Above a photo of President Obama on the February 18 issue of Barron’s Business and Financial weekly the headline exclaims ‘FOLLOW ME’ and the sub-headline expounds ‘We can be like Greece!’
Inside this publication, Gene Epstein, an economics editor for Dow Jones points out that the USA could easily be in the same financial straits as Greece within 22 years. Unless taxes are increased by huge amounts and bloated spending is drastically reduced, a depression could be on the not-too-distant horizon, unemployment could spike to 20% and debt could be more than 150% of economic output (GDP).
The good news for Mr. Obama is that in 22 years he will be in his 70’s and wandering about in the Barack Hussein Obama Libraries in Honolulu and Chicago. The bad news is that between now and 22 years hence, we may see the same sort of rebellion that has erupted in Greece. The economic disaster that befalls our nation – and the world – will make the current EU economic predicament appear in the history books as a minor gaffe by comparison.
Since the ‘State of the Union’ message on February 12, the administration’s political puppets have been asserting that we don’t have a spending problem. The PC (Politically Correct) expression for spending has been modified to ‘investing’, as ‘investing’ in preschool learning. Democratic Congressional Whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland says we have a ‘Paying-For ‘ problem and former House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi says we have a “budget deficit” problem.
Sophomoric politicians spew out these childish excuses for their own bungling incompetence. It’s about time for the President and his sycophants to terminate the campaign of rhetorical blame and face the reality of the $1 million liability for each U.S. taxpayer, the $16.5 trillion national debt and the nearly $123 trillion in unfunded liabilities.
President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law in March of 2010 although a majority of voters objected to its provisions. Prior to the bill’s enactment, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi emphatically stated that in order to find out what was in the bill (more than 2,000 pages in length), we would need to pass it into law! That sounds like, ‘you have to get sick to find out what the benefits are!’
Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) is reported to have said in July 2009, “What good is reading the bill if it’s a thousand pages and you don’t have two days and two lawyers to find out what it means after you’ve read the bill?” There were declarations of cost savings. Millions of families and individuals without health insurance would be covered and the savings would be significant.
It was disturbing to hear the President admit in his State of the Union message that ”The biggest driver of long term debt is the rising cost of health care for an aging population.” The administration’s actuaries can’t be mathematical morons; they knew all along that costs would spiral upward at a staggering pace. But machinations in the U.S. Congress got the bill passed into law and we gullible voters believed in the supermundane as promised by a silver-tongued politician.
Now called ‘Obamacare’, this law is going to add at least $1 trillion in added costs and a horde of new government employees. The National Taxpayers Union estimates that the President’s overall requests itemized in the State of the Union address will cost more than $83 billion. No cuts in spending (investing) were mentioned. Remember these prescient words of Thomas Jefferson, “A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you have.” Amen.
– Dick Baynton