Posted on 05/23/2009 7:17:02 AM PDT by autumnraine
Edited on 05/23/2009 2:21:14 PM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
'WE'RE OUT OF MONEY'
Sat May 23 2009 10:32:18 ET
In a sobering holiday interview with C-SPAN, President Obama boldly told Americans: "We are out of money."
C-SPAN host Steve Scully broke from a meek Washington press corps with probing questions for the new president.
SCULLY: You know the numbers, $1.7 trillion debt, a national deficit of $11 trillion. At what point do we run out of money?
OBAMA: Well, we are out of money now. We are operating in deep deficits, not caused by any decisions we've made on health care so far. This is a consequence of the crisis that we've seen and in fact our failure to make some good decisions on health care over the last several decades.
So we've got a short-term problem, which is we had to spend a lot of money to salvage our financial system, we had to deal with the auto companies, a huge recession which drains tax revenue at the same time it's putting more pressure on governments to provide unemployment insurance or make sure that food stamps are available for people who have been laid off.
So we have a short-term problem and we also have a long-term problem. The short-term problem is dwarfed by the long-term problem. And the long-term problem is Medicaid and Medicare. If we don't reduce long-term health care inflation substantially, we can't get control of the deficit.
So, one option is just to do nothing. We say, well, it's too expensive for us to make some short-term investments in health care. We can't afford it. We've got this big deficit. Let's just keep the health care system that we've got now.
Along that trajectory, we will see health care cost as an overall share of our federal spending grow and grow and grow and grow until essentially it consumes everything...
SCULLY: When you see GM though as Government Motors, you're reaction?
OBAMA: Well, you know look we are trying to help an auto industry that is going through a combination of bad decision making over many years and an unprecedented crisis or at least a crisis we haven't seen since the 1930's. And you know the economy is going to bounce back and we want to get out of the business of helping auto companies as quickly as we can. I have got more enough to do without that. In the same way that I want to get out of the business of helping banks, but we have to make some strategic decisions about strategic industries...
SCULLY: States like California in desperate financial situation, will you be forced to bail out the states?
OBAMA: No. I think that what you're seeing in states is that anytime you got a severe recession like this, as I said before, their demands on services are higher. So, they are sending more money out. At the same time, they're bringing less tax revenue in. And that's a painful adjustment, what we're going end up seeing is lot of states making very difficult choices there...
SCULLY: William Howard Taft served on the court after his presidency, would you have any interest in being on the Supreme Court?
OBAMA: You know, I am not sure that I could get through Senate confirmation...
Developing...
This the best news yet because it’s the only excuse that will stop the spending: “we’re out of money”. It’s not really true since we can print it. Think of the spending that can be stopped in its tracks just by saying “we’re out of money”. Now that Obama has said it, politicians can rally around the slogan. The public’s ready to believe it. Our economic problems are solved!
Ain't it funny how the tone has changed around here from back when those of us warning about this were being flamed?
I'll admit that my line of "wait until President Hillary Clinton has that power and see if you like it" wasn't an exact fit, but the point's the same.
If you wastefully spend, your GDP goes up. It's not very strongly linked to "production," despite that "P" in the initials.
Import a cheap trinket from China and unload it at the port, ship it to a warehouse, distribute it to local areas and get to retail market and sell it for a markup at the local store, and each and every cost along the way becomes "Product" that's boosting our GDP. But does it provide a single iota of "Product" for us to trade back to China or to anyone else external? No.
We can't keep getting things from others without sending anything back but IOUs. That's only one difference from WWII GDP ratios.
Don’t forget medications.
ping
you mean spending trillions of dollars with no money to back it up hasn’t pulled us out of debt? I’m shocked- Everytime I personally run out of money, I borrow 1000’s of dollars I can never hope to pay back, spend it on crappy ideas I have, and I get out of debt- I can’t understand how the president has failed to get us out of debt by spednign like a drunken sailor- Shocked I say! I was so sure his moronic spednign ideology was goign to save us all. (Woops- I used the words ‘obama’ and ‘moronic’ in the same post- now big brother is goign to put me on a ‘to watch’ list)
bammy: “Well, you know look we are trying to help an auto industry that is going through a combination of bad decision making over many years and an unprecedented crisis or at least a crisis we haven’t seen since the 1930’s. And you know the economy is going to bounce back and we want to get out of the business of helping auto companies as quickly as we can. I have got more enough to do without that. In the same way that I want to get out of the business of helping banks, but we have to make some strategic decisions about strategic industries...”
‘we want to get out of the business of helping auto companies as quickly as we can.’
+++++++++++++++++
Uh huh, but the unions bammy, but for the unions...all those votes...that’s what really matters bammy, isn’t it? The country be sacrificed.
“The difference is that at some point, the SS checks will cease, because servicing the debt will become a higher priority, and their value individually will not be worth the cost of printing and distributing them to those who are due them.”
++++++++++++++
More of this irresponsible mortgaging of our kids and grandkids futures...and the demonRATS are all for it...yeah, thumbs up </sarc>...
WE HAVE IDIOT AS PRESIDENT!!!
You only get that if you are married. I took care of my dad for six years and when he died they said I didn’t get the $250 because I wasn’t his wife. He was not married.
We were out of money trillions of dollars ago, yet you yoyo’s continue to borrow and spend money we don’t have!
I traded a jar of pickled peppers (my recipe is apparently gaining reputation around here) for 2 dozen farm eggs.
Practicing too. I want to be known as the cook and I figured in this fast food world, I’ll be the one people can come to learn how to cook from scratch with little ingredients. That’s what happens when you have a paranoid Grandmother who lived through the Depression who made her daughter paranoid and then taught HER daughter (me). The paranoia is heriditary (haha). Then you marry the same lineage in paranoid “it can happen again” farmers and have a mother in law who makes SURE I know how to cook, can vegetables and make jams to keep fruit from spoiling and keep my collection of cast iron skillets and dutch ovens because the aluminum ones don’t last...
You see where I’m going with this?
Please let me know when you go. My husband’s a farmer and I’m a cook/canner. I promise we’ll be valuable LOL!
(Seriously, can we look into this? I never thought I’d live on a commune, but I’d live on a Freeper commune)
Hitler was a genius in his own way too. Didn’t make him a good person.
Hopefully Obama won’t have a pesky cocaine problem that Hitler had.
Oh wait... oh dear, let’s hope not.
and tobacco.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.