Spendaholics Put America In Debt Ceiling Crisis

• America's debt is $31.5 trillion and growing by $102 million every hour of every day
• Interest on the nation's debt is projected to skyrocket to $1.2 trillion by 2032
• Washington has spent a record $13 trillion in the last two fiscal years
• Runaway government spending fuels inflation and cripples the economy

The kerfuffle over raising the ceiling on the country's debt is Washington theatre at its best.  Biden Administration officials are indignant over the House of Representatives plan to slow the Bataan-like march of federal government spending in exchange for increasing the debt amount.

The media, led by The New York Times, are sounding alarms about financial Armageddon. Failing to lift the debt ceiling "would prevent Congress from doing the basic tasks of keeping the government open, paying the country's bills and avoiding default on America's trillions of dollars in debt," the Times wrote.

Scare mongering is a tactic that has often been used by both parties in discussions about the debt limit.  This time is no different as Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen raised the specter of military veterans going without benefits; no payments to Social Security recipients; and, pulling the plug on Medicare.

Yellen keeps reminding the public the debt limit increase is needed to pay for money already spent by the government as if that precludes reining in spending. No Republican (or Democrat) will vote to end entitlements, despite the babbling statements from the White House press secretary.   

Congress has never failed to lift the debt ceiling.  This Congress will do the same. Although President Biden insists there will be no negotiations with the House, his former boss President Obama reached a budget deal to avoid a shutdown in 2013 after a protracted battle with the GOP-controlled House.  

While the debt issue elicits hysteria, there was no outrage from the media or the administration when the federal government broke all spending records in fiscal year 2021 by doling out $6.8 trillion. The Democrat controlled Congress followed that gusher with a near-record $6.27 trillion in fiscal year 2022.

In the madcap dash before the new House could be seated, Congress agreed to a $5.8 trillion budget.  The limitless spending helps explain why the current national debt is $31.5 trillion and growing $102 million every hour.  Yellen's solution? Just raise the debt limit to accommodate more reckless spending.

The mountain of debt has risen so fast that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects government spending will result in multi-trillion dollar deficits stretching through 2032, adding $15.7 trillion to the national debt.  

Current debt is 124% of the nation's Gross Domestic Product (GDP). That puts the U.S. in company with countries such as Bahrain, Zambia and Sir Lanka.  For comparison's sake, U.S. debt averaged 65.2% of GDP from 1940 until 2022.  

The CBO has repeatedly warned since the last decade "the current trajectory of federal borrowing is unsustainable and could lead to slower economic growth in the long run as debt rises as a percentage of GDP. " Their admonition has fallen on deaf ears in Congress.  

In fiscal year 2021, just the interest on national debt reached $562 billion.  Last fiscal year, it soared to $724 billion, an increase of 30% in a single year.  The CBO estimates the interest on national debt will skyrocket to a record $1.2 trillion by 2032, representing 3.3% of GDP, the highest ever recorded.

Too often Americans fail to take notice of the debt.  It doesn't effect them directly, they falsely believe.  As debt grows, it will sap growth of the economy.  That directly impacts jobs and pay.  An economy in decline effects those who can least afford to ride out a recession. 

Overheated federal government spending also fuels inflation, which raises the prices of goods for all Americans. Inflation last year was 8.7%, making it harder for Americans to make ends meet. Deficit budgets will inevitably lead to tax hikes on average earners to pay for the excessive spending.

Every American has a vested interest in this squabble over the debt and spending. 

Irregardless of what politicians think, Americans aren't being fooled by the rhetoric,  A Scott Rasmussen National Survey found that 45% of Americans think the debt ceiling should only be raised on the condition there are spending cuts. Sixteen percent say the debt ceiling should not be raised at all. 

The prudent course is for Congress and the administration to reach a deal to increase the debt level in exchange for spending cuts.  Just bowing to the president's demand for no negotiations is an act of surrender.  Unchecked spending is the biggest threat to the economy, not the debt limit.    

Four Trillion Reasons You Should Care

The federal government is on a trajectory to spend $4.1 trillion of your money this year.  The geyser of expenditures shatters another record for America.  Yet whenever talk turns to budget cuts, it triggers a volcanic eruption of outrage from special interests and the Washington political class.

Even a whisper of tampering with federal expenses churns up indignant protests. Any reduction will starve hungry children, sentence the poor to homeless shelters, deny medicine to the sick and force the elderly to eat dog food. It is a pathetically predictable response.  And it works every time.

But the truth is there are thousands of opportunities to trim the fat from the federal budget without harming kids, the poor, sick or seniors.  Your representatives in Washington know it. However, it is not the way the budget game is played.  More spending is always better for lawmakers.

