When we hear pleas for a “balanced approach” to addressing the federal government’s fiscal crisis, we ought to hear alarm bells. That’s the message Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute is sending to those who take comfort in the notion of “balancing” spending cuts and tax increases.

Obama’s other rhetorical trick is to claim he wants a “balanced approach.” Translated from Washington-speak to English, that means he wants more of our money. But it’s a soothing way to demand more money. After all, who’s against “balance”?

I actually agree with Obama – but only if one uses honest math. Needless to say, Obama wants to use Washington math, where spending increases get redefined as spending cuts if the burden of government spending doesn’t rise as fast as was projected in some artificial baseline.

This is why the budget deals put together by politicians almost always are awful. In order to protect the goodies they hand out to various special interests, the politicians use fake numbers to pretend they’re restraining spending, but when the dust settles, it turns out that the only real result is that taxpayers are forking over more of their hard-earned cash to the clowns in Washington.

Mitchell offers a simple chart documenting the “balanced approach” employed in European countries.