Obama Requests An Additional $1.65 Trillion In New Debt!
Posted: February 15th, 2011 | Author: Joe | Filed under: Debt, Economy | Tags: Economy, Obama, U.S. Debt, U.S. Deficit | No Comments »This is just plain crazy. I thought The President was all about cutting the deficit? I thought we were going to have to make “tough decisions”? This is a joke!
Only it’s not.
It’s real.
President Obama has submitted his $3.73 TRILLION budget to Congress on Monday. The President’s own budget is projecting $1.65 trillion in new debt for this fiscal year alone, but that’s not really being talked about. Instead, the media is focusing on the fantasy that this budget will reduce the deficit by $1.1 trillion – over 10 years!
First of all, every 10 -year budget projection is meaningless because there are just too many unknowns and when you’re dealing with a budget as big as that of the U.S., even small miscalculation or mistaken assumptions add up to billions.
Second, does the media (and the white house) think we’ve forgotten that President Obama and his party added nearly $5 trillion to the deficit in his first two years alone? Now we’re supposed to be happy that he’s going to add $1 trillion less after ten years than he wanted to?
He’s also projecting another $1.1 trillion deficit for 2012.
He keeps talking about making “tough choices and sacrifices” but I just don’t see it happening. does anyone see it happening? Does anyone out there see any seriousness on his part to reduce spending?
In fact, what we get is a budget that is loaded with gimmicks and tricks played on the American people:
1. Redefining Pell grants as mandatory spending. Stripped of this gimmick, discretionary spending jumps by $14 billion in 2012.[2]
2. Reclassifying $54 billion of surface transportation spending from discretionary spending to mandatory spending.[3]
3. Spending the peace dividend. The budget proposal includes spending for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, referred to as “overseas contingency operations,” as discretionary spending and reduces funding for these operations by $38.2 billion in 2012.[4]
The newly elected Republicans have shown some interest, but even they seem reluctant to make serious cuts.
Republicans want to cut $61 billion, but that’s a drop in the bucket and doesn’t address any of the real problems inherent in the structure of the budget – namely the “non-discretionary” spending… the unfunded entitlement programs that are due to bankrupt the country in the next few decades unless some major changes are made.
I’m not seeing the change anywhere, are you?
