Scary Chart Of The Day

I think this one definitively disproves the Obama myth that today's deficit is the result of the Bush tax cuts and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Via Instapundit.
 

If This Is Forward . . .

Hat tip to Vodkapundit.

Axelrod in 2005: Adding Three Trillion to the Deficit In Four Years Is Madness

Than what is more than five trillion in four years? 

Obama Cluless About Amount of Debt?!?!

Blatt:  The president who, in his first days in office promised to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term, says he doesn’t know how high the federal debt is today, unaware then that it increased by a greater amount in his three years and eight months in office than it did in his predecessor’s eight full years in office. Bear in mind that Obama called $9 trillion dollars in debt “irresponsible” and “unpatriotic“.

At least he seems confident that, whatever it is, it isn't a short term problem.  Sigh.

Wouldn't it be nice if we had a media that spent even a few minutes asking how the President can claim to be unaware of the single greatest threat facing our nation?  But no, we have one that will spend a third day hammering Romney's 47% comment.

There Is No War on Women

But there is a War on Children.

Squirrel!!

Gaypatriot:  Democrats use Todd Akin to scrape the bottom of the barrel.

Well, otherwise they might have to talk about something like unemployment or the debt crisis.

Democratic Grandee Explains What the Obstacle Was For the Simpson-Bowles Plan

Spoiler alert:  Obama (Not Ryan or the Republicans).

Ryan's Budget Is Radical?

Far from it.  Of course, I was raising this same point months ago.

Math

Erick Erickson:

If Barack Obama gets his way and raises taxes on everyone making $250,000.00 a year or more, the amount of money he brings in will not close his own budget deficit. Nevermind the national debt — he won’t close this year’s budget deficit.  

In fact, if we get the Democrats’ their wet dream of tax policy and take 100% of all annual income of everyone making $250,000.00 a year or more, we still won’t close Barack Obama’s budget deficit.

This is why Barack Obama will continue to simply demogague the Ryan plan, rather than present an actual plan of his own.  It is mathematically impossible for any real plan to match his own and, thus, the lie would be revealed.

Democratic Presidential Adviser Erskine Bowles Addresses the Ryan Budget

"It is a sensible, straightforward, serious budget and it cut the budget deficit by $4 trillion."

Of course, in 2010, even Obama acknowledged that Ryan's Plan "is an entirely legitimate proposal."

But I suppose that was before Ryan threw granny off a cliff.

Reality Deficit: Left and Obama Misrepresent Debt and Deficit Over Last Four Years

An Abdication of Responsibility

Veronique de Rugy and Nick Gillespie:

What we’re actually witnessing — and have been for years now — is not gridlock, but the abdication of responsibility by Congress and the president for performing the most basic responsibilities of government. Despite the fiscal crisis that Washington knows will occur if it fails to deal with unsustainable spending and debt, it hasn’t managed to produce a federal budget in more than three years.

To their credit, House Republicans have drafted, voted on, and passed a budget, but they are busy now trying to worm their way out of the very spending cuts — the sequestration deal — they insisted on as a condition for raising the debt limit last summer.

One of the most egregious failures of the president’s budget was that it, as in his previous budgets, offered no serious plan to stabilize the largest entitlement programs. Instead, the president and congressional Democrats lambasted Republicans for actually addressing the problem in their budget.

That's why we need a Tea Party.

How Much Has Debt Increased Per Taxpayer Under Obama?

By more than $64,000.  To put that into perspective, "the median household income in the United States in 2009, according to the Census Bureau, was $49,777. That means the median household would have needed to work all of one year and then the first 106 days of another year and then give all of their earnings from that time period to the federal government just to pay off the $64,219.88 in new federal debt per taxpayer piled up since Obama’s inauguration."

Plus, contributing every dollar that Americans have earned so far this year still would not cover the cost of government spending.  Cost of Government Day is not until tomorrow.

Flashback: Four Years Ago Today

Then-Senator Barack Obama blasted George W. Bush for adding $4 trillion to the national debt and spending from the “Bank of China” during Bush’s two terms in office, calling it “unpatriotic.” Obama repeatedly promised during that campaign to cut the deficits in half to slow down the rapid expansion of national debt.

  "The RNC certainly remembers this attack — and they’re featuring it in a new ad this week."

America's Federal Debt Greater than the Entire Eurozone's and U.K.'s Combined Debt.

Super.  Well, at least we have a President prepared to put forth a credible plan to tackle this impending debt crisis . . . oh right.

Horrifying.

Mark Steyn looks at the numbers and observes:

At this point, it's traditional for pundits to warn that if we don't change course we're going to wind up like Greece. Presumably they mean that, right now, our national debt, which crossed the Rubicon of 100 percent of GDP just before Christmas, is not as bad as that of Athens, although it's worse than Britain, Canada, Australia, Sweden, Denmark, and every other European nation except Portugal, Ireland and Italy. Or perhaps they mean that America's current deficit-to-GDP ratio is not quite as bad as Greece's, although it's worse than that of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium, and every other European nation except Ireland. 

But these comparisons tend to understate the insolvency of America, failing as they do to take into account state and municipal debts and public pension liabilities. When Morgan Stanley ran those numbers in 2009, the debt-to-revenue ratio in Greece was 312 percent; in the United States it was 358 percent. If Greece has been knocking back the ouzo, we're facedown in the vat. Michael Tanner of the Cato Institute calculates that, if you take into account unfunded liabilities of Social Security and Medicare versus their European equivalents, Greece owes 875 percent of GDP; the United States owes 911 percent – or getting on for twice as much as the second-most insolvent Continental: France at 549 percent. 

And if you're thinking, wow, all these percentages are making my head hurt, forget 'em: When you're spending on the scale Washington does, what matters is the hard dollar numbers. Greece's total debt is a few rinky-dink billions, a rounding error in the average Obama budget. Only America is spending trillions. The 2011 budget deficit, for example, is about the size of the entire Russian economy. By 2010, the Obama administration was issuing about a hundred billion dollars of Treasury bonds every month – or, to put it another way, Washington is dependent on the bond markets being willing to absorb an increase of U.S. debt equivalent to the GDP of Canada or India – every year.

 With no apparent Plan B.

Hat tip to Vodkapundit.

The Buffett Rule

It is no secret that Obama has failed to put forth a credible solution to the nation's debt crisis.  One of the few solutions he has proposed is the so-called Buffett Rule.  Well, the numbers are in: the Buffett Rule would raise an additional $47 billion over the next 11years, compared to the $47,913 trillion the Congressional Budget Office now projects in federal spending during that time. 



Of course, the Buffett Rule was never really about raising revenue.  It was about scapegoating and villifying the wealthy. The reality is that the US already has the most progressive tax system in the world.  And even if you taxed 100% of the income of those millionaires and billionaires, it still wouldn't close the budget gaps.  Actually paying for Obama's spending would necessarily involve massive, crippling middle class tax hikes.  But he doesn't want to do that, at least not until after his re-election. 

A Path to Prosperity?

Yesterday, for the second year in a row, Republican Congressman Paul Ryan revealed a credible, serious plan to tackle the impending debt crisis (something Obama and the Democrats do not even claim to have done).



Watching him in the below video actually depresses me because I realize we don't have a presidential candidate who is, like him, willing to honestly and coherently speak to the American people about the choice we face.

All that said, my first reaction upon reviewing the plan is that it still does not go far enough, fast enough.  It appears the Vodkapundit, Steven Green, had a similar reaction, so I will let him do the hard work and simply refer to his post.  Still, I think it says a lot about our political class when the boldest man in Washington is still nowhere near bold enough.