President Barack Obama has a new budget. So it’s time to suspend reality and listen and nod your head and pine for four more years.
Government debt
As the brinksmanship over the debt limit heats up, we can still hear the progressives saying that we are in this fix because we cut taxes without “paying” them. Let’s drive a stake through the heart of that one.
Maybe it was because he was trained as a medical doctor that Rand Paul knows that if you are going to lift something heavy you have to bend your knees and keep your back straight. Contrast that to the other members of Congress who stand on tiptoes, with their legs straight, bent at the waist leaning far over and picking through the $1.6 trillion deficit using only their thumb and forefinger, to find some morsel that they can extract from the budget, crying all the while “It’s too heavy, it’s too heavy.”
Michelle Bachmann let off the three day CPAC conference with a keynote address that laid out the case against the current administration and the rule of Nancy Pelosi. Most of the focus of her talk was on raising the alarm on our current financial situation and its urgency.
We have had several bubbles before, but if the Obama administration has their way, “you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.” Currently the budget for the federal government is $4 trillion dollars. That’s right, your federal government will spend approximately (which means probably more) $4 trillion in one year. Of that amount $202 billion is interest on the national debt. In an article in the New York Times today by 2019, a mere ten years from now, the portion of the budget directed to interest payments will be over $700 billion, or three and a half times what it is today. Many people have trouble grasping how much a trillion dollars are, and within ten years we will be paying three-quarters of a trillion dollars just to cover the interest without paying off any of the principle.
Family Budget Analogy
We all understand the dramatic effects of too much debt, as the point has been driven home every day throughout this financial crisis. Bankruptcy filings, home foreclosures, bailouts, all resulting from more debt than we can pay the interest on, let alone pay back the principle. You see commercials on television every day for companies that will help you renegotiate your credit card debt, your mortgage, intervene on your behalf with the IRS. None of those programs are available to the federal government as a debtor.
Obama’s Out of Control Spending
The Obama administration seems oblivious to the problem. As bad as it is they just keep on spending or want to spend more:
- Stimulus package — $787 billion. Despite evidence that it is not working and widespread opposition from the American people, the Obama administration is simply declaring that it is working and we need to do it again with a second stimulus
- Cap and Trade — this is a program that will drive energy costs through the roof for no real benefit. After all if, as is becoming more and more apparent, global warming is not man made then it cannot be stopped by man either. Higher costs will lead to businesses closing down, laying off people, and generating less tax revenue from both the businesses and the individuals it laid off. Result — an increase in the deficit.
- Health Care — another $1 trillion of IOUs piled on our children’s back and if Medicare’s history is any guide, these numbers are well below what will really happen.
The Truth About Government
The truth is that government doesn’t create anything. They don’t generate income. Everything that government has to spend comes from you and me. The government takes it from us (or throws us in jail for tax evasion) and then spends it. If they can’t get enough from us, they borrow the difference. But somewhere down the line, that money has to get paid back. A news report today said we have the opportunity to just write a check to the Treasury if we are concerned about the deficit and want to help pay it down! Let’s see how many of Obama’s wealthy supporters sign up for that program.
Runaway Train
Our federal government is a runaway train and if we don’t stop it very soon and pare it back to the functions enumerated in the Constitution, we will get hit with a bubble so big, that there is no Hollywood screenwriter that could even begin to conceive of how to portray it. $700 billion folks, that’s $2,059 in INTEREST for every man, woman and child in America. Ask yourself this, if you are a family of four are you prepared to write a check for $8,235 to the federal government for interest alone? You don’t get anything for your money, it just keeps your government from defaulting on what they already borrowed. This will be on top of your regular tax bill. And the next year you will have to pay it again and probably more. It’s time to stop the madness. It’s time to stop the spending. It’s time to stop the expansion of government and start shutting down departments. It’s what you would do at home in a financial crisis, it’s what a small business would do in a crisis. This is a crisis that we can still get under control, but if the debt continues to grow to the point where we can no longer afford to pay even the interest, America will be a footnote in history.
Do I have your attention now?
