Brother, Can You Spare A Trillion?: Government Gone Wild!

http://s.ytimg.com/yt/swfbin/watch_as3-vflvORKLE.swf

via youtube.com

What do you not understand?

Obama’s “Hope and Change” record…

	January 2009	TODAY	% chg	Source
Avg.. Retail price/gallon gas in U.S.	$1.83	$3.104	69.6%	1
Crude oil, European Brent (barrel)	$43.48	$99.02	127.7%	2
Crude oil, West TX Inter. (barrel)	$38.74	$91.38	135.9%	2
Gold: London (per troy oz.)	$853.25	$1,369.50	60.5%	2
Corn, No.2 yellow, Central IL	$3.56	$6.33	78.1%	2
Soybeans, No. 1 yellow, IL	$9.66	$13.75	42.3%	2
Sugar, cane, raw, world, lb. Fob	$13.37	$35.39	164.7%	2
Unemployment rate, non-farm, overall	7.6%	9.4%	23.7%	3
Unemployment rate, blacks	12.6%	15.8%	25.4%	3
Number of unemployed	11,616,000	14,485,000	24.7%	3
Number of fed. Employees, ex. Military (curr = 12/10 prelim)	2,779,000	2,840,000	2.2%	3
Real median household income (2008 v 2009)	$50,112	$49,777	-0.7%	4
Number of food stamp recipients (curr = 10/10)	31,983,716	43,200,878	35.1%	5
Number of unemployment benefit recipients (curr = 12/10)	7,526,598	9,193,838	22.2%	6
Number of long-term unemployed	2,600,000	6,400,000	146.2%	3
Poverty rate, individuals (2008 v 2009)	13.2%	14.3%	8.3%	4
People in poverty in U.S. (2008 v 2009)	39,800,000	43,600,000	9.5%	4
U.S.. Rank in Economic Freedom World Rankings	5	9	n/a	10
Present Situation Index (curr = 12/10)	29.9	23.5	-21.4%	11
Failed banks (curr = 2010 + 2011 to date)	140	164	17.1%	12
U.S.. Dollar versus Japanese yen exchange rate	89.76	82.03	-8.6%	2
U.S.. Money supply, M1, in billions (curr = 12/10 prelim)	1,575.1	1,865.7	18.4%	13
U.S.. Money supply, M2, in billions (curr = 12/10 prelim)	8,310.9	8,852.3	6.5%	13
National debt, in trillions	$10..627	$14..052	32.2%	14

Just take this last item:

  In the last two years we have accumulated national debt at a rate more
  than 27 times as fast as during the rest of our entire nation’s
  history..  Over 27 times as fast.  Metaphorically speaking, if you
  are driving in the right lane doing 65 MPH and a car rockets past you in the
  left lane. 27 times faster, it would be doing  7,555 MPH!

 

Sources:

(1) U.S. Energy Information

  Administration;

(2) Wall Street Journal;

(3) Bureau of Labor Statistics;

(4) Census Bureau;

(5) USDA;

(6) U.S. Dept. Of Labor;

(7) FHFA;

(8) Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller;

(9) RealtyTrac;

(10) Heritage Foundation and

  WSJ;

(11) The Conference Board;

(12) FDIC;

(13) Federal Reserve;

(14) U.S. Treasury

» Patton: The 9,000 Pound Elephant in the Living Room Commentary

Financial advisor Dave Ramsey put forth an interesting scenario recently on his nationally syndicated radio call-in program. Taking a hypothetical phone call from John Q. Public and his wife, We the People, in one brief illustration Ramsey demonstrated that no one in Washington, D.C., is really serious about cutting spending.

Ramsey has a way of boiling large numbers down to their essence and showing us the absurdity of our debt crisis. In his radio example, his callers — “John” and “We” — are earning $58,000 a year. However, they are spending $75,000 a year. More importantly, they have credit card debt totaling $327,000. In fact, $10,000 of the family’s income goes just to pay interest on those credit cards.

“Now, what would you expect my advice to this couple to be?” Ramsey asked his radio audience. He then proceeded to say that if he followed the current model of “cuts” being proposed in Washington, his recommendation would be that they reduce their annual expenditures by a mere $3,000 — all the way down to $72,000.

Ramsey has calculated that these numbers are in exact proportion to the actions of our federal government in dealing with our deficit. However, instead of terms like “billions” and “trillions,” to which no one can relate, Ramsey has reduced the numbers to one we can all comprehend. Anyone with a brain can figure out that a family making $58,000 and spending $75,000, with $327,000 in credit card debt, is headed for bankruptcy — or worse.

This, most people would agree, is the classic definition of insanity. And yet, many Americans go merrily along pretending that somehow the reason for our debt is the war in Iraq, or the war in Afghanistan, or tax breaks for the rich or whatever other cliché entrenched Washington politicians want to throw out during election years. The truth is that we could eliminate every federal program in Washington and we still could not pay for Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security at the current levels — and still provide for the defense of the country. The truth is that this nation cannot pay its bills, and like John Q. Public and his wife, We the People, we are in for a rude awakening when those bills come due.

