“Obama spending stimulates the national debt by $3,039,000,000,000,” blares Andrew Malcolm’s headline in the Los Angeles Times.
The information comes courtesy of “Mark Knoller of CBS News, who is the White House press corps’ chief cruncher of all things numbers.”
“national debt has increased by $3,039,000,000,000, as in, that much more than it was when he took the oath on Jan. 20, 2009, in front of millions of excited witnesses and Aretha Franklin’s huge hat.
“Obama prefers to lay the blame or credit for this gargantuan spending increase at the cowboy-booted feet of his Lone Star Republican predecessor,” writes Malcolm. “During George W. Bush’s Oval Office tenure, the national debt increased more — by $4.9 trillion, in fact.”
“However, Bush took 96 months to do that.”
“Obama has accomplished his spending feat in less than 21 months. Under his spendership the national debt has grown about $4.8 billion every day since he took the oath of office twice, just to be safe.”
[SNIP]
The problem is that no one who follows him will be able to reverse this. How do you turn this around? You can’t, given that the interest alone on such stratospheric debt is insurmountable. There is no returning America to a place of financial safety.
Putting up a pretense means, at the very least, doing what David Cameron is attempting in the UK.
Incidentally, can you imagine how apoplectic National Review (with the exception of the two non-neocons on staff) would become if BHO “announced plans to cut its military personnel by 10 percent, scrap 40 percent of the army’s artillery and tanks, withdraw all of its troops from Germany within 10 years, and cut 25,000 civilian jobs in its Defense Ministry”?
UPDATE (Oct. 20): British Stewardship? To listen to Daniel Hannan—English politician, commentator on all things American—the US is not as deep in trouble as the UK. Understandably, a rabid rah-rah for America comes with being a Fox News expert.
Yes we have fabulous founding documents and principles, but these have been flouted for at least a century. According to the facts mentioned in “Statism Starts With YOU!”, most Americans adore “Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — which combined, account for close to half of the federal government’s budget.” And “only 7 percent of the country will consider slashing the first two welfare programs; a mere eleven percent of those living in the ‘Land of the Free’ are prepared to pare down Medicaid.” (One Tea Party slogan read: “Keep the government out of my Medicare!”)
I cannot comment with any degree of authority whether there are differences in attitudes to entitlements between us and our cousins across the pond.
One thing is indisputable: Unlike in the UK, successive American governments—and the governing class—have been unique in working against the economic interests of their countrymen and their country. (Treason?)
BBC News: “Chancellor George Osborne has unveiled the biggest UK spending cuts for decades, with welfare, councils and police budgets all hit.”
A “19% average cuts to departmental budgets,” as well cutting “higher education spending by 40%, flood defences by 15% and sport England and UK Sport by 30%”—this is better than increasing spending as we are. Of course, price controls, such as on rail fares, are being tinkered with, namely “allowed to increase by 3% above RPI inflation from 2012.”
No doubt, certain cuts are an illusion, to be replaced by other, slightly modified programs. But again: better to fire 500,000 state workers than to hire 1.4 million census stalkers.
