Too Much Debt
July 28, 2016 at 4:25 p.m.
By Gary [email protected]
I hate to sound like Chicken Little here, but sometimes I think the sky really is falling.
And sometimes, I feel all alone.
It's the deficit and I just don't get it.
This stuff is so alarming to me and nobody else seems to even notice. I think the national media should be all over this. I think we should be demanding action from Congress.
Nothing happens.
Everybody just seems to think, "Well, it'll all work out somehow."
No. That's not true. We need to work it out. Now.
Well, actually, working it out a decade ago would have been better, but I'd settle for now. Right now.
What's got me all charged up about this is the fact that the Treasury Department said Wednesday the federal deficit for April soared to $82.7 billion.
OK, you know what April is, right? It's when you pay your taxes. It's the biggest month for government revenue. Last April's monthly deficit was $20 billion and private-sector economists were predicting $30 billion for this April. I thought those numbers were insane, but $82.7 billion? In April?
Another report that all but sent me to a tower in clown suit was the Congressional Budget Office's retallying of the health care bill.
Now, I can't say I was surprised because I was saying all along - in previous columns - the idea that the health care bill would reduce the deficit was absurd.
Did anyone really believe that? No, seriously. Did anyone really believe that?
President Obama told us the health care program "represents the biggest deficit reduction plan since the 1990s." Legions of Democrats in Congress parroted the president on that score and used
"deficit reduction" as reason to vote for the health care bill.
I never believed any of it.
First of all, the taxes start right away and the programs start in 2014, so of course the 10-year score by the CBO would look good. When Congress was getting ready to vote on the bill, the CBO said the plan would reduce the deficit by $140 billion over the first 10 years.
That's when the president told us, "The bill before Congress now represents the single largest deficit reduction in over a decade, saving nearly $140 billion in the first 10 years ..."
Well, now the CBO has re-added.
The new analysis says the program will cost at least $115 billion more in the first 10 years than had been originally thought.
That means Obamacare is now - officially - a trillion-dollar program.
But for reasons far too complex and involved to go into here, I can say with virtual certainty that $1 trillion isn't even close to the actual cost of this program.
Briefly consider the insane rigging of CBO numbers, the bogus shifting of the cost window and the hiding of hugely expensive programs like the $208 billion Medicare Physicians Payment Reform Act of 2009 by passing them separately from ObamaCare.
Unofficial - and by unofficial I mean realistic - calculations made outside the government, show the cost could reach $3.5 trillion over the first 10 years.
Remember that "bending of the cost curve" the president liked to talk about?
It was a lie.
The president said he wanted a bill that came in under $1 trillion and he got one. Of course, in order to get one Congress had to lie through its teeth and use every shady accounting gimmick known to mankind and toss in a few sneaky procedural tricks to boot.
But we got us some health care, didn't we?
It's ridiculous. It's beyond ridiculous. It's criminal.
And what timing, eh?
At precisely the moment in history when we need fiscal sanity and deficit reduction, Congress gives us a huge, budget-busting entitlement that will be insolvent before the first benefit is paid out.
But this should surprise no one.
Government programs always cost more than lawmakers tell us they will. Lawmakers tell us the program won't cost us a dime or that it will actually save us money, even though that's virtually never the case.
Medicare's costs are 10X their estimates.
It only took Medicaid five years to cost twice as much as its estimates.
Investor's Business Daily notes that state-level programs fare about as well.
Maine's 2003 program to cover the uninsured has already cost taxpayers there $150 million, but it was sold as a plan that would save them money.
Tennessee's arrangement became such a parasite - eating up 40 percent of the state's budget by 2008 - that it had to be shut down.
Massachusetts' program overran cost projections so sharply it had to throw 30,000 beneficiaries off the rolls last year.[[In-content Ad]]Anybody notice what's going in Greece these days? Draconian cuts in government programs and wage cuts. Massive new taxes coming. (They've already got a 23 percent value added tax over there and they're still broke.)
Have you heard that places like Spain, Ireland, Portugal, even the UK - all entitlement societies - are headed toward the same fate?
Let's look at Greece on the brink of financial ruin without massive International Monetary Fund bailouts - $50 billion of which will come from the good ol' USA.
Greece's budget deficit this year will likely exceed 12 percent of gross domestic product. That's bad. Really bad.
The Obama administration has proposed a budget of $3.83 trillion for fiscal year 2011 with a forecast deficit of $1.56 trillion in 2010.
The planned fiscal deficit is 10.6 percent of gross domestic product -up from a 9.9 percent share in 2009.
These aren't exact parallels to be sure. Greece is only the 27th largest economy in the world.