The media is a willing accomplice in this theater of the absurd.  Every attempt to slice a tiny bit of waste is treated with headlines about the heartless actions of a few lawmakers who are out to punish a protected demographic group. The media shields unfettered spending through its biased reporting.

A simple illustration: The Congressional watchdog known as the Government Accountability Office (GAO) just published its 2018 annual report card on opportunities for eliminating waste and duplication.  The 120-page release packed with detailed figures was shunned by the media.

The extensive rundown chronicles more than 68 actions Congress and the executive branch can take to save billions.  But don't expect your representative to give a hoot.  The GAO has issued seven previous annual reports.  More than 40% of the recommendations have not been fully implemented.

In its most recent edition, the GAO highlights the fragmentation, overlap and duplication in the tangled web of federal agencies and departments that contributes to the waste.  As one example, the agency cites the 256 military Defense Distribution Centers scattered across the country.

These centers store and process goods for troop support, including everything from clothing to weapons.  By adopting a more efficient distribution system, the military could potentially reap a savings of $527 million over five years. Even in Washington, that's hardly chump change.

Defense is just one area ripe for reform.  The GAO also underscores ways to save millions in spending on agriculture, health, security, science, the environment and international affairs.  For instance, in education the agency uncovered massive duplication in the STEM program.

The federal program is designed to prepare students for careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.  Despite the admirable goal, the agency documented there are 163 programs and 13 different agencies involved in the effort.  The annual taxpayer tab for all this overlap is $2.9 billion.

The GAO isn't the only group that ferrets out wasteful spending.  Citizens Against Government Waste, the nation's largest nonpartisan, nonprofit group dedicated to ending budget abuse, regularly exposes lawmakers' reckless spending on frivolous projects.

In its latest Pig Report, the organization spotlights the $10 million budget expenditure for high energy costs grants for Rural Utilities Service.  This program grew out of the depression in the 1930's and has met its original goal.  But Congress keeps funding it as a way to reward rural districts.

Another example is the $6 million price tag for the Delta Regional Authority, which provides economic development assistance to 252 counties in eight states.  It is duplicative of state, federal and local development projects, but it survives every year because the money goes to buy influence.

Those two projects are pikers compared to the $500 million cost of the Joint Strike Fighter aircraft for both the Navy and Marine Corps.  The program has been in development for nearly 16 years; it is six years behind schedule; and currently tips the scales at a hefty $170 billion over budget.

The GAO has consistently criticized the expenditures and noted that the lifetime operational and maintenance costs of these outlandishly expensive aircraft will total a whopping $1 trillion.  Despite the history of epic cost overruns, no one in Congress has succeeded in pulling the plug on funding.

There are a myriad of other illustrations of how lawmakers squander your tax dollars to purchase their reelection by kowtowing to special interests.  Those groups include environmentalists, weapons manufacturers, farm operators, the health industry and others who feed at the budget trough.

Nothing will ever change if the American public continues to be duped by the shrill voices of those who refuse to concede a single dollar in the federal budget.  The penalty for inaction is the incessant growth of the nation's debt, which now totals $19.8 trillion. Increased spending is unsustainable.

A good start would be ending the waste, duplication and outright fraud that vacuums up billions of tax dollars annually.  That savings would allow the budget to shrink without impacting critical programs.  Sounds like a good idea, right?  Then write your representative in Congress today.

Congress: Stop The Budget Madness

The Republican controlled Congress has shredded its promises of fiscal responsibility.  Spineless House and Senate members rubber stamped a stopgap spending bill last week that likely will tack on another $1 trillion to the already bloated national debt.  Conservatives are feeling betrayed.

The House struggled to pass a $1.3 trillion spending package in the wee hours after months of wrangling.  The 2,232-page appropriations bill was rushed to the Senate for approval, allowing legislators little opportunity to wade through the morass of appropriation items.

Many senators admit they did not read every page in the omnibus spending package before it was approved just after midnight. Democrats share in the blame for going along with the compromise, which included funding for many of their pet projects in exchange for votes.

What has not been widely reported is the $1.3 trillion represents a mere down payment on a two-year budget agreement.  The appropriation approved last week only funds the federal government through the current fiscal year, which ends September 30.  Then the drama will begin anew.

News coverage has failed to mention the gargantuan budget only addresses discretionary funding. It does NOT include entitlements, such as Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security.  There also is not one single dime in the budget for interest payments on the inflated national debt.

In bowing to pressure,  the GOP surrendered the high ground of fiscal conservatism. It has no one to blame but itself for the capitulation.  The party is a captive of Washington's chronically dysfunctional budget process.  However, Republicans have the power to fix it but they are cowards.

