Budget Busted

President Obama, a victim of his own spending:

President Barack Obama starts his second term in office facing unprecedented budget constraints that will challenge his ability to implement his economic vision.

Spending caps that Obama signed into law in 2011 will make it difficult to boost investment in education, scientific research, transportation and other areas that he says will help the country retool for heightened global competition and rapid technological change, budget experts say.

Because those caps won't keep pace with inflation and population growth, the government will effectively have 16 percent less to spend in these areas by the time Obama leaves office in 2017, according to White House estimates.

That could constrain college loans, preschool education, job training and other programs that Obama says will boost national competitiveness.

"Under the caps as they are currently constructed, we're going to see pretty significant diminishment of investment in all of those things," said Scott Lilly, who spent decades writing spending bills as a Democratic staffer in the House of Representatives.

That tends to be what happens when the money's pretty much gone already...