Congressional Budget Office could not even score them in past budget estimates. The budget takes credit for $700 billion in “cuts” by comparing the long-planned drawdown of Iraq and Afghanistan spending against a baseline that implausibly assumes those costs would rise forever.”

Many news stories have noted that the president’s budget refuses to touch runaway entitlement spending, but the budget gimmicks and “to be determined” have gotten little traction in the media. Riedl emphasizes what the budget really does: “It raises taxes by $1.5 trillion, keeps spending at its highest level sustained level since World War II, and nearly doubles the national debt.”