Tag Archives: Spending

News

Understanding the long-term forecast for the federal budget

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Watch this 2 minute video from Political Math.

Mandatory spending includes entitlements like social security, medicare and medicaid. It also includes payments on the national debt, which Obama intends to grow from about 12 trillion to about 19 trillion. The problem is that mandatory spending is set to skyrocket out of control in the next 8 years, and there isn’t any money available to pay for it.

Attacking businesses and productive individuals just reduces the amounts collected in income and sales taxes. In other words, taxing the rich just lowers government revenues by destroying economic growth. No one gets out of bed in the morning to earn 50% of what they are worth.

Public Debt Outlook
Public Debt Outlook

Click the images to enlarge them.

More charts:

Jobs Lost
Jobs Lost
National Debt
National Debt
Budget Deficit
Budget Deficit

More here.

In short, we’re doomed.

UPDATE: 1RedThread advises that I post the Doom Song.

I was JUST THINKING about 1RedThread a little earlier. I am NOT KIDDING.

This video is so going into the Friday Funny post.

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Commentary

How the irrational left prefers intentions over actual results

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Post from Red State. (H/T Babalu Blog via ECM)

Excerpt:

A clunker that travels 12,000 miles a year at 15 mpg uses 800 gallons of gas a year.

A vehicle that travels 12,000 miles a year at 25 mpg uses 480 gallons a  year.

So, the average Cash for Clunkers transaction will reduce US gasoline consumption by 320 gallons per year.

They claim 700,000 vehicles, so that’s 224 million gallons saved per year.

That equates to a bit over 5 million barrels of oil.

Five million barrels is about 5 hours worth of US consumption.

More importantly, 5 million barrels of oil at $70 per barrel costs about $350 million dollars.

So, the government paid $3 billion of our tax dollars to save $350 million.

We spent $8.57 to for every dollar saved.

How good a deal was that ???

They’ll probably do a great job with health care though!!

But at least they’re nice people, and so generous with other people’s money.

News

Obama awards billions of taxpayer dollars to British liquor producer

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The article is from the Chicago Tribune. (H/T ECM via The Weekly Standard)

Excerpt:

With little fanfare, a deal is moving forward to direct billions in U.S. tax dollars to an unlikely beneficiary — the giant British liquor producer that makes Captain Morgan rum.

Under the agreement, London-based Diageo PLC will receive tax credits and other benefits worth $2.7 billion over 30 years, including the entire $165-million cost of building a state-of-the-art distillery on the island of St. Croix in the Virgin Islands, a U.S. territory….

“The U.S. taxpayer is basically being asked to line the pockets of the world’s largest liquor producer,” says Steve Ellis, the vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan watchdog organization.

With the exception of Ellis and a handful of lawmakers, however, the deal has attracted little opposition in Congress or elsewhere.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has said he does not have authority to block or investigate the project. Criticism on the Hill has been confined to a small group that includes Republican Congressmen Dan Burton of Indiana and Darrel Issa of California, plus a handful of Democrats with large Puerto Rican constituencies.

Remember, Obama won’t allow drilling at home, but he has lots of money to give Brazilian companies to drill in Brazil. We didn’t really need those jobs, anyway. And besides, George Soros needs to make some money, too.