Free Republic

Do you want to understand the magnitude and imminence of America’s financial calamity? I’ve written hundreds of thousands of words about it over the years, but an accountant, Hal Mason, has prepared a five-and-a-half-minute YouTube video that does a pretty good job of bringing it all home simply and starkly. I advise every American to take a few minutes to view it if you want to understand why Washington is plunging off the fiscal cliff, even while the Democratic and Republican establishment talk about averting it. All one really needs to do is view the 2013 budget from a high...

In the duh department we have this: * * * * * * * * * * * The actual liabilities of the federal government—including Social Security, Medicare, and federal employees' future retirement benefits—already exceed $86.8 trillion, or 550% of GDP. For the year ending Dec. 31, 2011, the annual accrued expense of Medicare and Social Security was $7 trillion. Nothing like that figure is used in calculating the deficit. In reality, the reported budget deficit is less than one-fifth of the more accurate figure. * * * * * * * * * * * Did you get that?...

With Barack Obama re-elected to the White House for four more years, half the country is wondering what we can do to limit the damage. I actually have an answer. In January 2011, after Republicans took over the House, I launched a campaign that now appears to be our only hope of killing off Obamacare, making Obama’s lame-duck second term a nightmare (for him, that is) and actually moving Washington toward a return to limited, constitutional government. And all it takes to do it is the cooperation of the House Republican majority. After Republicans took control of the House in...

Alan Greenspan Just Called Out Republicans For Exploding Entitlement Spending Linette LopezNovember 7, 2012, 10:48 AM Alan Greenspan is on Bloomberg talking to Betty Liu about the economy and the fiscal cliff in Obama's second term. The former Fed Chairman is just as worried about the issue as everyone else on the Street, and he doesn't really think the election changes much (from Bloomberg): I think it's a very dangerous situation largely because presumption we can resolve this issue without physical pain, spiritual pain or any sort of economic pain whatsoever.... no matter how we resolve it there are negative...

WASHINGTON - The latest sign President Obama fears he's headed for defeat came this week when he said he'd seek a "grand bargain" with Republicans to reduce a $16 trillion debt. Over the course of his campaign, Obama has ignored the monstrous debt he's piled up over the past four years in an orgy of unprecedented annual spending increases and budget deficits. Now, with little more than a week left before Election Day, and the presidential race in a dead heat, he suddenly wants a compromise with Republican leaders in Congress to curb spending and borrowing. Well, he's four years...

In less than two weeks, Americans will either elect a new President, or give Barack Obama four more years to continue carrying out his "transformation" of America. Given their utter failure to get our economy moving again, it's not surprising the Left is trying so hard to keep the public's attention off their performance and on extraneous matters like the supposed "war on women" or the "war on Big Bird." And of course, their populist class warfare language has become their Alamo -- the last line of defense. Our focus must relentlessly remain on the economy and how the big...

Detail & The Donkey: Obama skates on specifics by Daniel Clark Since Mitt Romney announced his tax plan, the media have demanded that he provide more detail. In particular, they want to know exactly which deductions he wants to eliminate while cutting the rates. That’s a perfectly reasonable question, but why is only Romney expected to provide specifics, while President Obama continues to speak in puffy generalities? Nancy Pelosi, then Speaker of the House, famously said that Congress needed to pass Obamacare in order to find out what was in it. Even if the legislators had given themselves time to...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. budget deficit has topped $1 trillion for a fourth straight year, but a modest improvement in economic growth helped narrow the gap by $207 billion compared with last year. The Treasury Department said Friday the deficit for the 2012 budget year totaled $1.1 trillion. Tax revenue rose 6.4 percent from last year to more than $2.4 trillion, helping contain the deficit. The government's revenue rose as more people got jobs and received income. Corporations also contributed more tax revenue than in 2011. Government spending fell 1.7 percent to $3.5 trillion. The decline reflected, in part,...

Exclusive: John Rocker says sunset of America is upon us based on electoral results Snip: From the implementation of the first broad-ranging social entitlement programs, which were introduced through Johnson’s Great Society back in the ’60s, little by little the American populace has become more and more comfortable suckling at the government teat over the passing decades. No one can argue that the concept of expansive socialism and far-reaching entitlement were ever a component of the founding doctrine of these United States. Yet as with many things which at first are taboo, slowly they become tolerated, then accepted, then expected....

