Obama’s Team is So Transparent, They’re Opaque; Release of Mid-Year Budget Review Delayed
The release of the mid-year budget review from the White House has been delayed. It really comes as no surprise anymore that the Obama team meant “transparency for thee but not for me.”
As a democrat, it’s ok to harp about Republicans, scream, and whine when you feel as though they aren’t being transparent enough. Then campaign on empty slogans of hope and change, but once in office do nothing of the sort. As they say to the victor goes the spoils and in this scenario, the spoils include hypocrisy and a lack of information disseminated to the American public. Read more
Captain Obvious Moment of the Day: Debt Unsustainable, We Must Stop Borrowing From China
Thank you Captain Obvious… err… I mean Obama!
Ironically enough the debt and the borrowing that Obama is concerned about will mostly come from his irresponsible spending habits within his first 100 days. When Dick Morris mentioned that Obama’s first 100 days would come back to haunt him, he was right!
President Barack Obama, calling current deficit spending “unsustainable,” warned of skyrocketing interest rates for consumers if the U.S. continues to finance government by borrowing from other countries.
“We can’t keep on just borrowing from China,” Obama said at a town-hall meeting in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, outside Albuquerque. “We have to pay interest on that debt, and that means we are mortgaging our children’s future with more and more debt.”
Holders of U.S. debt will eventually “get tired” of buying it, causing interest rates on everything from auto loans to home mortgages to increase, Obama said. “It will have a dampening effect on our economy.”
That calls for a big “DUH!” but that is simple common sense, something that is much like an endangered species in the halls of D.C.
The amusing part of all of this is the fact that Obama is just simply unwilling to look in the mirror and realize that he has quadrupled the debt and increased our deficit more than any other president in history. He has spent more in his first 100 days than all presidents throughout history combined – and that includes Bush to all you liberals.
Obama continuously uses the blame Bush rhetoric for having to take “drastic” measures, but as any intelligent human being should realize, when the government and politicians make things out to be a crisis, yet you don’t really feel that way (unlike a physical attack against your country), you should be incredibly wary. Politicians lie, they lie to pass an agenda, and Obama is a genius when it comes to manipulation, deceit, and drama.
Earlier this week, the Obama administration revised its own budget estimates and raised the projected deficit for this year to a record $1.84 trillion, up 5 percent from the February estimate. The revision for the 2010 fiscal year estimated the deficit at $1.26 trillion, up 7.4 percent from the February figure. The White House Office of Management and Budget also projected next year’s budget will end up at $3.59 trillion, compared with the $3.55 trillion it estimated previously.
Two weeks ago, the president proposed $17 billion in budget cuts, with plans to eliminate or reduce 121 federal programs. Republicans ridiculed the amount, saying that it represented one-half of 1 percent of the entire budget. They noted that Obama is seeking an $81 billion increase in other spending.
We are now learning that the supplemental spending for war funding and emergency funding that is sitting in the House and Senate are both over $90 billion at this point. There will most likely be a compromise of some sort between the House and Senate but I believe that the real amount of additional appropriations will most likely stay above the $90 billion threshold.
Let’s not forget that under the Obama administration and this radical left Congress that government is growing and the private sector is shrinking. Entitlement programs are growing because liberals know that the more you can put your thumb over people and oppress them by getting them “hooked” on entitlements and the government, the more they will win votes… that’s just cruel.
The issue is that we are going to go bankrupt quicker by upping the ante on entitlements. Entitlements themselves are already unsustainable.
Baby boomers — that 70-million-strong population lump — begin officially retiring this year. That means the government’s bill for retirees’ pensions and health care has no where to go but up, for decades to come.
Everyone knew this day would come. And virtually every economist and actuary who had run the numbers could tell you, within a few years’ certainty, the system was going bankrupt.
But all this seemed to happen in the distant future. Last year, both political parties virtually ignored the topic during their presidential campaigns. It became a non-issue issue.
Well, thanks to a profligate federal government, which will double the national debt to $11.5 trillion in just four years, and a recession that has weakened federal tax revenues, we can no longer ignore the problem. The day of reckoning is at hand.
The Social Security Board of Trustees reported Tuesday that costs will exceed revenues in 2016 — a full year sooner than expected just last year. And total assets — including more than 70 years of “surpluses” built up in the “trust fund” — will be completely gone by 2037 — four years earlier than in last year’s report.
The deficit over the next 50 years is expected to be about 2% of taxable payrolls — up from 1.7% last year. By the way, changes in the last year alone have added $5.3 trillion in costs to the program.
Long-term, unfunded liabilities for Social Security and Medicare top $53 trillion — about four times the size of current GDP. Taxes must either rise or benefits shrink by that amount to close that gap.
Maybe we could try to work on some issues that really matter, those that could possibly destroy people’s lives? Instead of criticizing private social security accounts, maybe we should revisit the idea and work from there. Many economists argue that private accounts of some sort would be more cost effective and better for everyone.
We also cannot forget that Obama and his lefty contemporaries want to reform health care and create a possible single payer system. Many do not believe that the single payer legislation will get passed, but something that makes the private sector compete with the public sector by providing a choice. The issue that I have/see with this “competition” is how the government can become so forceful and, as it has done in the past, force out of business anything competing with it. Either way, any additional programs provided by the government must come out of taxpayers’ pockets, so medical care will never technically be free – it will only be free to those who don’t work or pay taxes. This is the crux of the problem. Health care provided by the government will just increase our debt to China even more…
Obama is concerned with China? He’s concerned with owing the Chinese more and more? Well, maybe if we took a look at the recent auto industry news regarding GM it would be evident that all we do is take China’s money, give China jobs, and all in all are in the pocket of China.
