Tag Archives: Federal Budget

News

Paul Ryan declares war on Obama’s record 1.56 trillion dollar budget deficit

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Rep. Paul Ryan

Conservative Republican Paul Ryan’s response to Obama’s new 2010 budget.

Excerpt:

“For the duration of the Administration’s 10-year budget, the deficit never falls below $700 billion, and never falls below 3.6 percent of GDP – a level the Administration’s own budget director has called ‘unsustainable.’ Debt held by the public doubles over 5 years, triples over 10,   and exceeds 60 percent of GDP as a share of the economy this year – surpassing last year’s 50-year high. Debt continues to rise to consume 77.2 percent of our economy by the end of the budget window. Even the countries of the European Union, hardly exemplars of fiscal rectitude, are required to keep their debt levels below 60 percent of GDP.

“The Administration will attempt to focus attention on a handful of proposals supposedly aimed at tempering the Federal Government’s explosive growth. But these have far more to do with calming Americans’ concerns than with doing anything to address them. His pay-as-you-go proposal has been waived or circumvented and only locks in deficits at their current high levels. His non-binding commission simply punts on the critical budget decisions that Members of Congress got elected to make. Finally, his so-called ‘freeze’ on some discretionary spending follows an 84-percent increase – and has no clear means of enforcement.

These charts accompany Paul Ryan’s statement. (H/T Michelle Malkin)

First, government spending:

Second, debt held by public as % of GDP:

The problems started when the Democrats got control of Congress in late 2006. (The House controls spending) Talking about “spending freezes” on tiny amounts of the budget now has no effect because we are losing a trillion dollars-and-a-half dollars a year now. It’s just politics meant to deceive the people who still believe Obama’s honeyed words.

More details about Obama’s budget are here on the Republican House Budget Committee web site.

What is Paul Ryan’s alternative?

Neil Simpson posted a link to an overview of Paul Ryan’s plan.

Excerpt:

Health Care
•    Provides a refundable tax credit — $2,300 for individuals and $5,700 for families — to purchase coverage in any state, and keep it with them if they move or change jobs.
•    Allows Medicaid recipients to take part in the same variety of options by using the tax credit to purchase high-quality care.

Medicare
•    Establishes and fully funds Medical Savings Accounts for low-income beneficiaries to cover out-of-pocket costs, while continuing to allow all beneficiaries, regardless of income, to set up tax-free MSAs.

Social Security
•    Offers workers under 55 the option of investing over one third of their current Social Security taxes into personal retirement accounts, similar to the Thrift Savings Plan available to federal employees.

Tax Reform
•    Provides taxpayers a choice of how to pay their income taxes – through existing law, or through a highly simplified income tax system that fits on a postcard with just two rates and virtually no special tax deductions, credits or exclusions (except the health care tax credit).
•    Promotes saving by eliminating taxes on interest, capital gains and dividends and eliminates the death tax.

Read the rest, and see if these ideas that promote saving and investing, instead of borrowing and spending, make more sense to you than Obama’s spending millions of taxpayer dollars on turtle tunnels.

News

Obama’s spending freeze saves 250 billion out of 43 trillion in spending over 10 years

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Article from Investors Business Daily.

Excerpt:

The latest idea for reining in the federal government’s runaway spending is to “freeze” nondefense discretionary outlays for three years. That may sound good, but it’s just another gimmick.

We try not to be too cynical about politics, but the White House’s proposed freeze will do nothing to address America’s budget problems.

Last year alone, the U.S. deficit hit $1.4 trillion on record spending of $3.7 trillion. The freeze will apply only to $447 billion in spending — just 12% of the total. Next year, if the freeze goes into effect, it will save just $15 billion — and $250 billion over 10 years.

Compared with the $9 trillion in new debt and $43 trillion in spending expected over the next decade, it’s a pittance — not even a down payment on our gaping shortfalls.

[…]According to the CBO, the $250 billion in savings amounts to a negligible 0.5% of the $43 trillion in spending over the next decade. But it will no doubt be put to good political use, as congressional Democrats suddenly style themselves as fiscal conservatives during the 2010 campaign for passing a meaningless freeze.

Let me be clear. Obama never has been a fiscal conservative, and he isn’t going to start to be one now. It’s just words on a teleprompter that he reads so that you stop calling your representatives.

News

Obama’s deficit for the last two months exceeds Bush’s entire 2006 deficit

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Story from Gateway Pundit. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

The Obama Administration is already $292 billion in the red this year.
This is more than the national deficit for the entire year of 2006 ($248 billion).
Not good.

President George W. Bush never did this.

Obama tripled the national deficit his first year in office and he’s off to a record-setting start in fiscal year 2010.

During the Bush years, despite the 2000 Recession, the attacks on 9-11, the stock market scandals, Hurricane Katrina, and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Bush Administration was able to reduce the budget deficit from 412 billion dollars in 2004 to 162 billion dollars in 2007, a sixty percent drop. In 2004 the federal budget deficit was 412 billion dollars. In 2005 it dropped to 318 billion dollars. In 2006 the deficit dipped to 248 billion dollars. And, in 2007 it fell below 200 billion to 162 billion dollars. During the Bush years the average unemployment rate was 5.2 percent, the economy saw the strongest productivity growth in four decades and there was robust GDP growth.

Please read my previous post that features two Harvard economics explaining why massive government spending drives unemployment up. You can’t fix an economy with spending. You fix it with tax cuts, especially for businesses who hire people. For example, we could cut the employer portion of payroll taxes completely. (That idea is from a different Harvard economist)

There are people I know who voted for Obama because McCain and Palin would spend more. I asked them to look at voting records and ratings from groups advocating fiscal conservatism, like Citizens Against Government Waste, the American Conservative Union, and the Club For Growth. But they kept talking about Sarah Palin’s wardrobe, because that’s all they saw on MSNBC.