Budget numbers? What budget numbers?

It's beyond us why anyone would challenge the Obama administration when it comes to their assurance that every penny of their "bailout and takeover" billions has been spent wisely and effectively.

Why, just look at how forthcoming Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke was in House hearings June 3, when Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, told the Fed chairman, "This use of expansive emergency powers relying on a vague statutory provision that hasn't been used in almost 70 years is not normal. We need to shine a light of transparency on this process, and we must do it now because the confidence of the American taxpayer, our public debt, and our economy are at stake. While independence and secrecy may be important to the Fed's normal operations, we need a canary in the coal mine."

But the Fed's secrecy about all the tax money the bankers are loaning other big bankers is just an isolated case, right? After all, one part of the big "change" Barack Obama promised to bring to Washington was more openness.

For instance, congressmen interested to know by how much Mr. Obama's willy-nilly spending has already ballooned the deficit and the debt before they decide whether to let him spend $1 trillion taking over the health care industry (15 percent of the U.S. economy) can just examine the administration's budget update, normally scheduled to be released in mid-July ...

Oh, wait.

Because "the administration's annual midsummer budget update is sure to show higher deficits and unemployment and slower growth than projected in President Barack Obama's budget in February and update in May, and that could complicate his efforts to get his signature health care and global-warming proposals through Congress," The Associated Press reported Monday, the release has been put off until the middle of next month -- after the date by which the president is frantically urging Congress to ram health care "reform" down our throats.

The notion that the delay "is somehow out of the ordinary seems somewhat silly," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Monday, blaming the postponement entirely on the "transition from one administration to the next," which happened just, um ... six months ago.

In fact, high cost estimates are already causing some principled Democrats to balk at the big medical insurance takeover. Meantime, "Instead of a dream, this routine report could be a nightmare," Tony Fratto, a former Treasury Department official and White House spokesman under President George W. Bush, says of the delayed budget update.

Setting the stage for bleaker projections, Vice President Joe Biden recently conceded, "We misread how bad the economy was," back in January.

A Washington Post-ABC News survey released Monday shows approval of Obama's handling of health-care reform slipping below 50 percent for the first time. The poll also found support eroding on how Obama is dealing with the economy, unemployment and the swelling budget deficit.

The Democrat-controlled Congress is still reeling from last week's testimony by the head of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, Douglas Elmendorf, that the main health care proposals Congress is considering would not reduce costs -- as Mr. Obama has insisted -- but would instead "significantly expand" the federal financial responsibility for health care.

Citing the CBO testimony, House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, on Monday accused Democrats of "burying this budget update until after Congress leaves town next month." He called the budget-update postponement "an attempt to hide a record-breaking deficit as Democratic leaders break arms to rush through a government takeover of health care."

Keeping Congress in the dark about the extent to which the debt and deficit have already ballooned on his watch may be one reason the president is desperate to complete his medical coup d'etat by Aug. 7.

But the president himself has provided another, stating that once the delegates "get home there will be forces influencing them."

Forces like ... their constituents?

No TARP transparency, and now no mid-year budget estimate, while Mr. Obama crashes madly forward with his schemes to double or triple our energy bills with his carbon dioxide "cap-and-tax" scheme, as well as the long-time socialist pipe dream of government-rationed health care -- the kind Canadians flee to the United States and spend their own money to avoid.

If he's so proud of what he's doing, why the secrecy?