I love this guy.
[quote name='Gregg Easterbrook'] Check it out:[/QUOTE]
Last week, in his
State of the Union address, President Barack Obama spoke of the need to restore fiscal discipline and end runaway borrowing. Members of Congress clapped and nodded approval. The following day -- the following day! -- the Senate voted to raise the national debt ceiling by $2 trillion, to $14.3 trillion. Resolve about reducing debt didn't even last 24 hours in the Senate. Then on Monday, President Obama released his next federal budget proposal, complete with a projected fiscal 2010 deficit of $1.6 trillion -- the worst-ever peacetime deficit -- and $100 billion in new deficit-based spending that Obama neglected to mention when speaking to Congress. The president's resolve about reducing the debt didn't even last a week.
Just five years ago, it was considered shocking when George W. Bush submitted a federal budget containing what was then the worst-ever peacetime deficit of $271 billion, stated in today's dollars. Now no one seems to shrug when the Congressional Budget Office
projects mega-deficits for at least a decade to come. America has many problems, but no national emergency. If we are already borrowing to the hilt to subsidize today's interest groups at the expense of the young, what will we do if there is an emergency?
A decade ago, the total U.S. national debt, converted to today's dollars, was $7 trillion. This year the total debt will hit $14 trillion. That means that in the past 10 years alone, the United States has incurred as much debt as was accumulated by our republic in its entire previous 211 years of existence. And the plan is to borrow, borrow, borrow more without accountability or the slightest restraint.
In his address, Obama called for a "spending freeze" not now, but next year. I'll quit smoking next year! The freeze would apply only to the roughly 15 percent of the federal budget that is not Social Security (the largest federal spending item), Medicare and Medicaid (No. 2), defense, interest on the debt -- or anything Congress stamps the word "emergency" on, such as the "second stimulus" handout many interest groups are demanding. Actually, such legislation would be a third stimulus -- Congress enacted a $152 billion debt-based stimulus bill in 2008, and a $787 billion debt-based stimulus bill in 2009. Calling the new bag of candy being demanded the "second" stimulus makes the idea sound less reckless and less like the institution of an annual giveaway to whatever special-interest groups have bought the most access that year.
In the course of conceding that no spending discipline would even be attempted until 2011 -- I'll lose weight in 2011 for sure -- the president declared, "We've already identified $20 billion in savings for next year." That amount would represent barely more than 1 percent of the projected 2011 deficit. But if the White House has "already identified" $20 billion that can be cut from the federal budget, why doesn't the cut take effect immediately? Because we'll quit smoking next year! When interest groups wanted handouts in the form of the 2008 and 2009 stimulus bills, and banks and Wall Street wanted handouts, the money began flowing right away, no waiting. When the president proposes an extremely modest spending restriction, it's delayed until the following year -- in order to give interest groups time to demand that the money be restored.
Won't we be saved by Paygo? After listening to the presidential address, the Senate voted to impose the Paygo rule on itself -- that any new appropriations must be offset by equivalent spending cuts or tax increases. The House of Representatives imposed the Paygo rule on itself in January 2007, and the U.S. national debt has risen by $5.4 trillion since. How can debt skyrocket under a pay-as-you-go system? Paygo applies to all spending bills -- unless they are security, defense, entitlements or interest on the national debt (those categories are the lion's share of federal spending) or unless they are "emergency" legislation. Essentially, every spending bill that has passed through the House in the past three years has had the word "emergency" in it somewhere, generating a waiver from Paygo. The Paygo concept is a complete fraud -- it almost seems designed for the purpose of insulting the intelligence of voters. And now the Senate has joined the fraud.
During the run-up to the 2008 mortgage-market implosion, many individual Americans and many investment firms borrowed in an outlandish manner, living high briefly while acting as if tomorrow would never come. It came. For the past five years, the U.S. government, under Republican and Democratic control alike, has been borrowing in an outlandish manner as if tomorrow will never come. It will come.
ing your friend's wife. That hurts unit cohesion. 