As thousands of General Motors workers await word on more U.S. plant closures, reports that the company plans to import Chinese-made vehicles to the U.S. have created a political problem for the automaker and the White House.
The reports, which GM will neither confirm nor deny, could mean trouble because GM is supported by $15.4 billion in U.S. government loans, largely due to the Obama administration’s desire to preserve the company’s 90,000 U.S. jobs.
The United Auto Workers charged last week that the Detroit automaker intends to almost double over the next five years the number of vehicles it imports to the U.S. from Mexico, South Korea, China and Japan.
“GM should not be taking taxpayers’ money simply to finance the outsourcing of jobs to other countries,” Alan Reuther, the union’s Washington lobbyist, wrote in a letter to U.S. lawmakers.
Maybe if the Unions were not allowed to lobby on Capitol Hill to force the hands of Democrats and completely crush the auto industry, this would not have been a problem and the outsourcing of jobs would not have been so enticing to the ailing auto giants. But why would Democrats ever put the good of the country or an industry over that of a big donor?
I have an idea for all who read this – let’s attempt to elect someone who is for the people, by the people – not bought and paid for. Let’s elect somebody who is honest and integrity means more to them than politics and agenda… Stop electing these corrupt, pathological liars and maybe we can get our country back on track.
President of the EU Calls Out Obama’s Spending and Budgetary Plans as a ‘Road to Hell’
What have we conservatives been saying this entire time? His spending, power grabs, budget deficits – will destroy the future of this country and put future generations on the road to serfdom.
It was unfortunate for us, as conservatives, that we had someone in office the last 8 years, who considered himself as such. A “compassionate conservative” is not a conservative, as many of us learned. George Bush did many things right, but he also did many things wrong, and I for one, being a libertarian (more so) and a staunch fiscal conservative, was very disappointed in his reckless spending habits. This puts us in a bad light because it takes away our credibility as a party when arguing for fiscal restraint and responsibility. However, the more we speak up and get louder and get those of us back on the path of principle and constitutionality, the better we will be as a party and in 2010.
The funniest part of this budgetary and monetary nightmare happens to be the outcries from across the pond! I guess I could say across the world as well, since China, a communist country, has even come out against Obama’s spending plans. Socialist and Communist countries are in an uproar with our spending habits and our creation of “monopoly” money, so much so, they are calling us out on it and are meeting to discuss dropping the dollar. Something that Geithner accidentally found himself agreeing with (along w/ Bernake) when interrogated by the lovely Michele Bachmann yesterday. Geithner is now sticking to that statement and we have seen what has happened to the dollar and the market since his statements today.
The president of the European Union slammed President Barack Obama’s plans to have the U.S. spend its way out of recession as “a road to hell,” underscoring European differences with Washington ahead of a crucial summit next week on fixing the world economy.
Soon to be Wednesday Night RAW in Congress
Obama will meet fellow Democrats in the Senate on Wednesday to try to shore up support for a budget blueprint that likely would increase the deficit more than initially estimated by the White House — it was forecast at $1.4 trillion for next year.
The House Budget Committee will begin a marathon session on Wednesday to write its version of the budget plan, followed a day later by the Senate Budget Committee’s unveiling of its budget plan for fiscal 2010 and the four subsequent years.
Republicans say Obama’s budget plan expands government and raises taxes on the rich and small businesses at a time when the country is mired in a deep recession. Obama, for his part, is trying to keep fiscally-conservative Democrats on board.
Why don’t we try to make budgets that will help Americans and take into consideration the times we are in, such as a recession! Can he try to act constitutionally and conservatively when it comes to monetary matters?
Democrats, who control Congress, are looking for ways to shave some of the spending requests in a bid to persuade enough fiscally-moderate members of their party to support a $3.55 trillion budget next year.
“I’m hopeful we can have a majority of the House and Senate support” a budget plan, said a cautious-sounding House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer.
I have no doubt in my mind that this will happen and it will be passed with the amount of “moderate” republicans, otherwise known as RINOs, in the Senate.
Democrats, said Senator Patty Murray of Washington, a senior member of the Senate Budget Committee, want to “put the middle class first and bring the country out of the recession.”
To do that, Murray told reporters, Congress must invest more in education, healthcare and alternative energy to create jobs, while shoring up domestic programs that she said were largely ignored in the eight years of the Bush administration.
In my mind, that is not putting the country first Ms. Murray – in fact -it’s putting the country last while sticking to your ideology. Last time I checked, the health care industry was selling on the market and was free enterprise based, but now you want to destroy an entire industry during a recession and have the government regulate it – have we not seen what your government has done to the housing market, capitalism and everything it touches? Rather than the Midas Touch, the government turns everything into Crap (just like those sandwiches it was making recently). Education is not sold on the market – not sure how that helps the economy, especially when we will just be increasing an already problematic cirriculum and teacher’s union. Usually children doing poorly is a reflection on the teachers – but… we don’t to fix the fundamental problems in the department of education - the answer to every democratic solution is to throw more money at it.
