printThe man with the revere-Midas touch has submitted his $3.7 trillion budget, which he, age-appropriately, justified before a suburban Baltimore middle school, this morning. Barack Obama’s definition of fiscal conservatism is guarding the status quo. Obama’s budget is the same budget as last year’s. The tax proposals are the same. Entitlements (Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and Defense) remain untouched, an exemption that included the new healthcare monstrosity. Discretionary spending Obama has vowed to freeze for five years at a very high rate, but, as Doug Holtz-Eakin, former Director of the Congressional Budget Office, reminded the Obama adoring Norah O’Donell, the president has a (short and savage) history of ferociously fighting the enforcement of the very freezes he proposes.
Holtz-Eakin: This budget is “a political documented oriented to getting him reelected. The American worker needs jobs. There is no greater threat to the economy than the accumulation of deb this budget promises. This budget is good political positioning,” which guarantees the continued issuance of debt at a rate of $50,000 a minute (the median income of the average American), or $12,000 per family.
With a flick of his forked tongue, Obama once beguiled media groupies such as MSNBC’s Norah O’Donnell. No longer. She seems persuaded by the warnings of former CBOaf to big spender President George W. Bush.
I have to believe our buddy Barack has a problem with simple addition and subtraction. No matter how optimistic the revenue scenario his minions concoct, the deficit is going to be well north of $1 trillion for the coming fiscal year (and doesn’t count the off-budget monstrosities of Social Security or Medicare, Fannie/Freddie obligations, or looming state and municipal bailouts). How is this shortfall to be gapped? Borrowing and inflating.
So how does the private sector create real, productive, long-term job growth when the public sector is sucking up all the capital and squandering it on its hare-brained schemes? It just doesn’t add up.
Where does that leave us? At the mercy of foreign lenders and the counterfeiting machine known as the Fed. Without immediate and drastic spending cuts and a repudiation of the debt, there is no way out of this debt trap. The only question is when the dollar collapse occurs and what we’ll be left with on the other side.
If you have any significant portion of your investment portfolio in dollar-denominated assets, you are a complete fool.
See Table 7.1 — Federal Debt at the End of Year: 1940-2016
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/Historicals
The “Gross Federal Debt” has increased every year since 1957. It is expected to increase every year through 2016. Note that these annual increases INCLUDE the years of Bill Clinton’s vaunted budget “surplus.”
Clinton achieved his fictional “surplus” by playing games with annual budget numbers. Virtually every President since Eisenhower has played the same game. Obama is no different.
His boast of record cuts in discretionary spending is due exclusively to budgetary slight-of-hand:
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2011/02/President-Obamas-2012-Budget-Builds-on-Failures-of-the-Past
Federal government accounting is obscure in its complexity. So long as it remains so, and so long as our media fail to do an informed and honest analysis of it, our republic remains severely threatened.
The disinformation flowing from The White House with regard to federal budget matters eclipses that which poured forth from Josef Goebbels’ Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda in Nazi Germany.
The following should be chopped out within 1 – 5 years (not just frozen): (countries listed denote troop withdrawals) 1. Afghanistan 2. Iraq 3. Japan 4. Italy 5. Germany 6. Korea 7. Kuwait 8. War on Drugs 9. NPR 10. Fannie 11. Freddie 12. Sallie 13. Student Loans 14. Foreign Aid 15. Manned Space Exploration 16. Agribusiness Subsidies 17. Export Subsidies 18. HUD 19. NEA 20. NEH 21. Department of Education 22. F-35 23. BATF 24. Amtrak 25. Post Office subsidies 26. TSA. 27. National Ignition Facility 28. Selective Service, 29. BIA. 30. most of MDA 31. Most new shipbuilding. Then change the military retirement system to be more like 401 k’s and eliminate pseudo-civilian positions that get to “retire” in their mid 40’s like lawyers, clerks, etc.
This doesn’t even cut the basic welfare state which should be cut over a longer term basis. Economic deregulation should also grow the economy and further reduce the deficit.
To Clinton’s credit, the size of the government relative to the economy did shrink – give that man a Lewinsky!
My RON PAUL,
Actually, the “Lewinsky” goes to Newt Gingrich and all the angry white men who voted in the Republican Congress in 1992.
Also, Reagan raised Social Security taxes in 1983 which Clinton credited toward the general revenue budget to achieve his “surplus.”
Moreover, Clinton’s massive “tax increase of 1993 resulted in short-term increases in revenues to the government but eventually became an anchor that stopped economic growth. Clinton left the country on the brink of recession at the end of his second term in 2001.”
http://www.ontheissues.org/celeb/Bill_Clinton_Budget_+_Economy.htm