Constant Conservative

That is what Victor Davis Hanson lays on President Obama and the failed policies of the executive branch.

Oil is climbing back over $80 a barrel; the dollar is falling against the Euro to 1.50. The annual deficit is already over $1.6 trillion and may go well over that. The tab for health care will hit right under $1 trillion. Unemployment may be headed over 10%. The people who voted for Obama were mad over Bush’s bailouts, unemployment, deficits, and supposed divisiveness. And?

They got greater bailouts, higher unemployment, larger deficits, and Chicago politics.

But, Professor Hanson is just getting started.  Go feel the burn for yourself.

VDH shows us that instead of providing the leadership our country needs, President Obama has chosen to spend his time trying to stomp out those who dare question his authority.  As Instapundit, Glenn Reynolds, likes to sarcastically say, “the county’s in the very best of hands”.

We’ve already addressed Johnson’s thinking on the stimulus in a recent mailing to his constituents, let’s now move on with the federal deficit. He provides us with a lovely graphic to get started.

Here’s the article from which the graphic was derived. The article includes, among other things, the following surprising statements:

If the analysis is extended further into the future, well beyond 2012, the Obama agenda accounts for only a slightly higher share of the projected deficits.

How can that be? Some of his proposals, like a plan to put a price on carbon emissions, don’t cost the government any money. Others would be partly offset by proposed tax increases on the affluent and spending cuts. Congressional and White House aides agree that no large new programs, like an expansion of health insurance, are likely to pass unless they are paid for.

So, the numbers which support the graphic are based on the idea that “no large new programs . . . are likely to pass unless they are paid for.” Right. Not to mention that increasingly strict regulation of businesses will indeed “cost the government money” when people don’t have any revenue to pay taxes on. The erroneous presuppositions inherent in these numbers are enormous.

Barack Obama has been president for 9 months (give or take). He now owns the deficit, no matter who created it. For him (and for his supporters such as Senator Johnson) to continue to claim that “ahh, we had this problem and can’t do anything about it right now” is remarkably childish. There are any number of things which could be done to reduce the affects of all the poor choices which were made by the President’s predecessors. However, the uproar isn’t about making positive changes to governmental spending habits. Nor does the current president want to stop spending at insane rates–he just wants to spend the money on different things (peace, love and lattes come to mind).

Poor fiscal policies have increased the deficit for years, including massive increases during President Bush’s years in office. Whatever the cause (including 9/11, Afghanistan and Iraq) Bush’s spending did add to the deficit. Yet the picture provided above is misleading, at best. Let’s look at another image, this one showing the past deficits as well as future projections by the White House and the CBO. Oh, and the numbers haven’t improved as of late.

Right. Seems as though the slice of pie for Obama might be a bit bigger than Senator Johnson would have us believe. Of course, don’t forget that as a senator, Obama could have voted against increasing the deficit with regard to those “Bush-era” laws and policies. He largely did not.

The Gateway Pundit (Jim Hoft) looked at some of the issues surrounding deficits earlier this year. Here is his take on the matter:

The truth is that Obama inherited a 2008 budget deficit of 459 billion dollars. He voted for the 700 billion dollar bank rescue in the fall. He was left 350 billion from this spending bill when he took office. He then spent 787 billion dollars on a Stimulus Bill, 33 billion dollars on the SCHIP bill, and 410 billion dollars on his record-setting Omnibus Bill. Karl Rove explained that if Obama didn’t like the banking bailout bill he could have refused to spend that 350 billion dollars that Bush left him but he didn’t. Obama went ahead and spent it anyway.

The CBO estimated that the Obama budget deficit will total an astounding 13.1 percent of GDP this year. As a comparison, under George Bush, the federal deficit for 2008 was 3.2 percent of GDP. The deficit for fiscal year 2007, in the last budget adopted when Congress was controlled by Republican majorities, was 1.2 percent of GDP. Obama’s deficit will force the United States to borrow nearly $10 trillion in the next decade.

One understands Senator Johnson’s desire to put himself and the President in a good light when it comes to monetary policy. That desire should not trump the truth. He does us all a disservice by providing such thinly sourced information as fact. While there are times when a picture is worth a thousand words, this one seems to have a deficit of at least that much.

