House Speaker John Boehner has a plan that he touts as slashing about $900 billion in government spending — shy of his original claim, only two days earlier, that cuts would amount to $1.2 trillion. It’s nonsense, of course. In Washington, unlike the rest of the known universe, a “cut” is a reduction in the rate of increase. There are never real cuts. In reality, Speaker Boehner’s plan would add $9.1 trillion to the national debt. It is a “cut” only in the sense that the Obama Democrats have rigged matters so that, if nothing changes, autopilot would add $10 trillion.
You could call this a cruel joke on a country that is already well over $14 trillion in debt — a country in which every newly born child opens his eyes as a debtor, well over $30,000 in the hole. But that would be premature, because I haven’t gotten to the punchline yet. The reason Speaker Boehner and the Republican establishment have suddenly stirred themselves to “cut” spending is their determination to keep the Ponzi scheme going. The “cuts” — less than $100 billion of which are real (the rest are consigned to the illusory “out years,” meaning they’re the responsibility of some future Congress) — are to be made in exchange for giving the government the authority to borrow another $2.5 trillion.
Advertisement
This will last only a few months because, at a rate of about $46,000 per second, the United States sinks $4 billion deeper in debt every day. But the $2.5 trillion stands to get President Obama through reelection without having much more attention called to his starring role in our dire straits.
To Thomas Sowell, the Boehner plan seems commendable because it would not only “spare the country a major economic disruption” but also “spare the Republicans from losing the 2012 elections by being blamed — rightly or wrongly — for the disruptions.”
Rightly or wrongly. In a nutshell, that tells us everything we need to know about the state of Obama’s opposition. Even our best minds assume that a principled stand taken for the right reasons is a loser. Standing in the midst of what is already a catastrophe, even our best minds are content to pretend that the “disruption” is something from which we can be spared.
Ask any rational person: “When a government is so addicted to reckless spending that it has run up a crushing $14.3 trillion debt that it has no plan to pay back — when it is borrowing $180 million per hour because it has taken on more obligations than it could ever hope to satisfy — would it be better to extend that government’s credit line another $2.5 trillion so it can continue heedlessly along, or to take every available opportunity to force it to alter course dramatically?” There is only one right answer to that question.
Yet, try to fashion a policy position around that right answer, and what do you find? None less than the Dr. Sowell, as fine a mind as there is, warning that we can’t do the right thing because we’ll be wrongly blamed for the consequences. None less than the eminent Charles Krauthammer spouting the lamest of GOP talking points: Because Republicans only control one-half of one-third of the government, it is constitutionally problematic for House conservatives to continue demanding deeper spending cuts, to refuse to allow the nation to be driven trillions deeper in debt, and to treat an existential threat to our country as an existential threat to our country.
The only sure thing here is that there will be consequences. With due respect to Dr. Sowell and the Republican establishment that breathlessly cites him, there is no chance of sparing the country. The major economic disruption is already happening, and it stands to get far worse. Millions are unemployed, millions more are on public assistance, at unsustainable levels. The government has sharply devalued the dollar, and is gearing up for a third round of “quantitative easing” (more money created out of thin air). Like private-fund managers, our sovereign creditors, including China, Japan, and Great Britain, are showing increasingly less interest in buying our debt, so Treasury “borrows” (prints) mostly from the Fed — whose swelling $2.7 trillion balance sheet is reportedly leveraged 55-to-1. That’s twice what Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers were leveraged when they failed. To entice real lenders, interest rates will have to be raised. That will add hundreds of billions to our debt service, wiping out the paltry “savings” the Boehner plan purports to achieve.
"Rightly or wrongly. In a nutshell, that tells us everything we need to know about the state of Obama’s opposition. Even our best minds assume that a principled stand taken for the right reasons is a loser. Standing in the midst of what is already a catastrophe, even our best minds are content to pretend that the 'disruption' is something from which we can be spared."
Jaw dropping, outstanding analysis.
The crisis is already here. Time for the adults in the room to take charge.
Let's get back to principle,whether it means a major upheaval in the GOP or not. The catastrophe to fear is if we don't begin seriously taking a stand on this problem now, and recognizing that both parties (in Congress at least) have done their part to cause and perpetuate the problem.
Andy: If you are so clever in analyzing the problem here why don't YOU come up w/a "perfect" solution? I find in your self-righteous attitude that you are like "O" above all of this to be highly offensive. Plz. remember we are all in this together. Your attacks on good people who are fighting hard to gain what is possible even if its one inch at a time against all odds. Obviously you have never been in the military where the objective is not always easily or readily taken due not only to being outnumbered as well things which are beyond one's control. Give credit where credit it due and quit taking potshots at those who are actually fighting the fight rather than kibitzing from the grandstands.
This entire website has been kibitzing from the grandstand. Just because you can't answer a well-written 4 page article, doesn't mean you should stoop to the McCain level of "what would you do"? intellect.
A 4truth:
"Andy: If you are so clever in analyzing the problem here why don't YOU come up w/a "perfect" solution?
