Deficit

After almost a year of big, new spending proposals - to say nothing of the tab that will come along with government run health care - the White House is signaling that this year's one and a half trillion dollar deficit might be a political problem that needs to be dealt with after all. 

It's a good bet that what this really represents is their recognition of what's happening in elections in Virginia, New Jersey and New York - and their trying to inoculate themselves against similar political damage in the future.

From the Washington Times... 

Anxiety about the deficit has fueled the anger of the conservative "tea party" activists, riled by government spending and debt, and it has seeded reservations about the long-term price tags of signature items on the president's agenda...

A speech last week by Christina D. Romer, chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers, looked at the reasons for the deficit and at how it relates to health care reform. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner appeared on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday to make clear that the administration recognizes the deficit is growing too large.

"Well, it's going to have to come down. Now it's too high, and I think everybody understands this," Mr. Geithner said. "The president's very committed to bring down these deficits."  read more »

As if Barack Obama's trillion stimulus legislation (which includes interest on the $787 billion final bill) was not enough, Americans found out today that the Democrats' health care legislation  --  which greatly increases government intrusion into Americans' health care  --  will cost American taxpayers another trillion dollars during the next 10 years if it is passed by the Democrat-controlled Congress this year.  This is what the Congressional Budget Office has estimated the Kennedy/Obama health reform bill will cost in a letter to Senator Ted Kennedy today.  

These two one-trillion dollar Obama programs are on top of the nearly 1/2 trillion onnibus bill passed to fund Obama's government until the end of this fiscal year.  Obama's first deficit is estimated by his administration to be $1.8 trillion, but many economists believe it will actually be a gigantic $2 trillion by the end of this fiscal year.  Obama has quadrupled the deficit and quadrupled the debt according to Sean Hannity on his show tonight on the Fox News channel.    read more »

Barack Obama's budget numbers were recently revised and the deficit now is expected by the Obama administration to top an incredible eye-popping $1.8 trillion for 2009.  Some economists actually expect that even this historic deficit total is based on rosy scenarios and will actually top $2 trillion.  This is on top of the sobering news that the deficits over the next decade caused by Obama's budgets will be larger than those created by all the previous 43 presidents combined from George Washington to George W. Bush!  

The Associated Press reported that Obama's government "will have to borrow nearly 50 cents for every dollar it spends this year, exploding the record federal deficit past $1.8 trillion under new White House estimates."   On Fox News' Special Report, it was reported that "The Administration is conceding the economy is not recovering as fast as it would hope and that means these budget deficits, historically large, are probably going to continue for a while.'"  

Obama said yesterday that his nearly trillion dollar (with interest added in) stimulus bill which he signed into law, has already created "or saved" 150,000 jobs.  By using weasel words such as "jobs saved," the Obama administration will be able to use just about any figure they want to pull out of the air, such as "my administration saved or created 10 million jobs during my first 4 years."    read more »

Deroy Murdock, a media fellow with Stanford University's Hoover Institution recently named the unnamed Senate/House compromise "stimulus" bill the Obama-Pelosi-Reid-Collins-Snowe-Specter bill. The former three names are the top three leaders of the Democrat Party. The latter three names are those of the Senate's liberal big-spending Republican Senators: Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe from Maine and Arlen Specter, up for reelection next year, from Pennsylvania.

Mr. Murdock quoted from a Heritage Foundation study which showed that adding the Obama-Pelosi-Reid-Collins-Snowe-Specter bill to a realistic budget baseline yields a projected 2010-2017 cumulative budget deficit of a gargantuan $8.4 trillion! This is 2.5 times the size of the irresponsible Bush 43 deficits over the equivalent eight-year time period. Brian Riedl from the Heritage Foundation wrote last Wednesday that "Obama pledged to fix what he considers Republican governing errors, not double down on them."

The American people, within a year or so, undoubtedly will find out that the pork-filled non-stimulus Obama-Pelosi-Reid-Collins-Snowe-Specter bill -- which Obama will sign into law on Tuesday -- will not work. The Japanese found out that after 10 years of churning out spending bills from their legislature to try to emerge from their recession, their economy remained flat.  read more »