Obama Burdens America’s Children with $5 trillion more Debt
Democracy and Power 104: Future Debt Burden
Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt. – Herbert Hoover
All democracies institute programs for current voters and shift the debt to future workers, even the unborn. Social Security, Medicare, prescription drug benefits for seniors are prime examples in America.
Obama Burdens America’s Children with $5trillion more Debt
Bush II spent much too much money and increased our debt. President Obama spent more money, and in four years increased our debt by $5 trillion. Debt is an unpaid tax that is pushed off to be paid by future workers, i.e. our children and grandchildren. President Hoover once said, “Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt.” Sad but true; this is an immoral burden on the young and unborn. [Read: http://www.freedomworks.org/blog/teda/when-pretending-fails-to-hide-bankruptcy]
How have the political elites failed America and America’s children? First, the federal government has not had a budget for over 2 years. A budget is a road map to balancing anticipated revenues with authorized expenditures. No institution can exist without a budget. Intentionally and harmfully, Congress and the President have breached their most basic duty of establishing and honoring a budget.
Last year, President Obama presented a budget that was so incompetent that the Senate defeated his proposal by 97 to 0. Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI) proposed his Path to Prosperity, which cut spending. Promptly, Obama invited Ryan to hear the President speak on the budget, where the President personally ridiculed Ryan. Intriguingly, in response to Ryan’s Path to Prosperity, President Obama then offered a second budget, which cut spending from the President’s original budget. Ultimately, America in 2011 did not have a budget. The deficit was over a trillion dollars. Unbeknownst to most young Americans, they got “another day older and deeper in debt.”
Now it is an election year and President Obama is proposing more spending and an additional trillion dollar deficit. Obama wants more money for “career centers” in community colleges, extending unemployment benefits, more money to k-12 education, control over interest rates on college tuition debts, more money for basic research at universities, money for clean energy, money to prevent wasting energy, money for roads and bridges, more money for the Internet, money for a financial crimes unit, and another bureaucracy to investigate risky loans and packaging of mortgages.
Additionally, President Obama wants to bailout homeowners to refinance at a lower interest rate. Admitting a previous program was unsuccessful, Obama wants to spend $10 billion more. Please know that every request by Mr. Obama is maintained by a confussing array of existing federal programs run by thousands of bureaucrats, which control billions of dollars.
Obviously in a typical election ploy, President Obama has pandered to every interest group for his re-election. Sadly, Mr. Obama insists on more money to be tranferred to large voting groups, and refuses to direct and supervise the bureaucracy. Instead of buying votes and coddling federal employees, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the United States of America should be demanding that the gigantic federal bureaucracy cut spending, initiate new priorities and save America billions of dollars.
Simultaneously, the CEO of America must seek solutions to the ever-increasing debt. In addition to Obama’s $5trillion increase, the big drivers of debt are Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. These three federal programs are 44% of the expenditures in 2012. In 2022, they will be 54% of the federal expenditures. The following is a recent report by Douglas Elmendorf the Director of Congressional Budget Office (CBO) as reported by the Wall Street Journal:
Mr. Elmendorf warned that the primary driver of the deficit later this decade would be the cost of an aging U.S. population, particularly the rising costs of government health-care programs. For example, the CBO projected the government would spend $1.6 trillion on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid in 2012, 44% of the federal budget. In 2022, the government will spend $3.0 trillion on those programs, 54% of the federal budget.
Who will ultimately pay for all of this spending? Remember Herbert Hoover, “Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt.”
America needs a President and Congress which has the integrity and courage to concentrate on the debt and the drivers of debt – Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. A few politicians have made references to the problem. Some like Ryan have made bold solutions. Legislatively and administratively nothing has been done by President Obama or Congress to reduce the debt, and, until the young people of America communicate their distain for the politicians, little will happen.
Pity the young and the unborn. [Read: http://www.freedomworks.org/blog/teda/stop-the-fiscal-war-against-our-children-now]
