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What happened in Parliament last Thursday over the 2010 Budget was symptomatic of the adage that it is the grass that suffers when two elephants are engaged in a fight. Yes, the ordinary folk became bemused as both the majority and the minority produced their little posters jeering at each other after the Finance Minister, Dr. Kwabena Duffuor completed his nearly two hours delivery. Whom did the budge agree target? And how true is the ordinary folk, the downtrodden, going to benefit? Is the price of food going to be cheaper and plentiful at the market? Whatever the needs of man, food comes out as the uppermost. In Ghana, rice and bread are the most basics consumed everyday by virtually every family. Certainly if these basics are to be restricted by way of imposition of levies all that means is that their prices are going to spiral higher. Certainly it is the most inward looking aspect of the budget whose impact would trigger off the kind of scarcities which were wiped off almost a decade ago. Which part of this country is going to produce rice to satisfy the consumption of the whole nation? The talk about impetus to agricultural production has become such deadly clich� nobody wants to hear again. How has the country�s agricultural fared since independence? As Professor Cletus Duordonoo, an economic think tank rightly observed: �politicians always load their budgets with many fanciful projections when they know they can�t achieve even half of them. This has been the pattern since independence and only God knows when they are going to stop.� He hit the nail right at the head. Dr. Duffuor spent close to two hours delivering the budget but everybody listening to him saw that he was just harping on NDC�s usual populism. Just when they are going to stop the excuses of inheriting unspeakable debts is something people can�t understand. President Barrack Obama inherited a banking system brought to its knees by overspending and the collapse of the giant car industries. But reports lately suggest American economy was on the verge of recovery. Ex-president Kufuor inherited a HIPIC economy but was able to stabilize the petrol situation, go to the capital market and borrow and got a chunk of Millennium Challenge Account. Those are well known and they presuppose the challenge facing the NDC government. Ghana�s economy needs growth and nothing else.