Read this headline and tell me why most Americans don't blame Obama for the deficits: "Dems push war, jobs bills despite tab"

I pointed to a poll recently about how most Americans unbelievably blamed Bush for the deficit. Now this:

The Senate opened debate Monday on a $58.8 billion war funding bill even as House Democrats made final adjustments to a separate, much larger economic relief package that the party hopes to send to President Barack Obama before Memorial Day.

The twin bills represent a high-stakes gamble with an almost “Pulp Fiction” cast and flavor: wars, earthquake relief, Big Oil, Wall Street, echoes of Vietnam and decades-old grievances brought by black farmers and Native Americans.

And in the absence of a budget resolution this spring, this week’s floor debate will be its own proxy war, testing how far Democrats can go to meet core priorities in the face of record deficits.

“It is our highest priority this week,” a top House leadership aide said of the jobs and economic relief bill. To play it safe and pin down final items, the anticipated floor debate will slip a day to Wednesday. “Change is hard,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D—Cal.) said, cajoling her Democrats at a lengthy caucus Monday night, and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Sander Levin (D—Mich.), the bill’s manager, said later he “fully expects” to act soon this week.

Failure to act will make it that much harder for the leadership to move ahead with its legislative agenda this summer. Yet the costs are undeniable, adding tens of billions to the annual deficit and virtually wiping out all the 10-year savings predicted for health care reform. . . .

Didn't Politico get the message that the health care "savings" has already disappeared.

UPDATE: So now comes word that the administration is leaning on congress to increase spending.

Mixed signals from the White House are making life harder for Democrats this week as the party tries to navigate between competing demands to reduce the deficit while also investing in new jobs and a patched-up safety net for the unemployed and the elderly.

The House and Senate are struggling with two big spending bills before Memorial Day — a heavy lift that begs for a strong White House partner. But the administration appears internally conflicted and has adopted the practice of urging lawmakers to add new spending for its priorities without having President Barack Obama sign a real request.

A $23 billion emergency proposal to forestall threatened layoffs of public school teachers is now a likely casualty of this approach. In a letter to Democratic leaders May 13, Education Secretary Arne Duncan endorsed the funding, urging Congress to add the money to a pending war funding bill in the Senate. But the White House never forwarded a budget request and was conspicuously silent on the whole teachers funding issue when it issued its endorsement of the underlying $58.8 billion bill this week.

With the handwriting on the wall, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) retreated Tuesday from offering his amendment. Duncan is next scheduled to appear Wednesday morning alongside House Appropriations Committee Chairman Dave Obey, who has promised to add the same $23 billion to his draft of the war funding bill Thursday. But the Wisconsin Democrat is clearly frustrated by the administration’s approach and, after the setback in the Senate, said the White House is creating conditions that only invite failure.

“I wouldn’t say it’s an issue. It’s a condition that affects results,” Obey told POLITICO. Asked if it hurt the ability to get the $23 billion, he said, “Yes.”

Coming from the opposite direction, the administration caught Senate Democrats by surprise Tuesday when the White House announced it now wants to add $500 million to the war bill for improved security of the U.S.-Mexico border, $50 million of which would go to pay for an increase in National Guard forces.

In this case, the administration is signaling that it will actually make a presidential request. But just last Friday, on a proposal by Energy Secretary Steven Chu for $9 billion in loan guarantees for new nuclear reactors, the White House reverted to the same formula of no presidential signature and, instead, having Budget Director Peter Orszag forward the request and related draft legislation. . . . .

Fox News has this:

As the national debt clock ticked past the ignominious $13 trillion mark overnight, Congress pressed to pass a host of supplemental spending bills to, among other things, fund the continuing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, ramp up security on the U.S.-Mexico border and prevent teacher layoffs.

Taken together, the Democratic-led U.S. Congress is trying to find a way to pass about $300 billion more in unfunded spending before Memorial Day -- a spending spree that rivals anything drunken sailors have been accused of.

The debt-fueled spending would only add to the $13 trillion national debt, which breaks down to $42,000 for the average American.

The spending spree comes three months after President Obama lifted the cap on the amount of money the U.S. can borrow from $12.4 trillion to $14.3 trillion to keep the nation from going into default.

But another intervention may be needed since the administration has projected a $1.56 trillion deficit for the budget year ending Sept. 30 -- a figure likely to grow in the wake of the current spending spree.

The underlying war funding measure that congressional leaders hope to pass by the end of the week would bring the amount provided by Congress for the Iraq and Afghanistan war efforts to $1 trillion.

But lawmakers in both parties are using Obama's war funding request to advance unrelated pet initiatives like a $500 million administration request for border security and an Education Department request for a $23 billion teacher bailout. . . .

UPDATE 2: Add on top of all that the $30 billion that the Obama administration wants for a new jobs program.