I’ve sent a number of missives (both hardcopy and softcopy) to Senator Tim Johnson. Therefore, I’m on his mailing list. Of course, so is most of the rest of South Dakota. However, I was interested to receive the most recent mailing from his office (not his campaign). In a brief series of posts, we’ll be looking at each of the areas he addressed in this mailing.

First up is the stimulus. Original article below (first as image and then as text).

South Dakota Wins Big in Stimulus Package

Money and tax cuts from the economic stimulus package enacted in February are already at work in South Dakota. Communities in every corner of our state have received funding for important projects that create jobs and further improve the our quality of life.

U.S. Senator Tim Johnson was pleased that the stimulus package yielded $12 million to increase the capacity of Mid-Dakota Rural Water System, which serves thousands of South Dakota families through a wide swath of Eastern South Dakota. A $6.7 million investment in the Mitchell Airport will support the region’s transportation system.

The economic stimulus package also provided funding for a wide variety of other South Dakota priorities, ranging from cardiac research at the University of South Dakota (USD) to repairing National Guard Armories in Brookings and Huron. Improvements will be made to the Gavins Point Fish Hatchery, as well as the National Wildlife Refuges located at Sand Lake, Madison and Waubay.

“These are just a few examples of the many substantial investments in our communities and in our future that were made possible by the economic stimulus package,” Johnson said. “The focus on good jobs combined with important infrastructure investments will generate economic activity that turns our economy around and returns our home towns and local communities to prosperity.”

While Tim shares concerns about the impact of the stimulus package on our budget deficit, mainstream economists assert that it is cheaper in the long run to get our economy moving again than to allow it to fall deeper and deeper into recession. Recent economic data support this view.

First off, nothing about how much money South Dakota got overall in the stimulus, nothing about how much of the stimulus money went to bailing out the state government’s 2009 budget. Nothing about how much more of the stimulus money will be needed to help out in that same regard for 2010 and 2011.

Then there is  “a focus on good jobs.” Where is this focus and what is the difference between a good job and a not-so-good job?

Finally, there is the last paragraph, which is where I’d like to spend most of the time. At first blush, it seems to acknowledge that there are those who disagree with the Senator and he shares their concerns. But then the piece does something which is a definite no-no: It provides two separate unreferenced facts as the complete basis for throwing out any disagreement that the stimulus is good for South Dakota.

Within this paragraph, we have a reference to “mainstream economists.”  Are Thomas Sowell and other economists of similar stripe not in the mainstream because they disagree with the current Bidenesque approach of borrowing our way out of a recession? Does the Senator know that by definition (at least by Wikipedia definition, so take it with a grain of salt) “mainstream economists” are divided over the benefits of the government meddling in the markets?

The second reference is to “[r]ecent economic data” which “supports this view” that borrowing more is better. Which data would that be? The data which shows the unemployment rate increasing beyond any measure of what we were told it would once the stimulus was enacted? The data which shows that we are now spending 40% of our personal income taxes to just service the national debt?

Must be some other data. I’d really like to know what it is. Surely it wouldn’t have been that hard to write a few more sentences giving us the sources for those statements. After all–franking is free, if you are a Senator.

Via John at Power Line, come these facts on the debt we owe but seem unable to pay:

As of Sept. 30, 2009, the national debt was almost $12 trillion and interest on that debt was $383 billion for the year, according to the Treasury Department’s Bureau of the Public Debt. The Congressional Budget Office on Oct. 7 estimated the 2009 budget deficit to be almost $1.4 trillion (about 10% of GDP). In August, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) estimated total government revenues at about $2 trillion. The revenue estimate included $904 billion from individual income taxes. This means the cost of interest on the debt represented more than 40 cents of every dollar that came in from individual income taxes.

[...]

In stark but simple terms, unless Americans are made aware of this financial crisis and demand accountability, the very fabric of our society will be destroyed. Interest rates and interest costs will soar and government revenues will be devoured by interest on the national debt. Eventually, most of what we spend on Social Security, Medicare, education, national defense and much more may have to come from new borrowing, if such funding can be obtained. Left unchecked, this destructive deficit-debt cycle will leave the White House and Congress with either having to default on the national debt or instruct the Treasury to run the printing presses into a policy of hyperinflation.

