"Mr. Lew is flatly in error, and it cannot continue. And I hope that he and the president never repeats that this budget balances at any point in the ten years." This budget is nothing more then a talking point for liberals and the MSM. The fact is it grows our deficit every year. It looks like the Democrats don't want to do anything about our national debt, other then raise it. I've seen this all before when I lived in Japan in the 90's. The Japanese tried to buy their way out of a recession and they still haven't recovered. China has now taken the #2 economic position in the world. We can not spend our way out of this recession. That is a fact. High debt will harm our economy and national security. Fact. It has always lead to the fall of a country. Fact. The Democratic Party only wants to raise our debt, even though it will harm our country. Fact. The only opinion is why are the Democrats doing this? Are they just so weak of leaders that they can't take the political heat for cutting the budget? Or are they trying to turn our country upside down in order to implement a new form of government that is focused on "social justice", rather then the US Constitution as law of the land? By looking at what the Democratic Party has become over the last decade, I'd have to say both. They have the motive to overweight our economy with massive debt. And their actions and the outcome of their actions speak louder then their words. But their words also tell us it's both. This is the dream of Obama's father and mother. His mentor and grandparents dreams. It's the unfinished dream of Jimmy Carter and Woodrow Wilson. I'm not saying that these people hate America. I'm just saying that they want to see an America that is much different then the one that was created in 1776. They see America and Capitalism as a failure. They don't see the wealth and good that Capitalism has created. They just see the damage that capitalism has done to some. They think they can tame capitalism. Make a fair capitalism that were no one gets hurt. They think they have a better system. The problem is capitalism doesn't go down very easy.The only way they can implement their "better system of government and capitalism" is to take down the old capitalist system. Think of it as a glass half full. They have been adding to it but it that doesn't work. So they need to empty the glass first and then they can fill it with their ideological system of "social justice". What do you think will happen when the states start begging for federal bailouts? Do you think that the states might have to give up something to get a bailout? How will that effect our national debt? Or will they just keep devaluing our dollar to pay off the states? The primer to start this new system will be the people. We can not sustain this debt. We couldn't sustain it when Bush did it. And this is just nuts what they are doing to the next generation and us. Here is a tool from the New York Times. See what effect cuts make to the budget. We have to make tough decisions now or we will be in bigger trouble later. Use this tool from The New York Times that lets you see the kinds of cuts that need to be made (but no one is making!) in the budget.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Sen. Sessions Smacks Around Obama’s Budget Chief at Hearing
"Mr. Lew is flatly in error, and it cannot continue. And I hope that he and the president never repeats that this budget balances at any point in the ten years." This budget is nothing more then a talking point for liberals and the MSM. The fact is it grows our deficit every year. It looks like the Democrats don't want to do anything about our national debt, other then raise it. I've seen this all before when I lived in Japan in the 90's. The Japanese tried to buy their way out of a recession and they still haven't recovered. China has now taken the #2 economic position in the world. We can not spend our way out of this recession. That is a fact. High debt will harm our economy and national security. Fact. It has always lead to the fall of a country. Fact. The Democratic Party only wants to raise our debt, even though it will harm our country. Fact. The only opinion is why are the Democrats doing this? Are they just so weak of leaders that they can't take the political heat for cutting the budget? Or are they trying to turn our country upside down in order to implement a new form of government that is focused on "social justice", rather then the US Constitution as law of the land? By looking at what the Democratic Party has become over the last decade, I'd have to say both. They have the motive to overweight our economy with massive debt. And their actions and the outcome of their actions speak louder then their words. But their words also tell us it's both. This is the dream of Obama's father and mother. His mentor and grandparents dreams. It's the unfinished dream of Jimmy Carter and Woodrow Wilson. I'm not saying that these people hate America. I'm just saying that they want to see an America that is much different then the one that was created in 1776. They see America and Capitalism as a failure. They don't see the wealth and good that Capitalism has created. They just see the damage that capitalism has done to some. They think they can tame capitalism. Make a fair capitalism that were no one gets hurt. They think they have a better system. The problem is capitalism doesn't go down very easy.The only way they can implement their "better system of government and capitalism" is to take down the old capitalist system. Think of it as a glass half full. They have been adding to it but it that doesn't work. So they need to empty the glass first and then they can fill it with their ideological system of "social justice". What do you think will happen when the states start begging for federal bailouts? Do you think that the states might have to give up something to get a bailout? How will that effect our national debt? Or will they just keep devaluing our dollar to pay off the states? The primer to start this new system will be the people. We can not sustain this debt. We couldn't sustain it when Bush did it. And this is just nuts what they are doing to the next generation and us. Here is a tool from the New York Times. See what effect cuts make to the budget. We have to make tough decisions now or we will be in bigger trouble later. Use this tool from The New York Times that lets you see the kinds of cuts that need to be made (but no one is making!) in the budget.
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Barack Obama is being accused of engaging in "shell games" with his just-released proposed budget for fiscal year 2012.
