Dustin Siggins @ Hot Air
Last week did not offer much good news for America’s fiscal or economic futures. On Friday, the White House announced its expectation that the Fiscal Year 2012 deficit will be $1.2 trillion, the fourth fiscal year in a row with a deficit of at least one trillion dollars. Also on Friday, it was announced that the second quarter’s preliminary Gross Domestic Product growth was a tiny 1.5 percent. Meanwhile, House Republicans and Senate Democrats played chicken on the Bush tax policies. This all comes shortly after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-NV) unlawful decisionto not pass a federal budget for the fourth fiscal year in a row.
But in times of trouble, one can always count on Congress to pretend it’s doing something to fix the problem. Erika blogged about this yesterday, but on ThursdayPolitico reported that the House and Senate leaderships are planning on introducing a bipartisan bill that would avoid the spending part of the so-called “fiscal cliff” that will arrive on January 1, 2013. The solution? To put forth a six-month budget bill that keeps spending at levels dictated by last year’s debt ceiling deal, AKA the Budget Control Act (BCA). This deal, which “cut” $2.1 trillion from federal spending over the next ten years, never actually attempts to diminish spending, however – it merely will slow the growth of spending.
In Washington, this is a big deal, and many pundits will spend months talking about how harmful, good, or otherwise large the BCA’s spending reductions are. As we hit two months from the end of the 2012 fiscal year, some perspective:
1. The BCA will “cut” a whole 4.77% from the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO)2012 baseline budget estimate over the next ten years. Compared to the Census-estimated median American income in 2010 of $49,445, this is a “cut” of $2,358.52 when overspending annually by over $16,000.
Expect another credit downgrade soon after.
This is what the liberal/progressives have given the country. Not the Democrats, specifically. Not the Republicans. And certainly not fiscal conservatives.
Liberal/progressives.
When Obama signed onto the Stimulus, hundreds of billions of dollars were instantly added onto the baseline federal budget. From then, until now, those hundreds of billions of dollars received an annual 4-7% increase in spending, just as the rest of the baseline budget has. This is why we now have, as the norm, $1 Trillion PLUS deficits. It’s not going to go away anytime soon, either. Even if Obama somehow is able to get his $250k/$200k tax plan passed. At best, if the full revenue addition is realized, the federal government will see $80-90 Billion a year. And that is only if the people affected don’t send even more of their money running into tax shelters.
What would we end up with? You guessed it. More of the same $1 Trillion PLUS deficits, year after year.
This is the best that liberal/progressives can come up with.
If this is what America desires, by way of voting Obama back in, then our economy is doomed.