Almost 44 years ago, Congress approved the Budget Act of 1974 legally requiring members to pass an annual budget. After the president submits a budget proposal, the House and Senate are supposed to adopt their own budget resolutions and follow with spending bills to fund the fiscal plan.

Since the passage of the budget law, Congress has a abysmal record of adhering to its own appropriation deadlines.  Lawmakers have managed to meet their legal deadline just four times in four decades.  For the last six years, not a single appropriation has been enacted by the deadline.

This behavior encourages fiscal irresponsibility.  Senators and representatives are either too lazy, too incompetent or too disorganized to meet their goal.  There is no excuse for what passes as fiscal planning in Washington.  This is reckless chaos.  No business would operate this way.  

Americans have grown weary of the seemingly perpetual threat of a government shutdown as an excuse for abusing the federal budget process.  Members on both sides of the aisle wink at deadlines.  Their disregard for the process is deliberate and dishonest. 

The dirty little secret is that Congress prefers a frenetic pace.  In the final hours, members shoehorn pork barrel projects into the thousands of pages, hoping no one will notice until its too late.  Members votes are often exchanged for pet projects.  It's congressional bribery underwritten by taxpayers.

The midnight scramble also keeps the public from learning the details until the budget has been shoved across the finish line.  Members don't have to handle all those angry calls from constituents.  As soon as the gavel falls, members hotfoot it out of Washington for recess.

The charlatans refuse to face the music for their negligence.  When pressed, they blame the budget process. They blame the opposition party. None of that matters to Americans.  Members jobs are to fulfill their obligation to fund the nation's priorities in a timely, responsible manner.    

Representative Paul Mitchell of Michigan has joined some of his colleagues in demanding more accountability from Congress.  They have proposed a bill that requires Congress to pass a annual budget by June 30.  It's officially called the Protecting Our Children's Future Act (HR5214).

Under the bill's chief provision, if Congress fails to meet the budget deadline, members pay will be withheld. In other words, No Budget, No Pay.  Currently, there is no penalty for Representatives and Senators if they are derelict in their duty to enact appropriation bills on schedule.  

The measure would also streamline the process for passage of appropriations bills in the Senate, which often bogs down the budget process with archaic procedures.  Even when the House meets appropriation deadlines, the Senate drags its feet to force desperate short term measures.

In addition, the legislation would require zero-based budgeting.  Historically Congress uses baseline budgeting, which assumes the previous year's expenditures are the starting point. The new methodology would force the government to justify every dollar of spending each fiscal year.

Republicans hold the majority.  They have the ability to end the unscrupulous budget finagling in Washington.  They can clean up the swampy mess.  If Republicans won't keep their promise of fiscal responsibility, they deserve to be a minority party again. 

CBO: Too Often The Numbers Do Lie

Your local weather forecaster has better odds of being right than the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).  Despite its lousy prediction record, the media continues to tout the CBO's estimates as unimpeachable numbers not subject to skepticism.  Even a meterologist knows better. 

The budget office issues an annual deficit prediction 12-months ahead of the fiscal year, yet it errs by billions of dollars.  Its yearly economic growth models are just as inaccurate. CBO predicted 3.2 percent GDP from 2010-2016.  Actual GDP performance was 2.1 percent, a yawning disparity.

Notwithstanding its slipshod record, the CBO claims to be "strictly objective and impartial" in its role of producing 'independent' analysis of issues to support the Congressional budget process. Lawmakers are supposed to look to the CBO to provide the cost to taxpayers of proposed legislation.
 
From its beginning in 1975, the CBO has clung to antiquated scoring methodologies that skew the results and raise questions about the accuracy of its forecasts.  Like many government agencies, the CBO has resisted calls to change its calculus to fit today's economic realities. 

Many of the CBO's problems can be traced to its founding.  The creation of the CBO was a Democratic political ploy to wrest control of the budget process from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) which reported to President Nixon at the time.

With lopsided majorities in the House and Senate, Democrats passed the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 birthing its own budget agency to weaken the OMB and to jigger cost estimates to fit its agenda.  Democrats named a director, who built a team of party loyalists. 

Since its infancy, the CBO has been the epitome of the Deep State, a reference to government employees who influence federal agency policies to reflect their own political views.  Even if the media uses the words "non-partisan" to describe the CBO, it serves its masters in Congress.

By its own admission, the CBO "consults" with members of Congress before it produces its estimates. Lawmakers can and do manipulate assumptions that the CBO bakes into its projections and forecasts on legislation. So much for an unbiased, nonpartisan estimate. 

Take the CBO's infamous forecast of the 10-year price tag of Obamacare.  Shilling for the proposal, President Obama vowed the legislation's price tag would be $940 billion. Magically, the CBO crunched the numbers and guesstimated the cost would be $938 billion.

