The House and Senate have passed their respective, wildly different budget plans to cope with the nation's debt crisis. So where's the president? Seems he'd rather do anything but lead on this critical issue. By law, the president is obligated to produce a budget plan on the first Monday of February, establishing his priorities for federal spending and taxes for the next year and the decade ahead. It's the first step that gets this all-important annual process under way, one that's more critical than ever as the U.S. careens toward a massive debt crisis. But Obama apparently can't be bothered with this mundane responsibility. He's now 50 days late with this budget, and is giving no indication of when, or even if, he'll bother to offer one up. Instead, Obama is planning yet another pointless and costly trip around the country, this time to try to rally support for politically expedient gun control laws. Meanwhile, House Republicans have passed their budget plan, as have Senate Democrats (for the first time in four years). But the gulf between these two plans couldn't be wider. The House GOP budget balances the books in just 10 years, without raising taxes. The Senate Democrats want to raise taxes another $1 trillion â on top of Obama's $1.3 trillion in tax hikes â and still produces deficits as far as the eye can see. The House plan would make real spending cuts, starting with deep cuts this year and next. Over the next decade, the government would spend $4.6 trillion less than it's currently projected to. The Senate plan would lift spending over the next three years by $134 billion, and â once you strip out accounting tricks â by $300 billion over the next 10. The House budget also tackles runaway federal entitlements. It would reform Medicaid immediately, converting it from an open-ended entitlement into a block grant to states. It would also kill ObamaCare. And while it doesn't make changes to Medicare over the next decade, it would later convert the program into one that provides subsidies to seniors and lets the private insurance companies compete for their business. Senate Democrats, on the other hand, refuse to lift a finger to reform these programs, despite the clear warning from the Congressional Budget Office that left unfixed, they will bankrupt the county. Clearly, bridging the budget chasm between the Senate and the House will require real leadership. But aside from pabulum about a "balanced approached," Obama's offered nothing. His budget last year was universally derided for its reliance on phony accounting tricks to make deficit cuts look far bigger than they were. And his-so-called plan to replace the $1.2 trillion automatic sequester cuts counted hundreds of billions in new revenues as spending reductions. In his campaign for re-election, Obama bragged endlessly he had a plan to deal with the nation's debt crisis. Now that the House Republicans and Senate Democrats have revealed theirs, why's Obama still hiding his? http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/032613-649435-obama-budget-plan-is-missing-in-action.htm