The Future Of An Illusion
By Mitch Berg
One of the most galling memes of the last eight years was the notion, passed on by thousands of talking-point-gurgitating, historically-illiterate, but sometimes well-meaning lefties at all levels of the media, alt-media and society, was that the Democrats – the party of the NRO, the CCC, the WPA, the Great Society, Ted Kennedy, Tip O’Neil and Phyllis Kahn – were the party of “fiscal responsibility”.
Especially this past eight years,when we were saddled with a president and Congress who spent like crack whores with stolen gold cards (by the standards we were used to anyway), allowing the Tics to frame the debate entirely in terms of “balanced budgets” and deficits, rather than spending.
Of course, we knew the meme was a bunch of baked wind. We merely hoped the US wouldn’t have to find out with the greatest lesson in negative consequences in the history of the free world.
But that’s pretty much what’s gonna happen:
Already in the first 45 days of his administration, the federal government has authorized more debt spending than Ronald Reagan did in eight years in office.Then last week the Democrats’ own Congressional Budget Office found that the ten-year deficits of the Obama plan will be about $2.3 trillion higher than the $6.97 trillion the White House is projecting. This is the policy of the party that was swept back into power in 2006 and 2008 promising a return to an era of fiscal responsibility.
Welcome to the Obama doctrine.
“Tax and Spend” is the meme we on the right have assigned to liberal policy for several generations now. It was pretty much a breezy device, in retrospect, compared to today, where Obama proposes to spend ghastly, brain-spinning sums today in exchange for job-killing, growth-shredding, future-mortgaging taxes tomorrow.
But the news on the red ink front is much worse than the president or even the CBO’s budget report suggests. If all of Obama’s “transformational” policy objectives–from global warming taxes to universal health care to doubling the Department of Energy’s budget–are enacted, the debt is likely
to increase from about 40 percent of GDP today to close to 100 percent of GDP by 2018. The ten-year debt is likely to be at least $6 trillion higher–or more than one-half trillion of higher deficits a year from now until forever–than the Obama budget projects.These are uncharted levels of debt for the United States–though not for such high-flying nations as Argentina, Bolivia, and Mexico.
To be fair, Obama did promise change.
We’re changing into a third world country.
March 30th, 2009 at 10:33 am
For an interesting perspective on our national debt, and who did what to contribute to it’s size, check out the Frontline (PBS television) segment on the subject aired a week or so ago.
It has some fascinating, well documented insights into fiscal responsibility – and the possibilities for getting out of the current economic situation.
March 30th, 2009 at 1:34 pm
Dog Gone, I watched the Frontline piece — or rather, I listened to it while I surfed the web.
I had a relentless liberal/democrat bias.
Two examples out of many:
The Frontline piece slammed Bush again and again about his tax cuts. They never mentioned, even in passing, that total federal government receipts were 1.991 trillion in 2001, in 2008 2.521 trillion. Spending in 2001 was 1.863 trillion, in 2008 2.938 trillion.
Clearly the problem is not tax cuts, but out of control spending. Yet Frontline — supported, as it is, by federal grants, sees things differently than most people would given the same sets of numbers.
Second example: Bush’s devotion to tax cuts is shown as being derived from conservative ideology and, weirdly, his father’s problems with the conservative base after GHW Bush broke his ‘no new taxes’ pledge. Obama’s ideology and background go completely unexamined, as does the ideological commitment to government spending that characterizes the modern Democrat party. No Democrat congress since 1969 has passed a balanced budget — but you’d never know that from watching this Front Line special.
Reminds why I don’t watch political shows on PBS. Wish I wasn’t forced to support them with tax dollars.
March 30th, 2009 at 2:10 pm
“interesting perspective” = “relentless liberal/democrat bias”
Still waiting for the Liberal Fascists… peevee and his ilk to chime in…
March 30th, 2009 at 2:35 pm
The Frontline special sort-of-kind-of tried to defuse the ‘too much spending’ angle to the story by saying that the outsized spending of the last eight years was due in part to entitlement programs like Medicare & Social Security, which were hard to cut because they are tremendously popular with the public.
You don’t have to be an ideologue to note that the greatest reason for their popularity is because, so far, the vast majority of Medicare & SS recipients get more out of it than they put in.
That will change very soon.
There was also no mention that these two programs were the signature social programs of two liberal, big-spending democrats, FDR & LBJ.