From Andy's piece:
"...that mean the debt ceiling shouldn’t be raised at all? I think so. I am open, though, to arguments that the Titanic can’t be turned around on a dime, that some schedule of modest monthly tweaks — upward and downward — may be justified while we roll up our sleeves and do the hard work of dramatically scaling back. One would have to be convinced that the hard work is actually underway, but I could see the sense in such a plan."
For starters, it's utter vacuous. And for that matter, I've not seen a serious alternative proposal from a single commenter. Lots of attacks against "the establishment", no plan. Reminds me of a certain community organizer.
If a bill THAT REQUIRES passage of a Balanced Budget Amendment isn't enough, nothing ever will be. I'm done arguing this issue here.
Excellent post "4Truth"! McCarthy misses that fact that "the people" are not interested in cutting back on entitlements. As the recipients of theses goodies they will always support tax increases for those who have to pay and increases in entitlements for those who don't have to pay taxes. Further, McCarthy has never acknowledged the importance of November 2012 and the removal of these cancerous liberal/progressive thugs from office. All of his fine pronouncements amount to nothing unless we also have the Presidency and the Senate. Then let the real change begin!
The best line from this article: this is not a political problem it is a debt problem (inexact quote).
You can't argue with debt. And default is no less catastrophic just because one side blames the other.
When banks go out of business because they are forced to cash social security checks for which the treasury has no cash, will it matter less to us because bankers are "rich"? Or will we only care when we can't get a car loan or a mortgage?
4truth - as someone who has been in the military, let me just say that the only attack in this article is in your comment, toward the author. He is speaking the truth and it's this kind of intelligentsia bullying that is beginning to clearly define just how much of a split there is between the party establishment and real people in this country.
Pretty big disaster, and McCarthy doesn't even touch the 3 days of cheap shots that the Tea Party has taken from the so-called conservative media and former Tea Party Congressmen.
A movement that handed the GOP the House on a silver platter has been sent off to boarding school. The Republican Study Committee is being marched the gallows. The GOP's conservative purge is in full swing. Good luck in 2012 GOP.
Spot on, Andrew!
The idea of "compromising" so that we can win the other 2/3 of the government made us LOSE in 2008 whatever we had left after 2006!
BTW, even when the GOP HAD all 3/3 , they went on a spending spree. That it's no where near as bad as the Mr. Obama's doesn't make it any more justifiable.
I'm seriously beginning to wonder if the GOP actually believes what Obama intimated earlier, that "the American people don't understand" (to be fair, at the GOP has presented several different plans, unlike the Dems)!
I can't argue with what he says. It is the truth. It may be too late for us. Short of a structural control--BBA--it is highly unlikely that Congress can control itself. The people who got us in this mess---and that includes us---can't get us out. Sometimes you just have to take your licks.
The negotiator in me said 'make the best deal you can under the circumstances'. However, it may be too late for anything. If we get a second chance, let's pray that this time we have learned something. NEVER elect a neophyte to the Presidency again. The price that you pay is too stiff.
Blaming Obama is more of the same self-indulgence that got us into this mess. Not to say that, when the issue is Obama's performance, it's unfair to blame him for jacking up the deficit, since that was his wish and he got it. But he would not have been able to if the voting public had made clear that was not what they wanted.
Put another way, if it were really all Obama's fault, we could just bite the bullet and balance the budget, now, by cutting the spending. The fact that this is regarded as political suicide by the majority of Republicans says that the deficits are what people want. Representative government being what it is, they elected people to give it to them. Obama, Reid, and Pelosi are the symptoms, not the cause.
Put yet another way, we get the government we deserve.
"The crisis is already here. Time for the adults in the room to take charge."
Except if the GOP take the stand prescribed by Andy and you, they'll most likely not gain enough power to take charge.
It's a complete non sequitur to pretend that Boehner and company have it within their power to force the kind of change that (they and) you want today.
Allow Obama to hang this debacle solely around the necks of the GOP, particularly the House GOP and it is most likely they'll still be unable to grasp the power they need to do so 18 months from now.
Your kind keep saying that we have to wait until we have "the power" to effect the kind of change we need. We had that power and we blew it. Now the GOP needs to prove that we don't need a third party because promises that tomorrow everything will be better just don't cut it.
I can't believe that a country built by men like George Washington has been reduced to a bunch of excuse making losers that refuse to fight.
Thank God all these "moderate" people weren't at Valley Forge, otherwise we'd be Canada.
Scratch that, Canada is a responsible country that has a manageable debt to GDP ratio and an unemployment rate a full 2 percentage points less than ours.
4thruth - Well put. To all the Thank you Andys, put down the Kool-
Aid. How about some ideas Andy? Some ideas that might work and are not part of some fever-dream.
"To all the Thank you Andys, put down the Kool-Aid. How about some ideas Andy?"
In case you did not notice he did give you ideas. Here are just two of them:
1. Stand on your principles and do not sell out like a two dollar (sic) whor for the sake of political expediency, particularly if selling out condemns your children to debt slavery and your country economic ruin.
2. Stop spending money beyond what you have and do not give a blank check to socialist maniacs like O and company.
Those are just two of the ideas in the article and both of them sound and absolutely necessary if we are to avoid an economic cataclysm.