But if you think the U.S. isn't on a path to financial ruin, you're delusional.
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I hate to sound like Chicken Little here, but sometimes I think the sky really is falling.
And sometimes, I feel all alone.
It's the deficit and I just don't get it.
This stuff is so alarming to me and nobody else seems to even notice. I think the national media should be all over this. I think we should be demanding action from Congress.
Nothing happens.
Everybody just seems to think, "Well, it'll all work out somehow."
No. That's not true. We need to work it out. Now.
Well, actually, working it out a decade ago would have been better, but I'd settle for now. Right now.
What's got me all charged up about this is the fact that the Treasury Department said Wednesday the federal deficit for April soared to $82.7 billion.
OK, you know what April is, right? It's when you pay your taxes. It's the biggest month for government revenue. Last April's monthly deficit was $20 billion and private-sector economists were predicting $30 billion for this April. I thought those numbers were insane, but $82.7 billion? In April?
Another report that all but sent me to a tower in clown suit was the Congressional Budget Office's retallying of the health care bill.
Now, I can't say I was surprised because I was saying all along - in previous columns - the idea that the health care bill would reduce the deficit was absurd.
Did anyone really believe that? No, seriously. Did anyone really believe that?
President Obama told us the health care program "represents the biggest deficit reduction plan since the 1990s." Legions of Democrats in Congress parroted the president on that score and used
"deficit reduction" as reason to vote for the health care bill.
I never believed any of it.
First of all, the taxes start right away and the programs start in 2014, so of course the 10-year score by the CBO would look good. When Congress was getting ready to vote on the bill, the CBO said the plan would reduce the deficit by $140 billion over the first 10 years.
That's when the president told us, "The bill before Congress now represents the single largest deficit reduction in over a decade, saving nearly $140 billion in the first 10 years ..."
Well, now the CBO has re-added.
The new analysis says the program will cost at least $115 billion more in the first 10 years than had been originally thought.
That means Obamacare is now - officially - a trillion-dollar program.
But for reasons far too complex and involved to go into here, I can say with virtual certainty that $1 trillion isn't even close to the actual cost of this program.
Briefly consider the insane rigging of CBO numbers, the bogus shifting of the cost window and the hiding of hugely expensive programs like the $208 billion Medicare Physicians Payment Reform Act of 2009 by passing them separately from ObamaCare.
Unofficial - and by unofficial I mean realistic - calculations made outside the government, show the cost could reach $3.5 trillion over the first 10 years.
Remember that "bending of the cost curve" the president liked to talk about?
It was a lie.
The president said he wanted a bill that came in under $1 trillion and he got one. Of course, in order to get one Congress had to lie through its teeth and use every shady accounting gimmick known to mankind and toss in a few sneaky procedural tricks to boot.
But we got us some health care, didn't we?
It's ridiculous. It's beyond ridiculous. It's criminal.
And what timing, eh?
At precisely the moment in history when we need fiscal sanity and deficit reduction, Congress gives us a huge, budget-busting entitlement that will be insolvent before the first benefit is paid out.
But this should surprise no one.
Government programs always cost more than lawmakers tell us they will. Lawmakers tell us the program won't cost us a dime or that it will actually save us money, even though that's virtually never the case.
Medicare's costs are 10X their estimates.
It only took Medicaid five years to cost twice as much as its estimates.
Investor's Business Daily notes that state-level programs fare about as well.
Maine's 2003 program to cover the uninsured has already cost taxpayers there $150 million, but it was sold as a plan that would save them money.
Tennessee's arrangement became such a parasite - eating up 40 percent of the state's budget by 2008 - that it had to be shut down.
Massachusetts' program overran cost projections so sharply it had to throw 30,000 beneficiaries off the rolls last year.[[In-content Ad]]Anybody notice what's going in Greece these days? Draconian cuts in government programs and wage cuts. Massive new taxes coming. (They've already got a 23 percent value added tax over there and they're still broke.)
Have you heard that places like Spain, Ireland, Portugal, even the UK - all entitlement societies - are headed toward the same fate?
Let's look at Greece on the brink of financial ruin without massive International Monetary Fund bailouts - $50 billion of which will come from the good ol' USA.
Greece's budget deficit this year will likely exceed 12 percent of gross domestic product. That's bad. Really bad.
The Obama administration has proposed a budget of $3.83 trillion for fiscal year 2011 with a forecast deficit of $1.56 trillion in 2010.
The planned fiscal deficit is 10.6 percent of gross domestic product -up from a 9.9 percent share in 2009.
These aren't exact parallels to be sure. Greece is only the 27th largest economy in the world.
But if you think the U.S. isn't on a path to financial ruin, you're delusional.
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