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August 26, 2009

A Trillion Dollars per Year

Justin Katz

President Obama has put the government on track to realize nearly one trillion dollars per year of cumulative deficit for the next decade:

In a chilling forecast, the White House is predicting a 10-year federal deficit of $9 trillion -- more than the sum of all previous deficits since America's founding. And it says by the next decade's end the national debt will equal three-quarters of the entire U.S. economy.

Do you suppose Americans are finally waking up to the hangover resulting from their campaign-year binge of moral vanity and political superficiality? It's becoming difficult to miss the scam-pitch in such nonsense as the assertion by Obama's Budget Director Peter Orszag that rewriting our healthcare system with an emphasis on regulation and government involvement will decrease the deficit. Sorry, Pete, more and more of us simply aren't buying.

But before President Barack Obama can do much about it, he'll have to weather recession aftershocks including unemployment that his advisers said Tuesday is still heading for 10 percent.

I submit that the solution to both problems is one and the same: shrink government. Define the United States as something grander than its government, and the tidal economic rewards of freedom will lift the bureaucrats' boat, as well.

Comments

Suddenly conservatives don't want a deficit. Bush built up some serious spending and huge deficit but that was okay. Once again a glaringly huge case of JKatz hypocrisy.

Posted by: Scungilio at August 26, 2009 10:20 AM

True, but THAT deficit was built on taking care of Blackwater, Carlyle Group, and the like. THAT deficit is okay, capice?

Posted by: rhody at August 26, 2009 12:02 PM

Yup, when in contention, blame Bush. If not available, blame Republicans.

Let's completely forget about the trillion dollars per year of cumulative deficit.

It's most important to argue the color of the tree and ignore that it's burning.

Capiche?

Posted by: Roland at August 26, 2009 12:49 PM

Let's compare this to a personal economic plan. Some debt is reasonable, a mortgage, a car payment and college tuition. But to place oneself in a debt that is so wildly huge and will never be paid off in one's lifetime is not reasonable. Funny how the libs screamed to the hilt about Bush's spending but embrace Obama's. Non capisco!

Posted by: bobc at August 26, 2009 1:31 PM

Roland
1. The Italian verb is Capire: conjugated capisco, capisci, capisce, capiammo capite, capiscono in the present tense.

Your Italian is as inaccurate as your politics. You are out of your league.

2. The facts are that the Repugnicans were in power for 8 years and handed us a whopper of a mess and you never said a mumblin' word. You stuffed your pockets and now you try to tell the newly elected majority that they made the mess. Do you remember that Clinton handed Bush a surplus? I do.

Get real

OldTimeLefty

Posted by: OldTimeLefty at August 26, 2009 2:48 PM

Republicans vs Democrats. Liberals vs Conservatives. The false political dichotomy that is supposedly representing America. Around 70% of Americans characterize themselves as socially liberal and fiscally conservative. Who is representing all of those people? Nobody. All we have to choose from now is the big government party or the bigger government party, although I can't seem to remember which is which.

Rhode Island and the Federal system are both damaged beyond repair. The size of each government has been increasing ever since the founding era, never once scaled back, and you hope to start now? It's just pushing sand up against the tide at this point.

The Free State Project is the last real option anyone has for small government, responsible spending, and liberty within our lifetimes. The alternative is to keep voting for the two-headed hydra which increases the deficit each term whether the R or D head is currently directing it. The haphazard justifications may be different, but the end result is the same.

Again, it needs to be asked, at what specific point will you be willing to concede that Rhode Island can no longer be saved from itself?

Posted by: Dan at August 26, 2009 3:41 PM

The question is, "Can Rhode Island be saved from people like Dan?"
OldTimeLefty

Posted by: OldTimeLefty at August 27, 2009 8:26 AM

OK, I'm not going to try to pit Dems vs Repubs. I'm neither. I'm trying to make sense of all this spending. The previous administration drove up the debt to record levels and was criticized by the current administration as being fiscally irresponsible. Now, the current administration is driving up the national debt to a level that will dwarf the previous administration's debt but is not being fiscally irresponsible??? I'm not talking about what the money is being spent on, just how much is being spent. The White House says by the next decade's end the national debt will equal three-quarters of the entire U.S. economy. How is that good??? To me, that is like spending 3/4 of you pay on credit cards and living on 1/4. It's how people got into money trouble in the first place. All I keep hearing is "Trust us, we got a plan". Well, we trusted the previous administration and look what it got us. I want to see how the money is going to be spent and how the debt is going to be paid down. If I borrow so much that I can't afford the payments, that's wrong. If the gov't borrows so much that it can't make the payments, that's right??? Is there any wonder there is so much misinformation out there? I want to see a plan with specifics and I want it plain english not 1000+ pages of "congress speak".

Posted by: Chris Swiderski at August 27, 2009 8:57 AM

What option did Bush have? It costs a lot of $ to wage war against an enemy that didn't attack us. He couldn't have done that for $100. I'm sure he economized in spending billions for this fine war that he got us into based on false pretenses. If he spent billions on a bunch of bananas, we should be upset, but he spent these billions so that 1000s of americans could be killed needlessly. That was $ well spent and that's the basis of our current deficit.

Posted by: steve at August 27, 2009 2:42 PM