Spending

Ask liberals what president they like and Clinton will be at the top of the list. Go from there and ask that, in those halcyon days of the Clinton Administration if we were grossly underserved by our government. If people were dying in the streets for want of food or medicine, if our children were being taught off of stone tablets in water damaged class rooms. They will say no. What is their rationale for saying that even now, when we are spending 2x what we were spending back then, that any cuts are draconian and will, according to Pelsoi, ruin "Life as we know it on Earth?"

Fiscal year 2001: $1.86 trillion
Fiscal year 2002: $2.01 trillion
Fiscal year 2003: $2.16 trillion
Fiscal year 2004: $2.29 trillion
Fiscal year 2005: $2.47 trillion
Fiscal year 2006: $2.66 trillion
Fiscal year 2007: $2.73 trillion
Fiscal year 2008: $2.98 trillion
Fiscal year 2009: $3.52 trillion
Fiscal year 2010: $3.46 trillion
Fiscal year 2011 (estimate): $3.82 trillion

The question is what will be enough? We have doubled spending and all we want to talk about are more "investments" and "savings in the tax code." There are no brakes on this bus. They will never be able to tax and spend enough.

Now on the subject of "new revenue" we are told by Barney Frank that there are "a lot of Rich people we can tax" but is he right? If we taxed the top 1% of earners, those evil millionaires and billionaires and corporate jet owners (we all know that Obama signed a stimulus bill written by Reid and Pelosi that contained the jet tax break right? I feel this needs to be stressed) at 100%, just confiscated all of their earnings it would only yield $938 billion. So with out $1.65 trillion deficit this year would still not be covered. 

I was talking to an Obama supporter last week and we were discussing the Republican field for 2012. She was giddy about the lack of a big name or obvious strong challenger but my feeling is that the toughest opponent that Barry is going to face in 2012 will not be any of the Republican challengers but Math. These figures are, to use an awesome liberal buzzword, unsustainable.  

These debt conversations are sickening. We should be talking about cutting entire departments rather than rounding error level cuts this year with totally awesome promises for cuts in the out years. There should be a 10% AT LEAST cut of every department even after we slash Education, Interior, Education and HUD but we are quibbling over 30 billion here and there. We borrow more than that in 10 days. This deal saves what the government borrow while I was body surfing at the Jersey Shore with my family. This is insulting to anyone who understands math and I cannot understand why the discussion is framed in these terms. I wish there was an adult in Washington over then Paul Ryan. I would buy that man a $300 bottle of wine.