ReplyDeleteOn Monday President Obama unveiled his $3.73 trillion spending plan, calling the "investments" outlined in his plan "essential" in his desire to "out-build and out-innovate and out-educate [and] out-hustle" the rest of the world. But the government has to start "living within its means" for that to happen, he stated, and taking responsibility for its deficit.
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Critics of the proposed FY 2012 budget are basically saying the president's words are empty. Gretchen Hamel, executive director of Public Notice, says the president's new budget plan is "very disappointing."
Monday on American Family Radio's Nothing but Truth program, Hamel said the budget President Obama has presented to Congress "will result in the highest deficit our nation has ever seen, and more spending than we can really take."
The message voters delivered in November, she said, is being ignored. "The American people spoke in November -- they said they wanted fiscal responsibility to be restored, that they wanted to get this economy moving again. And the only way we can invest in tomorrow is to start cutting today."
The Heritage Foundation was less reserved in its criticism, saying the president has "abdicated" his leadership role for addressing the nation's spending and debt problems.
"Rather than delivering on his budget message -- which promises to 'free ourselves from the burden of historic deficits and growing debt' and stop 'spending money without identifying a way to pay for it' -- this budget delivers exactly the opposite: more spending, more taxing and pushing our country further into debt," argues Alison Fraser, director of the Thomas Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation.
In a press release, Fraser accuses the proposed budget of ignoring proposals from the president's own deficit commission, doubling the public debt by the end of the decade, and using "typical budget tricks" to cut discretionary spending by simply moving it into mandatory spending.
"This budget perpetuates typical Washington business as usual," she concludes. "More spending, budget shell games, and a profound failure of vision to tackle the nation's long-term budget crisis."
The Associated Press reports today that Republicans on Capitol Hill are "mocking" the massive budget proposal for "waving feebly at historically huge federal deficits."
Brace yourself. This isn't going to be pleasant. If you're in a bad mood or get easily upset, you may wish to pass on reading this article.
ReplyDeleteThe country is in even worse shape economically than we thought. We awoke on February 14 to find that this year's federal budget deficit is going to be larger than previously projected -- a record $1.65 trillion.
Recently, the official accumulated debt of the federal government passed the $14 trillion threshold. A trillion is a gigantic number. If you stacked $100 bills flat on top of each other, then turned that stack on its side, a trillion dollars would stretch from where I live in western Pennsylvania to somewhere past St. Louis. That's just ONE trillion. Multiply that by 14, and it would stretch from here to Honolulu and back with plenty to spare.
The really bad news is that Uncle Sam's debt is significantly greater than $14 trillion, and I am not referring to the tens of trillions of dollars of unfunded liabilities representing undeliverable government promises. According to data released by the U.S. Treasury on January 21, the public debt is $20.7 trillion, an increase of $3.3 trillion in just the last year.
The larger sum -- actual existing debt of $20.7 trillion -- includes such off-budget items as bailouts, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, student loans, and who knows what else? I have to say "who knows what else," because the leviathan federal government long ago became too large to keep track of. For example, 25 years ago the Grace Commission, instituted by Ronald Reagan in the hope of identifying ways to streamline the federal government, was unable to tabulate how many people worked for the federal government, although they did manage to identify 963 federal programs that redistributed wealth.
Not only is our current national indebtedness more than 40 percent greater than the already horrendous commonly cited figure, the Social Security program is in worse shape than expected, too. As recently as a month or two ago, it was widely accepted that payouts from Social Security would start to exceed revenues in 2016. In a stunning development, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released a report on January 26 which projected that revenue shortfalls will begin this year and continue uninterrupted until all unfunded IOU's are exhausted by 2037 (if not much sooner). The CBO projects what would have been a $45 billion shortfall this year, but thanks to the terrible deal that President Obama and congressional Republicans forged in December -- the one that included a two-percent reduction in Social Security withholding from workers' paychecks -- this year's Social Security red ink is expected to hit $130 billion.
At the state level, finances are deteriorating at a sickening speed. Governors are starting to ask the Obama administration for permission to drop people from Medicaid (280,000 people in Arizona alone). Moody's, the debt-rating agency that seems to wait until after a collapse has happened to lower its rating of an entity's finances, is making noises about downgrading the credit rating of several states.
At the municipal level, many bonds continue to tank as municipalities careen toward bankruptcy. Of the three largest bond insurers, two are already bankrupt while the survival of the third is in doubt.
Meanwhile, ObamaCare is ripping us apart. The administration itself has already granted over 200 waivers to well-connected businesses and labor unions from having to comply with its unaffordable costs (meaning that wealth is being redistributed from those who don't receive the exemptions to those that do).
Two federal judges have upheld ObamaCare while two others have ruled it unconstitutional. The result is that some state governors and attorneys general are voiding it within their jurisdictions while others are not. Obama is proceeding with costly implementation despite the bill's uncertain status. Besides the confusion and uncertainty that this is sowing, valuable time will be consumed in waging this titanic constitutional struggle -- time that could and should be spent addressing the ballooning spending/debt crisis.
