Posted on 03/29/2009 5:53:50 PM PDT by reaganaut1
With a bit of bookkeeping legerdemain borrowed from the Bush administration, the Democratic Congress is about to perform a cover-up on the most serious threat to America's economic future.
That threat is not the severe recession, tough as that is for the families and businesses struggling to make ends meet. In time, the recession will end, and last week's stock market performance hinted that we may not have to wait years for the recovery to begin.
The real threat is the monstrous debt resulting from the slump in revenue and the staggering sums being committed by Washington to rescuing embattled banks and homeowners -- and the absence of any serious strategy for paying it all back.
The Congressional Budget Office sketched the dimensions of the problem on March 20, and Congress reacted with shock. The CBO said that over the next 10 years, current policies would add a staggering $9.3 trillion to the national debt -- one-third more than President Obama had estimated by using much more optimistic assumptions about future economic growth.
As far as the eye could see, the CBO said, the debt would continue to grow by about $1 trillion a year because of a structural deficit between the spending rate, averaging 23 percent of gross domestic product, and federal revenue at 19 percent.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
(1) cap-and-trade, causing energy prices to "skyrocket" (2) card check, pushing workers into unions (3) amnesty for illegal aliens, causing an unending flow of less-educated people to the U.S.
could cause the economy to never recover, making the deficit even worse than they predict.
I liked the article, but the digs at the Bush administration are irrelevant.
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Oldtime pissy liberals like David Broder just can't help themselves. The Depends generation.
“They borrowed it from George W. Bush, who turned to it as soon as his inherited budget surpluses withered with the tax cuts and recession of 2001-02.”
Not so fast. The Clinton budget surplus withered as a result of the Clinton stock market burst (April 2000) of the Clinton tech bubble (1998 to 2000). This was followed by the the Clinton recession (two consecutive quarters of of declining GDP starting in year 2000), which was officially declared when the numbers came in 40 days after Bush took office in 2001. The economy didn’t turn around until AFTER the Bush tax cuts took effect in year 2003. Tax revenues actually increased after the Bush tax cuts, because due to the economic turn - around, the government had more wages and business profits to tax. All this in spite of 9-11 and the Iraq war.
Too bad that after a moment of honesty, MSM reporters are required to perform penance by throwing in a gratuitous declaration of political correctness. Otherwise a good article.
If George Bush spent as much as Obama did to contain the 2001-02 recession, the MSM would have been howling from the rooftops. Now, with a few exceptions, they characterize it as necessary and are mum on the consequences.
One has to wonder what it is we’re counting on. Personally, I think the Dems think the more goodies they can hand out, the more power they’ll accumulate. So far they’ve been right. Its very short term thinking, but they probably feel they’ve got everyone who is anyone in their pocket.
I think butt head broder was writing of what has happened, and not speculating, and when you have a—hole’s like fred barns pushing number three who knows what will happen. It can only go down hill from here.
He started this piece out trashing Bush - hoping and praying that his "trash Bush" will get a pass for daring to speak poorly of King Obama.
Can anyone recall ONCE when Broder trashed a dem in the first sentence so he could cushion criticism against a Republican?
Broder does a MSM suck-up in the first sentence - but other than that there’s some interesting stuff.
Border is not smart enough to even be wrong.
I thought Broder shuffled off this mortal coil years ago...
Or any strategy. Did you hear the phrase “We cant borrow our way out of debt” ?? That is exactly the Keynesian strategy that Obama and the MSM has the public sold on(republicans are not much better). It is that we must combat each recession with more national debt to avoid a depression. This is a disastrous strategy but it is the strategy of ‘immediate action’ which is the news cycle.
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