[emphasis added]

As I’ve noted previously, we cannot not deal with the real results of inflating the supply of currency and expect all things to continue merrily as they have. There will, there must, be an adjustment of values. If we do not make the needed reductions in spending, it is difficult to say just what a sharp drop in in the full faith and credit of the United States will do to you and me.

In an earlier post entitled, “Stop Digging.“, I offered some unsolicited advice to our elected leaders.  I urged them to reverse course on their spending plans in order to prevent a looming fiscal disaster for our government.

Veronique de Rugy (H/T Instapundit) shows us what the future holds for our national deficit:

Based on Congressional Budget Office (CBO) data, the following chart shows a projection of deficit numbers for each year until fiscal 2018. Each color represents the difference between the projected deficits at different points in time. The purple bars represent the deficit numbers as they were projected back in September 2008; the black and red bars represent the difference between the projected deficits at other points in time. The black bars represent the growth in the projected deficit numbers between September 2008 and January 2009. The red bars represent the difference between the January 2009 projections and the new deficit numbers as projected in August 2009. Finally, the orange bars represent the actual deficit numbers during President Clinton’s last year in office (fiscal 2001) and President Bush’s two terms.

Be sure to read Miss de Rugy’s analysis of the data.  We will face massive deficits leading to dire fiscal consequences if this unrestrained spending doesn’t reverse itself.  Sadly, it doesn’t seem that Obama and the Democrats in charge understand this or if they even care.

The old saying goes that when you find yourself in a hole the first thing you do is stop digging.  Obama, Pelosi, and Reid need to put down their shovels.

Because of the recent and proposed spending of this profligate trio, the debt of the United States government will explode to a size never before seen in our nation’s history.

John B. Taylor, Stanford University Professor of Economics, recently compiled a series of charts showing just how deep of a hole we are about to find ourselves.

For example, the following chart shows the federal debt as a percent of GDP over the mid-term:

As you can see the debt goes from about 45% of GDP in 2008 to about 85% of GDP by 2019.

If you think the trend corrects itself starting in 2020 you would be wrong.  The next chart shows what happens in the long term:

By 2025 the debt is over 100% of GDP.  By 2080 the debt is around 800%  800!

The United States as we know it will cease to exist long before our debt reaches 800% of GDP.  The chart is meant to be a demonstration of the speed at which we are sinking.  Be sure to check all of the other charts that Professor Taylor put together.  They will surely drive home the point that our nation is on an unsustainable fiscal course.

The best way to avoid a hole is to not dig one.  It’s too late for America.  Our leaders have already dug one for us.  Stop digging!

Last fall Bush Treasury Secretary Paulson told us the financial industry was failing and passing TARP was going to fix it.  Today banks are steadily failing and the FDIC is going broke.

Last winter Obama and the Democrats came to power and they said people were losing their homes.  They said passing Making Home Affordable would fix it.  Today the foreclosures haven’t stopped and the number of people losing their homes continues to rise.

In the spring of this year as the poor state of the economy came into focus, Obama and the Democratic congress passed a so-called stimulus package meant to boost the economy and keep the unemployment rate below 8%.  Today the economy is set to shrink 2.8 percent this year (1.6 percent greater than expected) and unemployment will surpass 10%.

By all reasonable measures these big government efforts have failed to deliver, but the American people are stuck with the $1,500,000,000,000 ($1.5 TRILLION) price tag.

Because of this failure to deliver it should be no surprise to the politicians in power that their plans for healthcare, cap and trade, and card check are being met with resistance by the citizens of this country.

I believe that most Americans are instinctually skeptical of big government.  However, in times of apparent crisis this skepticism yields to the desire for government action.  In the past year we’ve repeatedly yielded to government action and yet the crisis continues to deepen.  The people are seeing the government failures, and they are not happy.  Their skepticism has come back with a vengeance.

