President Obama’s fiscal 2011 budget will generate nearly $10 trillion in cumulative budget deficits over the next 10 years, $1.2 trillion more than the administration projected, and raise the federal debt to 90 percent of the nation’s economic output by 2020, the Congressional Budget Office reported Thursday.
In its 2011 budget, which the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released Feb. 1, the administration projected a 10-year deficit total of $8.53 trillion. After looking it over, CBO said in its final analysis, released Thursday, that the president’s budget would generate a combined $9.75 trillion in deficits over the next decade.
“An additional $1.2 trillion in debt dumped on [GDP] to our children makes a huge difference,” said Brian Riedl, a budget analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation. “That represents an additional debt of $10,000 per household above and beyond the federal debt they are already carrying.”
The federal public debt, which was $6.3 trillion ($56,000 per household) when Mr. Obama entered office amid an economic crisis, totals $8.2 trillion ($72,000 per household) today, and it’s headed toward $20.3 trillion (more than $170,000 per household) in 2020, according to CBO’s deficit estimates.
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Sometimes I wonder what all this spending is actually doing that might be needed or useful ? Could have a colony on Mars at 10% of the cost with all the technological spinoffs that usually come as side effects of pure research.
How much money would be available for productive commerce if resources where not being drained by so many Government projects of dubious value ?
It’s almost like building a bigger and bigger car needing ever increasing amounts of fuel, running the engine at full power but forgetting to have that power connected to do work by forgetting put on wheels on the vehicle !
Yeah, economics is more complicated than this but I wonder what would happen if only 10% of wasted money or energy was actually doing something useful …. LOL.
How much money would be available for productive commerce if resources where not being drained by so many Government projects of dubious value ?
Therein lies the problem. What is dubious value? In this room it would be any measurement inhibiting barebones freedom such that society’s goats can get their lives on track. At Rabble.ca it would any kind of military effort or attempt to bail out big business. You think CBC is a waste of money; they think faith-based programs are a waste of money. All of these things cost a lot of money.
Until we start to accept that a dollar spent on our pet causes is just as expensive as a dollar spent on causes we don’t care for, the debt problem will never be solved. Trying to make your opponent fall on his sword while you keep spending away is a recipe for deadlock.
“You think CBC is a waste of money; they think faith-based programs are a waste of money.”
Which is why “one size fits all” and designed by remote apparatchiks in Ottawa makes no sense in our growing and diverse regions.
The Québec Niqab legislation is a good example of why decentralization works in Canada and why we need more regional/local/provincial trial and error attempts at policy changes. Because Québec can experiment with this Niqab legislation, if it works, the rest of the Provinces can copy. If it appears Québec hasn’t got it right, then other Provinces can tinker and amend it.
Similarly the Massachusetts RomneyCare experiment could have carried on trial and error throughout the USA and eventually the best practices would be discovered. But that is not what the elitists want. They are not interested in best practices. They are only interested in their selfish centralized CONTROL.
We see this control manifest itself by the progressives in various ways, lately on our tenured campuses. The progressive control of our universities is demonstrating that they have no interest in diversity of thought .These elitists are like the Obama cabal of groupthinkers who want to control us.
Therefore, we need to decentralize more money and power out of Ottawa, let Quebec stand on its own or collapse from excessive socialism. If it collapses it won’t take the country down. But if the Liberals were to get their way in Ottawa and set up more centralized entitlements like Obama is doing, then when those experiments collapse, the whole country is at risk.
Shrink Ottawa!
Too much decentralization and we’re not even a nation. What rules and practices should remain consistent across Canada? Or should we just break up into 12 nations and hope Russia/USA don’t make a move?
“Or should we just break up into 12 nations and hope Russia/USA don’t make a move?”
I’m sure Russia/USA are terrified by our solid unity of the 12 regions; all for one , one for all. Sure, that’s what’s holding them off.
But more seriously, it’s not hard to figure out what needs to be centralized
The Military
The Bank of Canada
The Supreme Court
Interestingly, there’s a lot we should centralize but don’t because the Liberals spent the last century building social engineering entitlement programs instead of gluing the country together. What powers we don’t have and aren’t like to ever get back into Ottawa is:
-Immigration is already a joke, as is Foreign Affairs with Quebec letting in anyone who speaks French, once in Quebec for a couple of years, they then learn English and move to Toronto.
- Free trade and the movement of labour across provincial borders. We have more free trade with the USA than amongst provinces.
- A national securities regulator
Providing health care for the 15% of Americans without coverage and leaving the 85% who were covered and completely satisfied should have been Obama’s goal. He could have done so for a fraction of the cost. What should be one of his most important challenges would be making America self-sufficent in energy as soon as possible. America has a wealth of undeveloped energy sources from oil (est, 23% of America’s oil reserves lie off the untouchable coast of bankrupt California), natural gas and even coal. As but one example he could have invested his illegal $300M bribe for a single health care vote from Louisana into research into clean coal burning technology. Another one, tell the greenies to take a hike and follow Sarah Palin’s advise, drill baby drill. Areas of the Gulf of Mexico are dotted with oil rigs as is the North Sea and elsewhere. The rest of the world is drilling for oil without destroying our planet so could America. I remember GWB saying a fews years ago that it wasn’t feasible because it would take America too long (est. 10 yrs) to achieve that goal. Well, about 5 of the 10 years has passed and they are no further ahead because they have done little if anything in the regard. For a fraction of the trillion dollars Obama is wasting promoting socialism he could have done far more to enhance the security, stability of the economy and the future for 100% of Americans. Just look at the opportunites being wasted……and this is just one!
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/item_8Xi70vvkx55bbHApUeqlGP
90% by 2020? That’s a very rosy outlook, it will more likely happen in half that time, especially if the Democrats get re-elected. Obama is doing nothing to grow the economy, in fact he’s working against growing the economy with this ‘health care’ takeover of the insurance industry and the cap & tax Bill coming up. The CBO is being very kind to the Obama Administration.