Editorial
San Diego Union-Tribune
2/15/2012
The $3.8 trillion 2012-13 federal budget proposed by President Barack Obama instantly became a political football among partisans. Among the pundit class, the conventional wisdom is that the spending plan is more a campaign document to help the president win re-election. Given that Congress hasn’t passed an actual budget in three years, this cynicism is defensible.
But at some point we wish everyone – the political class, the media, taxpayers of all ideologies – would just accept this as a given: As a nation, we can’t continue spending vastly more than we take in. The Obama plan, if enacted, would add $901 billion to the national debt. This is less than in recent years but still enormous on a historical scale – the U.S. spending 31 percent more than it receives in revenue.
A household that for years on end spent 31 percent more than it took in would soon be spending more on interest on debt than on most priorities. As a nation, we are already there. In 2010-11, the federal government spent $454 billion in interest on the national debt – 12 percent of the entire budget. That’s only going to go up, up and away unless deficits are finally, substantively addressed. We wish the immensity of this problem would finally sink in – with everyone.
Related: Credibility Deficit: President’s False Claims Evaporate
The President continues to assert that policy changes proposed in his budget will result in $4 trillion in deficit reduction. The claim is simply false. House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan unpacks the false claims and the gimmicks — revealing a deep divide between reality and the Administration’s rhetoric.
H/T GretaWire
Also, Never Trust Government Numbers
President Obama said in his State of the Union speech, “We’ve already agreed to more than $2 trillion in cuts and savings.” That was reassuring. The new budget he released this week promises $4 trillion in “deficit reduction”—about half in tax increases and half in spending cuts. But like most politicians, writes John Stossel, Obama misleads.
Update: Federal debt increase under Obama to surpass that under W And W served 59 months longer.
Also, Geithner says administration lacks solution to debt problem
Update 2: Obama Wishes He Knew Full Extent of Economic Crisis When He Took Office
…Rewind to October of 2008 — how much more could Obama have prepared the American people?
I think everybody knows now that we are in the worst financial crisis since the great depression…
Read the whole thing.
Update 3: This is the debt chart Obama and Geithner should be ashamed of H/T ReFounders on Facebook
Testifying before the House Budget Committee today, U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner told Chairman Paul Ryan the following: “We’re not coming before you to say we have a definitive solution to that long-term problem. What we do know is we don’t like yours.”
