Latest Pajamas Media Column (’POR [Pelosi-Obama-Reid] Congress the Most Profligate of Bush Years’) Is Up
Conveniently timed to appear on the same day as today’s Never Find Out post on earmarks, my latest PJM column notes the free-spending ways sanctioned by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid (with the unfortunate absence of sufficient vetoes by President Bush) during the budget year that just ended on September 30.
This “just happens” to be the first year over which the Democratic Congress had full budget-passing responsibility, and resulted in the largest annual spending increase in any of the Bush years:
Barack Obama must be okay with the 9.1% increase in spending during the past fiscal year (12.6% if you treat the fiscal stimulus checks as spending, which I believe would be proper). I say that because, according to the GOP’s Spend-O-Meter, Obama wants to spend almost $1.3 trillion more (spread over roughly four years) if he becomes president. Averaged out, that would be another 11% annual increase in spending, over and above scheduled increases in existing programs.
The Bush administration has done a poor job of controlling spending. The POR Congress has added insult to injury. Obama as president would take the irresponsibility to an unprecendented level.
The column will appear here at BizzyBlog on Sunday (link won’t work until then) after the blackout expires.
Senior Citizens and those soon to retire take note, every dollar of the increase was stolen from the Social Security receipts and IOUs placed in the SS trust fund with meager interest to justify this embezzlement of YOUR money from YOUR payroll deduction EVERY paycheck! When 2014 arrives the positive cash flow from both SS and Medicare will dissappear and guess who will be told they have to fork over more money because there isn’t more to spend, I mean invest in social programs? That’s right folks, not 2017 but 2014, why? Because SS by itself is 2017 BUT when you add in Medicare (hospital insurance fund portion) that pushes up the date of financial sky rocketing federal deficits. 5 years and counting…tick, tick, tick
Comment by dscott — October 24, 2008 @ 10:08 am
I’ll concur with your assessment of the current management of Washington D.C. It’s taken the combination of very poor judgment on both ends of Capitol Hill to create today’s circumstances.
Here’s a post you might find interesting: I applied statistical methods to determine when the job market for teenagers turned south (why teenagers is explained in the post). There’s a very clear reason why more than 20% of the decline in overall employment levels from the peak of the previous expansion is made up of those Age 16-19, who represent less than 4% of the entire workforce!
Comment by Ironman — October 24, 2008 @ 12:57 pm