THEY CANNOT COUNT
NOVEMBER 2011
Congratulations to all of our elected officials who were involved in making 2011, a record breaking year!
Our fearless leaders really outdid themselves once again by wrapping up its biggest spending year ever and its second largest annual budget deficit. According to the Congressional Budget Office, for fiscal year 2011 which ended September 30th, we spent $3.6 trillion.
Do you remember all those cuts that were made in order to raise the debt ceiling?
Outlays actually rose 4.2% from 2010. Defense spending rose by 1.2% on a calendar adjusted basis, Medicaid .9%, Medicare 3.9% and interest payments that are funding the Chinese military by 16.7%. Tax revenue grew by 6.5% in 2011, which included a 21.6% gain in income tax revenue.
The budget deficit increased from 2010 to 1.298 trillion, which was the greatest share of our gross domestic product since 1945. The last year of the Bush presidency the deficit was $161 billion. To put this into proper perspective the Wall Street Journal points out, “The Obama years have racked up the three largest deficits, both in absolute amounts and as a share of GDP, since Hitler terrorized Europe. Under the same tax rates in 2007, the government raised $2.57 trillion in revenue but it spent only $2.73 trillion. Four years later, the government raised $265 billion less thanks to the tepid recovery, but it spent nearly $900 billion more thanks to never-ending Washington stimulus.”
As expected, the super-duper committee, tasked with “getting themselves under control” failed. Do you want to know how pathetic their “efforts” were?
The super-duper committee could not agree on how to count.
One of my favorite Sesame Street characters was the Count. The Count, if you are unfamiliar, helped teach kids to count. Whenever the Count completed his counting a flash of lightning and a loud thunderclap would follow. It’s really too bad that when our fearless leaders in Washington were crafting their debt ceiling raise through the construct of this exercise in futility deficit cutting commission that they didn’t include the Count to help them. I know the Count does not hold public office, but heck, this committee lies well beyond what is Constitutional already, so what difference does it make. These bozos write their own rules now.
Editorial A New Spending Record Wall Street Journal 10/28/2011
