The White House couldn’t have picked a more perfect day to release its bloated budget than Fat Tuesday. Bulging with new spending and taxes, the President’s plan fit right in with Tuesday’s celebration of excess. After striking out the first two tries, President Obama is still looking for that first “aye” on a budget after failing to win a single vote in 2011 (97-0) and 2012 (99-0).

Based on the reaction to this latest draft, this version has the potential to be even more unpopular (if that’s possible). For once, the White House dropped its façade of frugality and mapped out a glutted plan that would spend $56 billion more than the two-year deal Congress just passed. With a $3.9 trillion price tag, the 2014 edition sets the record for the fewest proposed cuts since President Obama took office. Instead, the federal government, which has spent $18,000,000,000,000 since 2009, would put America in the hole another $8.3 trillion. Even the extra $1.8 million in tax hikes doesn’t begin to offset the debt the country would be saddled with under the Obama blueprint.

Still, the President, speaking to a group of local elementary school kids, managed to keep a straight face when he said his “budget is designed with their generation and future generations in mind.” A grab bag of liberal priorities, the budget reads more like a “campaign brochure,” said Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) than a “serious document.” This plan, the President insisted, is about “our values.” But by “our values,” he must have meant liberals’, because the proposal takes aim at everything from the unborn to education.

President Obama said he wanted God to bless Planned Parenthood, Steve Ertelt quipped, but this year, the White House wants to do it for Him. Despite a year of Gosnell-like clinic scandals, fraud charges, and whistleblowers, the President still suggests shipping another $286,479,000 to the abortion giant, whose president, Cecile Richards, doesn’t even know the science behind her own business. And while the White House is willing to funnel hundreds of millions of dollars to an organization that promotes bondage and S&M to teens, it couldn’t spare the nominal $5 million for abstinence education.

One of the few areas President Obama is willing to cut, abstinence programs are what the father of two called “wasteful spending.” Unfortunately, he doesn’t recognize the value of the self-control message, which, ironically, is the best way to keep his daughters from being “punished” (as he called it) with a baby. “Taxpayers want to know: Is my money going to something that’s making a difference,” said the chief program officer at the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. “In the grand scheme of things, $5 million doesn’t amount to a hill of beans, but on the other hand, abstinence-only is not a program based on science.” What does that mean? Telling kids to wait until they are married and can emotionally and financially provide for a child is anti-science? It’s certainly pro-common sense! (And pro-research, based on these studies.)

Meanwhile, the administration just can’t seem to come to terms with the shortcomings of Head Start, proposing even more taxpayer dollars for the preschool money pit that the government already discredited. The program, which analysts blamed for having – not just zero effect, but “harmful effects on children” – would be rewarded for its failures with another $76 billion. “Our budget is about choices,” said President Obama. Poor ones, from the looks of it.

Obama Adds to Flip-Flop Collection in Romeike Case

What kind of country welcomes terrorist supporters and sends homeschoolers packing? Until Tuesday, ours! Just weeks after relaxing the rules on asylum seekers with “loose ties” to terrorists, the Obama administration was unusually preoccupied with deporting a law-abiding German family with five children.

That all changed Tuesday, when the President’s team did a surprise about-face and offered to let the Romeikes stay in the country indefinitely. Uwe, Hannelore, and their five kids fled to the U.S. in 2010 and were granted refuge when an immigration judge agreed that the harassment they faced at the hands of the German government for homeschooling their children amounted to “persecution.” Last year, the Justice Department urged U.S. courts to kick the Romeikes out, insisting in a legal brief that the family was never the target of hostility – a view they reversed Tuesday, two days after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear their case. To the shock of the family and their tireless advocates at the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), Homeland Security contacted the Romeikes with the good news that they could stay in America indefinitely.

FRC celebrated with Uwe and Hannelore that the administration had finally come to its senses – but in reality, it never should have come to this point. Months after arguing that homeschooling is not a fundamental right, what could have caused the White House to change its mind? A sudden benevolence for a Christian family? Possibly, but it’s more likely that the administration recognized the political fallout that would come from one of the most organized and politically astute corners of the social conservative world: homeschooling families.

Imagine the negative PR that would have ensued if the White House deported the family, implying Uwe and Hannelore Romeike posed a greater threat to national security than refugees who had offered “limited material support” to terrorists. That, along with the threat of civil disobedience from people and political leaders in their new home state of Tennessee had to factor into Homeland Security’s decision. Regardless, it’s an incredible victory and we, along with our friends at HSLDA, thank God that the Romeikes are here to stay!

AG Mows Down Bluegrass Constitution

The explosion of activist marriage rulings isn’t just putting courts at odds with voters – but state leaders at odds with each other. In Kentucky, where Judge John Heyburn has given the state 21 days to recognize outside “marriages,” the Governor and Attorney General are split on how to proceed. The differences between the two Democrats became public this week, when AG Jack Conway announced that he would take U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder’s advice and ignore his duty to defend the law. “From a constitutional perspective, Judge Heyburn got it right,” Holder claimed. Obviously, that suggestion is ridiculous on its face no matter which Constitution Conway is referring to. There is no fundamental right to marry in the U.S. Constitution, and in Kentucky’s, voters specifically defined marriage as the union of a man and woman.

Ultimately, Jack Conway took an oath to uphold the constitution and the laws of Kentucky, not undermine them through indifference driven by his personal ideology. Does Mr. Conway possess some mysterious knowledge and understanding that 75% of Kentucky voters who approved the marriage amendment don’t have? Meanwhile, Governor Steve Beshear, whose son, Andy, is running for the job that Conway just abandoned, has promised to hire outside lawyers to defend his state’s marriage amendment, warning of the “legal chaos” that would result if he didn’t.

This is a publication of the Family Research Council. Mr. Perkins is president of FRC.