This isn’t just a problem at the national level.  All levels of government will be facing serious challenges in the next few years.  How the elected leaders choose to use government to meet these challenges will set the political tone of this country for the next several years.  The voters are watching.  The margin for error is slim.

We’ve heard various numbers for how much debt each US household is now responsible for (both in consumer debt as well as public/national debt). Two Japanese citizens were apparently doing their part to profit from that state of affairs:

A purported $134 billion in U.S. government bearer bond certificates seized by police near the Italian-Swiss border are fake, the U.S. Treasury said on Friday.

[...]

The Treasury’s determination confirmed the suspicions of Italy’s Guardia di Finanza, or tax police, which seized the bond documents in early June from two Japanese nationals at the Chiasso rail station in northern Italy, close to the border with Switzerland.

The bonds comprised 249 “Federal Reserve” bonds of $500 million nominal value each and 10 “Bond Kennedy” with a $1 billion nominal value, the tax police said on June 4 in a statement on the seizure of the bonds.

A senior tax police officer said Italian authorities also were checking whether the two travellers’ Japanese documents are genuine.

I’m not sure whether to be glad that the bonds are apparently fake or upset that the real bonds may not soon be worth much more than the fake ones.

Neil Boortz unloads several thousand words on the election. Here’s the bit about the Republicans:

One thing for sure … the Republicans deserve exactly what is happening to them in this election. It’s just too bad the rest of the country has to suffer the lion’s share of the punishment the Republicans so richly deserve. In 1994 the voters were fed up with Clinton and the Republicans swept to control of both houses of congress, largely on the strength of Newt’s Contract with America. Do you remember some of the promises? One that sticks in my mind is their promise to dismantle the Department of Education. Republicans – in 1994 – recognized that the quality of American education had been going steadily downhill since this government behemoth was formed. Well, that was then … this is now. The size of the Education Department, as well as the cost, has doubled. Republicans did this, not Democrats.

As a matter of fact, it’s not just the Department of Education; it’s our entire federal government. Spending has doubled. Size has doubled. All under the Republican watch inside the beltway. Pork barrel spending is completely out of control, and Republicans are behind the wheel. Education and pork spending aside, we have the Medicare prescription benefit, McCain-Feingold, Sarbanes-Oxley, a tepid response to Kelo vs. New London … all elements of a well-deserved Republican drubbing. The problem here is that the cure, that being Barack Obama, might well be much worse of than the disease.

The Republicans don’t deserve power in Washington just as you don’t deserve a boil in the center of your forehead. There are worse things, however. Complete Democrat control or, in the case of your forehead, a nice big melanoma. Pretty much the same things, actually.

It’s not that the Republicans did everything wrong. They got the tax cut thing right, and they responded correctly, for the most part, to the radical Islamic attack on our country. They just did so much wrong at the same time. They got drunk with power, and the hangover affects all of us.

Boortz is blunt, as usual, but he makes a needed point. It isn’t just the Democrats who have some ‘splainin’ to do here. Many Republicans, erstwhile conservatives, did not follow through on the promises they made in 1994. Today, conservatives are fighting for ground we thought we had already won 14 years ago.

That, my friends, is too long to stay drunk. The question is, how many in political leadership today are still drunk and will just give us more of the same if they return to Washington, DC, or Pierre, or Harrisburg, or Albany, or . . . ?

I was hoping that Dean’s World was an alternate reality. Unfortunately, it is firmly grounded in the here and now. Unless I’m actually in an alternate reality, which would mean that somebody else is really typing these words and I’m enjoying a non-thrilling discussion with someone like Brian Williams. Or not.

Even with the tax cuts, and even with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Bush would have reduced the national debt by nearly half a trillion dollars if he’d kept domestic spending under control. Instead, he did just the opposite: the Medicare drug benefit, No Child Left Behind, and dozens of smaller new spending programs he pushed through a reluctant congress. And the national debt went up by $1.3 trillion.

I’m not sure which is sadder — that these spending programs were approved by the Republican congressional majority forged by genuine fiscal conservatives on a promise of balancing the budget by cutting spending, or that the only other viable political party has been continuously criticizing Bush and the Republican party for not spending even more.

Go check out the whole article. There are several depressing graphs to support all the information which is being discussed.