|
|
|
Jewish World Review July 18, 2011 / 16 Tamuz, 5771 You'd think these numbers would frighten Dems By Jack Kelly
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
"We don't estimate speeches," responded Douglas Elmendorf, director of the Congressional Budget Office, when asked why CBO hadn't prepared a detailed analysis of President Barack Obama's proposed budget.
Mr. Elmendorf's quip illustrates how unserious Mr. Obama has been in the fiscal crisis. He is the first president since CBO was established in 1974 to fail to provide enough detail for CBO to "score" his budget plan.
Mr. Obama isn't alone in what is, literally, criminal irresponsibility. It's been more than two years since Senate Democrats have produced a budget, which the majority party is required by law to do.
"I've bent over backwards to work with Republicans," Mr. Obama said in his news conference Monday on negotiations to raise the ceiling on the national debt.
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell disagrees. "The president has presented us with three choices: smoke and mirrors, tax hikes, or default. Republicans choose none of the above."
Mr. Obama's aides told reporters he'd offered to trim spending by $1.7 trillion over the next ten years in exchange for tax increases.
The Democrats' plan would trim just $2 billion from the president's spending plans for next year, the director of the Office of Management and Budget told Sen. McConnell. That's less than one tenth of one percent of what is needed to prevent financial catastrophe, Republicans think.
Here's why Republicans are worried. In 2001, the national debt was $5.95 trillion. By the time Barack Obama took office it nearly doubled -- to $11 trillion -- and is $14.34 trillion now, a 141 percent increase in just ten years. The U.S. issued more debt last year than all the rest of the world's governments combined.
The Treasury Department announced Wednesday the budget deficit this fiscal year will exceed last year's $1.29 trillion deficit. If we keep spending money we don't have at the rate President Obama's been spending it, the national debt will double again by 2022. Interest on the debt will be the largest federal expenditure. Interest payments and entitlement programs -- if unreformed -- will consume all but eight cents of every dollar the government spends.
You'd think these numbers would frighten Democrats, too, but they want to go on spending as usual. Hence the impasse over the debt ceiling.
He couldn't guarantee Social Security checks would go out if the debt ceiling isn't raised by Aug. 2nd, Mr. Obama told Scott Pelley of CBS Tuesday.
That's a lie. If the debt ceiling isn't raised, Treasury won't be able to borrow more money. But current tax revenues are more than enough to make interest payments on debt already issued; to pay Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and veterans' benefits, and to cover the wages and insurance benefits of federal employees, Treasury says. So there would be no default, nor any hardship to people dependent upon government checks, unless President Obama deliberately chooses to inflict such pain.
Mr. Obama is holding a gun to grandma's head to try to buffalo Republicans into acceding to real tax increases in exchange for phantom budget cuts. But the debt crisis is entirely a product of too much spending.
In addition to the $862 billion Mr. Obama spent on a stimulus that didn't stimulate, and a $1.4 trillion price tag (over ten years) for Obamacare, the president has raised discretionary nondefense spending 24 percent. The federal government now consumes 24 percent of the gross domestic product, the highest burden ever except for World War II. (Since 1903, federal spending has averaged a hair over 20 percent of GDP).
Federal spending hasn't been reduced since FY 1965. Even under the budget proposed by Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis, which Democrats have described as "draconian," spending would rise by nearly $40 trillion over the next ten years. When politicians talk about spending "cuts," what they really mean is slowing the rate of growth.
Since World War II, federal tax revenues have averaged 18 percent of GDP. Income tax rates varied widely during this period, and there were both booms and busts. But tax revenues never exceeded 20.6 percent of GDP. That seems to be a ceiling, and it suggests the budget cannot be balanced unless spending is held to no more than 20 percent of GDP.
Few in the "mainstream" media make note of these facts, which is why Mr. Obama figures he can lie brazenly and get away with it. Journalists have his back.
The president has good reason to feel confident, according to a Quinnipiac poll released Thursday (7/14). It indicated that if the debt ceiling is not raised, 48 percent of voters will blame Republicans, only 34 percent will blame Mr. Obama.
That won't last in the wake of the snit fit Mr. Obama threw Wednesday (7/13), thinks Conn Carroll of the Washington Examiner. The president stormed out of a meeting after telling Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va., the House Majority Whip: "don't call my bluff."
"Up until now, the liberal media has been dutifully playing along with the preferred White House script that Obama is the 'adult in the room,' far above Washington politics," Mr. Carroll said. "But at some point the facts will make it impossible to play along."
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Comment by clicking here.
JWR contributor Jack Kelly, a former Marine and Green Beret, was a deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration.
© 2009, Jack Kelly |
Arnold Ahlert | |||||||||||
