Obama’s Legacy Written: Trillion Dollar Deficits
According to this AP article, President Obama’s legacy might well have already been written. It looks like we’ll experience trillion dollar deficits for the next decade:
The Congressional Budget Office figures, obtained by The Associated Press Friday, predict Obama’s budget will produce $9.3 trillion worth of red ink over 2010-2019. That’s $2.3 trillion worse than the White House predicted in its budget.
Worst of all, CBO says the deficit under Obama’s policies would never go below 4 percent of the size of the economy, figures that economists agree are unsustainable. By the end of the decade, the deficit would exceed 5 percent of gross domestic product, a dangerously high level.
If the CBO’s numbers are accurate, President Obama will likely become the first president to run trillion dollar deficits during his entire time in office. Unfortunately, that’s only the tip of a Titanic-sinking sized iceberg. Rep. Michele Bachmann rightly points out in this Pi-Press op-ed that already-out-of-control spending is accelerating:
Washington is on a dangerous trend of excessive spending. In the past two months, Congress has already spent over $1.5 trillion of the American taxpayer’s money, and the release of President Obama’s $3.6 trillion budget is a good indicator that change is not imminent.
During President Obama’s recent address to Congress, he promised the American taxpayers he would not raise taxes “one dime” on people making under $250,000. However, he has proposed new taxes that will impact every American. For instance, a cap on itemized deductions for mortgage interest, a limit on charitable donation deductions and a new tax on carbon emissions are just three examples of what Americans can soon expect.
President Obama’s middle class tax increases will hurt alot of people at a time when they’re already hurting. Trillion dollar deficits will cause another tax increase in the form of high inflation. Economists know that high inflation spikes are silent tax increases.
We learned during the 2004 election that Herbert Hoover’s administration was the last administration to have lost jobs. President Obama is in danger of repeating the Hoover administration’s ‘accomplishment’.
Rep. Mike Pence, chairman of the House Republican Conference, issued this statement on the revised numbers:
“The CBO re-estimate confirms what Republicans have said all along: the President’s budget spends too much, taxes too much and borrows too much. Our nation cannot sustain this level of spending and debt. Enacting the President’s budget will only continue to sow the seeds of financial ruin at the expense of our children and grandchildren.
For weeks the President has used the current economic crisis to promote billions of dollars in wasteful spending. But he then proposed a budget based on unrealistic assumptions to help justify even more government spending.
“Congress has a moral obligation to turn this ship around and put our nation back on a course of fiscal responsibility and economic prosperity. In the coming weeks, Republicans will unveil an alternative budget plan that will do just that, and that serves the best interests of the American people. It is my hope that the President will work with Republicans to craft a bipartisan budget that puts our nation’s hard-working taxpayers and the family budget first.”
Rep. Pence is right on. We can’t, nor should we want to, maintain the irresponsible out-of-control spending that the House Democratic majority started with the stimulus bill.
The silver lining to this news is that it’s almost certain that there won’t be support for universal health care, the mortgage bailout or another less-than-stimulating stimulus bill.
I said long before the 11th Congress got started that the Democrats would overreach. That wasn’t the question. The only question was how badly they’d overreach. I’ll admit that the amount by which they’ve overreached surprised me.
The only question remaining is whether their overreach will hurt the Democrats in the 2010 elections or if it’ll hurt them alot in 2010. At this point, their overreach has been so noticed that people are starting to think that the Democratic Party doesn’t have any appreciation for the notion of fiscal restraint. If that image solidifies over the next 3-6 months, the Democrats will face a stiff headwind in 2010.
Couple that with Geithner’s ineptitude and the corruption of John Murtha, Christopher Dodd and all of the Obama appointees to cabinet positions that had tax troubles and it won’t be difficult to hang the culture of corruption title on Democrats.
What do you call a political party that is corrupt but doesn’t exercise fiscal restraint? In 2006, they were known as Republicans. They might be called Democrats in 2010.
Technorati Tags: Economy, Deficits, Budgets, Cap And TRade, Tax Increases, Recession, President Obama, Tim Geithner, Christopher Dodd, John Murtha, Corruption, Election 2010
Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog