Tag Archives: Deficit

Judd Gregg says Obama’s budget will bankrupt the country

UPDATE: Welcome visitors from Free Canuckistan! Thanks for the linky, Binky!

Found this post over at Gateway Pundit. You’ll remember that Judd Gregg is one of those fiscally conservative New Hampshire senators, an expert on business, finance and economics. Despite being a Republican, he was nominated by Obama for the Cabinet position of Commerce Secretary. He backed out of it, though. And now we can guess why.

Last month, he warned that the budget would bankrupt the USA:

A new video from CNN is here. Here’s an excerpt from the transcript:

“The practical implications of this is bankruptcy for the United States,” Gregg said of the Obama’s administration’s recently released budget blueprint. “There’s no other way around it. If we maintain the proposals that are in this budget over the ten-year period that this budget covers, this country will go bankrupt. People will not buy our debt, our dollar will become devalued. It is a very severe situation.”

“Your listeners have to understand how staggering the numbers are. We’re talking about a deficit in the trillion-dollar range for as far as the eye can see. We’re talking about deficits which are 4% to 5% of GDP – which is not sustainable under any form of government. We’re talking about a public debt – this is a debt that people own of the federal government – that will be around 80% of GDP. Historically, it’s been around 40% of GDP in the out years. The practical implication of this is bankruptcy for the United States. There’s no other way around it.”

I know people who denounced Bush, McCain and Palin. They voted for this ACORN lawyer. As if Obama was God’s gift to small government conservatism. They wouldn’t read a single economics book. I remember showing them numbers from Citizens Against Government Waste and American Taxpayers Union, which they rejected.

Here’s one more interesting piece from the always wonderful IBD (editorial, podcast). I include the details of the Bush and Reagan budgets, for comparison with Obama’s budget.

Excerpt:

According to the CBO, the Obama administration lowballed its deficit forecast by $482 billion over the next four years and $2.3 trillion over the next 10. In other words, the CBO says that 10-year deficits will be 33% higher than the president claims, should his plans get enacted.

This makes Obama’s budget one of the worst accounting jobs ever put forward in modern times by a new administration.

When the CBO reviewed George W. Bush’s first budget, for example, the difference between what Bush said his budget would cost and what the CBO said it would cost was minimal.

…Reagan’s first budget, which was widely panned for allegedly employing rosy scenarios to cook the numbers, differed from the CBO by just 1.2% in projected revenues and 5% in spending over the first four years.

So why the huge gap between Obama and the CBO?

Obama’s team employed one of the oldest budget tricks in the books — exaggerating economic growth — to hide the true cost of his tax and spending plans. Budget forecasts are hugely sensitive to predictions about GDP growth, inflation, unemployment and interest rates. Even slight differences can have a huge impact on projected outlays and revenues.

And in his budget, Obama is positively Pollyannaish about the economy, predicting 3.2% real GDP growth next year, compared to the CBO’s 2.9% and the Blue Chip consensus forecast of 1.9%. While the CBO and Blue Chip think unemployment will be 9% in 2010, Obama claims it will be only 7.9%. And so on.

Here’s an image I stole from IBD:

IBD: Publically-held debt
IBD: Publically-held debt

Read the whole editorial! And don’t foget to subscribe to IBD’s podcast feed. It’s FREE!

Michelle Malkin has more details on Obama’s “public-private partnership” plan for economic recovery.

Excerpt:

John Boehner calls for Congress to freeze spending at current levels

House Republican Leader John Boehner
House Republican Leader John Boehner

House Republican Leader John Boehner calls for an immediate spending freeze at current levels. The freeze would cancel the 900 earmarks in the 410 billion dollar porkulus-2 omnibus bill. The video of his speech is below, and you need to watch it right now. Please.

Excerpt from John Boehner’s speech on the floor of the House of Representatives:

I know there are a lot of members that have a lot of other issues that they’d like to include in this, but the fact is that American families are hurting, small businesses are hurting around the country, our economy is hurting. And I think we could help our economy, we could send a strong signal to the American people by extending this spending freeze through September 30.

“Let’s show the American taxpayers that we get it. Let’s show investors in our American economy that we get it. Because clearly the bill that’s been under consideration both here in the House and now in the Senate has a $30 billion increase over last year’s spending, and includes nearly 9,000 earmarks. And the way to put all of this to a stop is to just have a spending freeze. Let’s show the American people we understand the pain they are under and show them that we are willing to tighten our belt.

Boehner was not content to give mere talk. He tried to force a vote on the freeze in order to get the Democrats to go on record on the 1.75 trillion dollar deficit they’ve introduced. The story is here, and includes this quote from the Associated Press:

“The top Republican in the House is seizing on the latest spike in unemployment to call for a freeze on government spending and to urge President Barack Obama to veto a $410 billion spending bill.”

“Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, said the jump in unemployment to 8.1 percent and the loss of 651,000 jobs in February is a sign of a worsening recession that demands better solutions from both parties.”

“Boehner criticized the spending bill as chocked full of wasteful, pork-barrel projects. The Senate postponed a vote on the bill until Monday amid the criticism.”

“Boehner said he hoped Obama would veto the bill. He urged the president to work with House Republicans to impose a spending freeze until the end of this fiscal year.”

Who gets it? The House Republicans get it.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin is reporting (via Connie Hair of Human Events) that the motion failed 160-218, with every Republican present voting for it.

Obama blames Bush for Obama’s 1.75 trillion dollar deficit

Full story over at Gateway Pundit.

Excerpt:

[Bush’s policies] dropped the deficit 4 of 8 years, held an average unemployment at 5.2%, saw the strongest productivity growth in 4 decades and witnessed robust GDP growth.

Bush was able to do this despite the recession he inherited, 9-11, Hurricane Katrina, and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

As you can see from this chart, after the Bush tax cuts were implemented the budget deficit was reduced 3 of the last 4 years.

The deficit was reduced in 2005, 2006 and 2007 even with war and implementation of the successful Bush surge of troops in Iraq.
It wasn’t until the mortgage crisis struck the economy, a crisis Bush warned the democratic Congress about 17 times in 2008 alone, that the deficit climbed to $459 billion.

Have you seen this chart? (Source: CBO chart via RedState)

Gateway Pundit also mentions that Bush warned about crisis 17 times in 2008 and was blocked from regulating the GSEs by the Democrats. I proved here that the Democrats are to blame for this mess. In the post, I cited 1999 and 2003 articles from the left-wing New York Times and Los Angeles Times. There are also videos of Republicans trying to stop the crisis and Democrats blocking them.