It has become obvious over the last two years that Barack Obama and the Democrats in Congress have no intention of being serious about the realities of our federal spending. Letting them set our national priorities is — in the words of satirist P.J. O’Rourke — tantamount to giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.

It is tempting to believe that John Boehner and his House Republicans are any more serious than the Democrats about making the tough decisions to keep this nation from falling into a financial pit from which we can never escape; but all one has to do is look at their proposals to know they are not the least bit serious. They are as addicted to spending as Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, who ran our spending levels up to the point where we are now spending $1.5 trillion more than we are taking in this year. Meanwhile, Boehner and company want us to cheer about $6 billion in cuts?

We cannot continue in serious times with unserious people representing us in Washington. They have taken the United States of America from the greatest, strongest, most prosperous country on the face of the earth and turned it into a debtor nation. They have taken us from a shining city on a hill to a banana republic.

As Dave Ramsey concluded in his lesson to his listening audience, it is the 9,000-pound elephant sitting on our foot in the living room.

—

Doug Patton describes himself as a recovering political speechwriter who agrees with himself much more often than not. Now working as a freelance writer, his weekly columns of sage political analysis are published the world over by legions of discerning bloggers, courageous webmasters and open-minded newspaper editors. Astute supporters and inane detractors alike are encouraged to e-mail him with their pithy comments at dougpatton@cox.net.

via gopusa.com

Do you think Congress is really serious about reduced spending? If you think they are serious, please explain your conclusion.

American Thinker: America Slouching Towards Fiscal Armageddon

via americanthinker.com

Washington has been taken over by fiscal idiots. These are people who are either ignorant beyond imagine, care nothing for America or the future of America, or hope to destroy freedom and impose a new Statist regime to control, dominate, and enslave America under some form of Tyranny. This article should be required reading for every American.

Washington Post.. Needs Civic Lesson And Remedial Ethics

The Washington Post babbled again today about Obama inheriting a huge deficit from Bush. Amazingly enough, a lot of people swallow this HORSE MANURE

So once more, a short civics lesson.

Budgets do not come from the White House. They come from Congress and the party that controlled Congress since January 2007 is the Democratic Party.

Furthermore, the Democrats controlled the budget process for FY 2008 and FY 2009 as well as FY 2010 and FY 2011.

In that first year, they had to contend with George Bush, which caused them to compromise on spending, when Bush somewhat belatedly got tough on spending increases.

For FY 2009 though, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid bypassed George Bush entirely, passing continuing resolutions to keep government running until Barack Obama could take office. At that time, they passed a massive omnibus spending bill to complete the FY 2009 budgets.

And where was Barack Obama during this time? He was a member of that very Congress that passed all of these massive spending bills, and he signed the omnibus bill as President to complete FY 2009. Let’s remember what the deficits looked like during that period: (below)

If the Democrats inherited any deficit, it was the FY 2007 deficit, the last of the Republican budgets. That deficit was the lowest in five years, and the fourth straight decline in deficit spending. After that, Democrats in Congress took control of spending, and that includes Barack Obama, who voted for the budgets.

If Obama inherited anything, he inherited it from himself.

In a nutshell, what Obama is saying is “I inherited a deficit that I voted for and then I voted to expand that deficit four-fold since January 20th“.

The American Spectator : They’re All Detroit Democrats Now

Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), ranking Democrat on the
House Budget Committee, went on CBS’s Face the Nation on
February 20 to argue that the Republicans’ draconian spending cuts
equal to 2% of the 2011 budget, and 6% of the 2011 deficit, would
destroy 800,000 jobs. The Wall Street Journal tracked down
the foundation for that number, and found it was a fabrication put
out by the Economic Policy Institute, a disreputable union
front.

via spectator.org

In today’s modern world, that 1930s-1970s Keynesian thinking can only be attributed to a poor education. What increases economic growth, jobs and prosperity is not government spending but increased production, which comes from increased incentives for production. That means lower tax rates and regulatory costs on production. That was the new, more modern, supply-side economics that President Reagan brought to Washington, resulting in a 25-year economic boom without inflation. The rest of the world watched and learned from Reaganomics, which is why countries like China, India, and Brazil have been growing steadily. America is starting to fall behind now because the Democrats are taking us back to the 1930s-1970s era, with their Rip Van Winkle economics pretending that everything since 1980 except the financial crisis of 2008 never happened.

The Republicans’ $100 billion spending cut is just a small down payment on what is necessary and what is coming in House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s 2012 budget that will set spending on a different course for the next several years. If the Democrats cannot abide even a 2% cut for 2011, with a $1.645 trillion deficit, they will be on a different planet when it comes to Ryan’s 2012 budget.

What the Democrats are revealing on a daily basis right now is that they are at war even more with the Tea Party than with the Republican Party. Tea Party activists take note, the daily message of the Democrats right now is that the Republicans don’t want to spend enough. The Democrats are even saying now that smaller deficits and debt will be bad for the economy.

Democrats, the party of dependency, continue to insist that we transfer income and wealth to government employee unions and assorted “dependent” classes, no matter the cost or destructive effect on our economy and job creation. Theirs is a purposeful effort to ignore the reality of economics and follow a Marxist ideological path where the only destination is economic Armageddon. Why do we allow ourselves to be subject to this insanity?