Exclusive: Joseph Farah compares billions given away to what's spent on border security It may be an apocryphal quote attributed to the late Sen. Everett Dirksen: “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.” There’s really no credible citation one can find that suggests he actually ever said those famous words – though I swear I can still hear him saying them when I was a child. Those words were reverberating in my mind again this week as it was revealed that Barack Obama has increased spending on foreign aid by 80 percent through last...

Since 2009, and since Senate Democrats last passed a budget, the Congressional Budget Office has calculated $1 trillion deficits each year with 2012 being no exception. But now, a new USA Today study shows that last year's budget deficit wasn't $1 trillion....it was actually $5 trillion. The deficit was $5 trillion last year under those rules. The official number was $1.3 trillion. Liabilities for Social Security, Medicare and other retirement programs rose by $3.7 trillion in 2011, according to government actuaries, but the amount was not registered on the government's books. It is well known by now that even if...

The teenagers who speak in this video belong to http://www.im2moro.org. These young people realize that if they don't stand up and speak out for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness today, they will be living in a very different America tomorrow.

VIDEO: Barack Obama tells David Letterman he doesn't remember how much the national debt is (either he's lying or he doesn't want to remind everyone how gargantuan it is), blames Bush, and plays the class warfare card.

I have posted before on the impending bankruptcy of America and how we can proactively deal with it. I will not repeat the entire text here, but the main idea is that Congress should pass and Prez Romney should sign a bill declaring national Chapter 11 Bankruptcy. Then have a Bankruptcy Judge cut all the sacred cow programs, lay off federal employees, etc. to get the federal budget back into surplus. This morning I had an idea on how we can pay down the staggering $16 Trillion debt. The Federal government owns half the land West of the Mississippi as...

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble questioned on Tuesday how the United States could deal with its high levels of government debt after November's presidential election.

NATIONAL TAXES, SPENDING AND DEBT In June 2009 the U.S. national debt was over 11 million dollars, and growing at $3.82 billion per day. each citizen's share of this debt was $37,231.31. http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/ As of Aug. 08 2011, the national debt was at $14.5 trillion, but with $211 trillion in unfunded liabilities. http://www.christianpost.com/news/whats-the-real-national-debt-211000000000000-53525/ As of Sept 6. 2012, the national debt was over $16 trillion, The estimated population of the United States is 313,455,377, so each citizen's share of this debt is $51,091.16. The National Debt has continued to increase an average of $3.88 billion per day since September...

Now that the Democratic National Convention is in the rearview mirror, let's evaluate it by the numbers.  I believe the conference can be summed up in five: (1) 16,000,000,000,000 - Just as the DNC was scheduled to kick off on Tuesday, the national debt clock clicked over to the staggering and dangerous sum of $16 Trillion.  More than $5 Trillion of that total has accrued under President Obama, and a top administration official has testified that the White House has no plan to restore the national debt to a position of sustainability. (2) 46,700,000 - The Department of Agriculture released...

Two days ago, the gross federal debt of the United States of America surpassed $16,000,000,000,000. That's sixteen trillion dollars. This historic landmark in reckless spending neatly coincided with the beginning of the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina. Make no mistake: Both parties definitely bear some blame for this fiscal catastrophe, and I've gone in-depth on that subject before. President Obama's administration has presided over a $5.4 trillion surge in the debt, but the primary blame for debt-creation must go to Congress. As I pointed out in that article, the president does not control government spending. It's certainly true that President Obama...

An explosive mix of dysfunction, miscommunication, and misunderstandings inside and outside the White House led to the collapse of a historic spending and debt deal that President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner were on the verge of reaching last summer, according to revelations in author Bob Woodward's latest book. The book, "The Price of Politics," on sale Sept. 11, 2012, shows how close the president and the House speaker were to defying Washington odds and establishing a spending framework that included both new revenues and major changes to long-sacred entitlement programs. But at a critical juncture, with an agreement...

Read the entire 7,000 word ABC News story to get a grasp of Obama's incompetence in dealing with a major negotiation. Absolutely breathtaking: An explosive mix of dysfunction, miscommunication, and misunderstandings inside and outside the White House led to the collapse of a historic spending and debt deal that President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner were on the verge of reaching last summer, according to revelations in author Bob Woodward's latest book.The book, "The Price of Politics," on sale Sept. 11, 2012, shows how close the president and the House speaker were to defying Washington odds and establishing...