Monday, February 1, 2010

Ridiculous Item of the Day: $3.72 Trillion (Obama's 2010 Budget)

This critism is not directed solely at Obama as I would expect any sitting Republican President in the current situation to sadly also submit an overly inflated budget (Bush did a good job of this). Now all of this is just a proposal as Congress (Heaven help us!) has control of the purse strings. I guess right now would be a good time to invest in companies that make printing equipment, since Ben may have to build some new mints to keep up.

My point is unless our friends in Washington finally get their heads out of the sand and propose real cuts and not freezing decretionary spending while in the same breath proposing a new $100 billion plan for job growth, we are in for some real pain in the coming years (think early 1980s: high unemployment coupled with double digit interest rates). I guess thanks to the healthcare bill (which will pass at some point) more of the unemployed will have health issurance.

It could be a very interesting mid-term election!

6 comments:

Vince said...

How about cutting the ridiculously over-inflated military budget? We should find out how many friends of congressman stand to get rich off of earmarks that are littered in the proposed budget.

Vince said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Vince said...

btw...Bush's 2007 budget was set at 2.9 trillion.

Dave said...

Vince, I agree with you. Everything needs to be on the table NOW or it will be even more painful in the future. I just grow increasingly uneasy that the worst is not behind us but actually in front of us.

As for Bush's budget, I would have told you back in 2007 that he and congress were spending too much. The thing they had going for them were tax receipts had just started to fall off, but no where near what it is today. That's were the crux of the matter comes in, I wouldn't expect Obama or congress to cut as much as the tax receipts have been, but to rather increase is insane. Again the government has spent more year over year since the 1960's so this epidemic is Democrat and Republican approved.

If you or I continued to do this, our credit would be shot. America's AAA-rating is shaky at best. If it gets downgraded, borrowing rates will spike and the real fun will begin.

I just want some sanity from anyone.

Vince said...

Sanity? In the government? Congressmen were elected to serve the interests of their constituents, but rather serve the interests of themselves.

Jim said...

Here's a GOP budget proposal in Washington, written about by my favorite liberal blogger, Ezra Klein:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/02/rep_paul_ryans_daring_budget_p.html

I gotta say, I like Ryan's style.

That being said, I think that there's a 5% across-the-board cut that could be made in DoD without too much real present/future pain. Sigh, F-22.