Category: National Debt

A Trillion Dollars in Perspect

“A billion here, a billion there.  Pretty soon, you’re talking about real money.”  

Attributed to the late Sen. Everett Dirksen

 

Everett Dirksen (R.-Ill) was the Senate Minority Leader in the 1960s.  He was as famous for his wit as he was for his concern about federal spending and our rising public debt.  In 1969, the year he died, the U.S. public debt was $354 billion.  In today’s dollars that would be around $2.5 trillion.  If only that were the size of today’s debt.   Instead it has ballooned to a whopping $22 trillion.

As if that weren’t bad enough, the leading Democrat presidential candidates are proposing programs that will add trillions more:  universal child care, free college, universal basic income, reparations, tax credit for renters and let us not forget Bernie Sander’s Medicare for all.  The latter is estimated to cost anywhere from $3.24 trillion to $1.38 trillion a year, depending on whose estimate you take. Continue reading “A Trillion Dollars in Perspect” →

World’s Greatest Negotiator Just Got Rolled

Don’t look now, but the world’s greatest negotiator just got rolled on a budget deal by a couple of snake oil salesman and you will end up paying the bill.

Don’t blame Nancy Pelosi.  She does what she has always done.  Her game plan has always been the same.  It has never changed.  However, the president refused to listen to the grownups in the White House — Chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and Russell Vought, the acting director of the Office of Management and Budget —who had studied it and prepared an adequate defense.

No, the two guys holding out the bottle of magic miracle tonic were none other than Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.  They claim it contains the solution to all Trump’s current problems.  All he has to do is agree to raise the debt ceiling.  Drop his insistence that there be real offsets for a heavy round of new spending that bust the caps in the 2011 Budget Control Act — the hard fought victory won by the tea-party Congress —  and call it a victory for national defense.

Just drink the contents in this little bottle and Continue reading “World’s Greatest Negotiator Just Got Rolled” →

Congress Fiddles while U.S. Burns

Legend has it that the emperor Nero played the fiddle while the ancient city of Rome burned for six days, destroying 70 percent of the city and leaving half of its population homeless.

While it is unlikely this actually happened, given that the violin hadn’t been invented yet, it is true that he was an unpopular, evil, ineffectual leader in a time of crises.  Some believe he actually started the fire because he used this opportunity to build a magnificent palace surrounded by lush gardens for himself on the land that had been cleared by the blaze.

Now it’s Congress that is fiddling around while the country is facing, not one, but two crises.   The first is our national debt that has reached a staggering $22 trillion, with no real plan for relief in sight. Continue reading “Congress Fiddles while U.S. Burns” →

George W. Bush Too Nice to be a Good President

President George H.W. Bush was a nice man. In fact, he was much too nice to be a good president.

Bush was no conservative.  We knew that before he was elected.  However after watching him capitulate to Democrats again and again,  I asked someone who knew him well if the Democrats had something on him or did he simply desire to be liked by them.  His friend’s voice fell as he confirmed it was the latter.

I do not begrudge the honors our 41st president has received following his death.  The office should be respected and these things are befitting anyone who has held the office of head of state of this great country.  I also feel for his family as they mourn the loss of a beloved father and grandfather. 

I do, however, resent the attempt to reinvent the man as a great president.  He was not even adequate.  If anything, he torpedoed much of the good that began under Ronald Reagan and is responsible for many terrible things that live on. Continue reading “George W. Bush Too Nice to be a Good President” →

Senate Punts on Defunding Planned Parenthood, Again

Last week  Sen. Ron Paul (D-Ken) succeeded in getting a vote on defunding Planned Parenthood and, in doing so, exposed his party’s hypocrisy on two important issues:  protecting life  and ending deficit spending.

Planned Parenthood is arguably one of the most evil organizations in America.  Thanks to the efforts of undercover journalists this organization was caught red-handed trying to sell the body parts of little aborted babies, which is illegal.  http://www.centerformedicalprogress.org/cmp/investigative-footage/

However, to date, Planned Parenthood has managed to escape prosecution, claiming the charges only covered doctors’ fees and transportation, despite what was said on these nauseating videos.  Meanwhile,  the filmmakers involved in the investigation are still fighting off lawsuits.

The outrage is compounded by the fact that Congress has been giving this fat-cat, highly political organization a half billion of our hard-earned tax dollars each year.   With the Republican Party — the party that has pledged to protect life — in control, reasonable people who put all these lawmakers in office expected this to end.   Continue reading “Senate Punts on Defunding Planned Parenthood, Again” →

The U.S. vs China

How can China hurt us?  Let us count the ways:

First and foremost, they hold most of our foreign debt, 19 percent or $1.17 trillion.  By buying U.S. treasuries, China keeps our interest rates low but it also gives China leverage over U.S. fiscal policy.

What would happen if China stopped buying U.S. treasures or, worst still, called the loans?

China also controls the supply of the world’s rare earth metals that are used in most of the high-tech products we take for granted like smart phones and hard drives.  More importantly, these materials are necessary components for building smart bombs and military radar.  It’s not that we don’t have any of these minerals.  It’s just that our government shut down our only rare earth mine and allowed the Chinese to buy the company that supplied them.

Lastly, China now has access to our most sensitive military technology.  That which wasn’t stolen was transferred overtly by previous administrations.   Continue reading “The U.S. vs China” →

GOP Needs a New Mascot

The Republican Party needs a new mascot.  The elephant is no longer appropriate.  An elephant is a proud, strong animal.  It represents strength, wisdom, loyalty, stamina and leadership.   Clearly, after last week’s cave-in to Democrats in order to achieve a long-term spending bill and avoid the possibility of another government shutdown, none of those traits apply to a party that controls both houses of Congress and the White House.

This little compromise, which added another $300 billion to the budget over the next two years, was a complete disaster for a country that is up to its eyeballs in debt and a president that was elected promising to drain the swamp.  Earth to the president:  The swamp feeds on tax dollars.  This deal the GOP is celebrating just flooded the place and added to the stench.   Continue reading “GOP Needs a New Mascot” →

Big Bird: You’re Fired!

On Monday, Donald Trump signed an executive order aimed at cutting out waste in the federal government.  The ink wasn’t dry when the Washington Post trotted out Big Bird, the affable “Sesame Street” figure who has been used to blunt past efforts to cut unnecessary government programs.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/the-end-of-big-bird-hes-survived-the-budget-ax-many-times-before/2017/03/13/f5c1c94a-082a-11e7-93dc-00f9bdd74ed1_story.html?utm_term=.c6a28dc55b29

“Sesame Street” has millions of fans and I am one of them, but this bird is a fat cat!  It’s time we recognize that his life and our lives will not change if we cut the funding for the National Endowment for the Arts, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, NPR and all the rest. Continue reading “Big Bird: You’re Fired!” →

The Obama Legacy: Broken Promises and Lies

In 2004, Barack Obama came onto the stage at the Democrat National Convention as the party’s candidate to represent Illinois in the U.S. Senate and wowed the country with his keynote address.  Less than three years later, he was campaigning to be president of the United States with a lot of promises and a message of “hope and change.”

Though Obama remains a popular figure, the overwhelming majority believe that he has placed the country on the “wrong track.”  Those who even remember his promises, now know they were empty.

In his final days at the White House, I made a list of his most memorable broken promises or outright lies —  one for each year he was in office.

1.   “If you like the (health care) plan you have, you can keep it.  If you like the doctor you have, you can keep your Continue reading “The Obama Legacy: Broken Promises and Lies” →