ReplyDeleteGiven the magnitude of governmental fiscal woes, the struggle in Washington between Democrats who talk about (but don't propose) a possible spending freeze in one small corner of the federal budget, and Republicans who claim to want to cut $100 billion of annual spending, is a cruel joke. Talk about fiddling while Rome burns!
The financial condition of governments at all levels is worse than it ever has been. Neither political party seems ready to address the crisis in any meaningful way. As a result, our financial predicament is even worse than most of us had thought.
Wow that was a long and rambling post.
ReplyDeleteWe do agree that the Japanese government acted incorrectly to its issues. I don't agree that they were wrong to try to increase government spending as a means of moderating the recession. I think they did it incorrectly and too little too late. I know someone of the Austrian School would disagree, but i doubt there's any of your readers who think of themselves as a future Mises.
As for you facts, they are more points of debate than facts. The debate about Japan hasn't been solved, nor has one side won or convinced others to give up their cause. Keyenes, Monetarists and Austrian school economists still debate the point, so its not a fact.
As for your stated third fact, that my friend is only INDUCTIVE reasoning not a fact. It is only your best guess as to what they want. All the prima facie evidence in the world doesn't allow you to enter ones mind and decide what they are thinking.
As for your second fact, its not a fact either but at least its a defensible position to take. Debt can destroy a nation, but the unanswered question then becomes at what level? Is 60 percent too much? And while the Obama admin has expanded the debt too much what is an acceptable level for the debt to expand at? Reagan took it from the low 30's to the low 50's. Bush 41 took it to 64% and Clinton brought it down to 57%. It then rose again under Bush 43 to 70% (69.15.) so at what point does the alarm go off?
Finally onto the subject of a word that wasn't part of the language during the time of our revolution. Capitalism and our founders. Surely they go hand in hand though, even if the men of that time weren't economists right? Wrong the men of that time were not capitalists. Adam smith had not even wrote "the Wealth of Nations" by the time of the revolution. even the late great republican leader Abraham Lincoln was a noted merchantilist all those many years later.
So sorry that you have little in facts, a lot in ideology and revisionist history but once again your wrong.
It's been decades without a recovery Joe. How long should we wait to find out if Japan's and the Democrats spending theory works? If they are debating about Japan's handling of their economy being wrong when it gave them the lost decade that has lasted over 20 yrs then maybe I wouldn't listen to them. Just look at their economy. You do know they used to be #2 next to our economy? Do you remember the "Japan bashing" you unionons did in the 90's when you thought that Japan was taking over the USA? It's hard to spin that one but thanks for trying. You libs have been crying about the national debt incrued by Republican presidents as being the major risk to our economy. You libs were crying at Bush when we were in the hundreds of billions of dollars in debt. You libs said it would destroy our economy. And now that it's in the trillions under Obama debt ain't no big deal. Were you lieing then or just wrong then or are you lieing or just wrong now? Which is it Joe? Joe capitalism is a concept not just a word. When most Americans were business owners back then capitalism was all over the place. But if your looking for the word as proof then keep looking. If they were not capitalist then why did they set up a system of governance that promoted capitalism and free trade? Oops you didn't think about the facts and the context of the history did ya Joe? Sorry to see you spinning all over the place trying to fit the world into the little box you made.
ReplyDeleteChris,
ReplyDeleteOnce again you choose to boil the issue down to its simplest terms and ignore the overall reality. The issue with Japan and its stimulus attempts are well-known and suggesting that stimulus spending alone won't blunt or induce the upswing is clearly false. It can and it could, but it has to be the correct stimulus. You and I know that the stimulus of the United states is different than the attempted stimulus of the past in Japan. If you don't then you have a place in the debate at all.
As for the debt i am worried about it, and i am sure that it needs to be brought back under control. Lefties did cry about the debt under the republican presidents as conservatives defended them. Now the roles are reversed. Who's the hypocrite? Both would be my guess.
Its impossible to debate things with you. You reference nothing but your own opinions, you offer no evidence of any sort and stick with theories long since proven wrong. capitalism then wasn't what you believe it to be and it certainly isn't what the republicans offer now. There is no spin to that.
The "correct stimulus" now is it? Who is the one making his own reality now Joe? Have you ever wondered why they always use the "wrong stimulus" rather then the idealistic right stimulus? You are so diluted it's funny Joe. The government can't indebt itself into prosparity or out of recession. But you keep holding on to your theory of the "right stimulus" or the right conditions. We all know that they are just excuses.
ReplyDeleteChris, yes the correct stimulus. No i haven't wondered why the Japanese used the wrong stimulus and in the wrong manner. I've seen it theorized in the various research papers and peer review writings i've read, but I haven't really taken a interest in why. I can tell you that some economists believe its due to the closeness between certain business and the political leaders, but I'm not interested in the study of Japanese politics.
ReplyDeleteYou should expand your reading circle out from whatever Beck says to and engage some actual economic reading. It would help you with understanding things.
I'm getting the feeling that you don't know what actually happened in their stimulus attempts.