That was in 2010.  Two years later the CBO did a "whoops" and restated its estimate.  In 2012, the ten-year cost had escalated to $1.76 trillion.  It turned out many of the original assumptions in the formal estimate were provided by one of Obamacare's architects, Jonathon Gruber.

When Republicans launched a legislative battle to repeal Obamacare this year, the CBO stepped in and effectively handed the Democrats a sledgehammer to smash the effort.  The CBO calculated 23 million people would lose health coverage in the insurance exchanges under the GOP plan.

The media used the figures to tar Republicans and scare Americans. No journalists bothered to look at the CBO assumptions. Agency bean-counters inflated the forecast for enrollment in Obamacare exchanges to make the losses appear larger than realistically expected over a 10-year horizon.   

With tax reform blinking on Washington's legislative radar, the CBO has dredged up findings that match the Democrat narrative of exploding deficits.  After examining the House and Senate tax plans, the CBO has projected 10-year deficits totalling $1.4 trillion and $1.7 trillion, respectively.

The same Democrats who applauded President Obama's $1 trillion budget deficit in a single year, are appalled and shocked at the estimated shortfall caused by tax reform.  However, the CBO's flawed analysis does not assume the reforms will fuel economic growth that will increase tax revenues.

The charade has lasted too long.

Virginia Representative Morgan Griffith and two of his colleagues recently offered legislation to abolish the Budget Analysis Division at the CBO.  "Too often predictions made by the CBO turn out to be far off the mark," Griffith told the House in pleading his case. 

Hidebound members of the House rebuffed the measure.  The swamp takes comfort in sustaining bureaucracies, particularly those that serve its purposes at the expense of taxpayers.

The CBO and its 250 analysts, economists and budget specialists have failed to publish accurate forecasts Congress can rely on in making decisions.  Axing the CBO will remove an obstacle to Washington reform. And it will have the added benefit of lowering the water level in the swamp.

How To Cut the Federal Budget By Billions

Liberals usually dredge up images of starving children, the bedraggled homeless and the penniless elderly to justify fatter federal budgets. More government spending is the remedy for every social injustice. They mock advocates of fiscal responsibility, branding them heartless monsters.

In the mind of a liberal, Washington's budgets cannot be trimmed. There is no waste, no fraud, no inefficiency, no pork in the budget.  Every penny in spending can be justified.  Liberals never let the facts become an obstacle to their quest to spend, spend, spend.

No one can contest the fact the liberals, often with the support of wishy washy conservatives, have won the battle of the budget most years. The result has been record-busting spending.  Just consider what has happened in the last 28 years.

In 1987, the federal budget burst through the $1 trillion ceiling for the first time.  Since then, it has tripled to $3.8 trillion for the current 2015 fiscal year.  That is nearly $300 billion more than the previous year. Next year's budget will likely be the first one to crack $4 trillion.

Those budget increases have been built on the backs of higher levels of debt.  In President Obama's first four years in office, budget deficits surpassed $1 trillion annually for the first time in U.S. history.  During this spending binge, America's debt has mushroomed to $18 trillion.

For most of the 20th century, federal government spending was about three per cent of the country's economic output or Gross Domestic Product (GDP).  But today your government's spending amounts to more than 20 percent of the GDP.

As the federal government has gobbled up taxpayer funds, it has become more unwieldy, inefficient and susceptible to fraud.  If you need evidence, look no further than the annual U.S. government audit released this month by Gene L. Dodaro, comptroller general of the United States.

In a report that attracted scant media coverage, Dodaro said the government's own records documented that various federal agencies doled out improper payments totaling $124.7 billion in 2014. That represents a $19 billion hike from the previous fiscal year, suggesting fraud is rampant.

For the record, the government classifies "improper payments" as fraudulent spending.  However, not all of these payments are the result of fraud.  Some improper payments are a by-product of lax government controls, non-existent safeguards or administrative bungling.

Over the years, the situation has grown worse.  Since fiscal year 2003, improper payments have cumulatively totaled almost $1 trillion.  That contributes to the growth in government spending that no politician or government official ever mentions.  It is Washington's dirty little secret.

In 2014, the largest share of over payments occurred in three programs: Medicare, Medicaid and the Earned Income Tax Credit.  Those plans accounted for 75 percent of the estimate of improper payments, according to a recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report.  

One of the most popular frauds is the earned income tax credit claimed by those filing with the Internal Revenue Service.  The government handed out $17.7 billion in improper payments to taxpayers for this credit last year.  It accounted for 14.2 percent of the total improper payments.

During 2014, Medicare financed health services for about 54 million elderly and disabled persons at a cost of $603 billion.  Nearly 10 percent of that amount ($60 billion) was labeled improper spending. Most but not all of those payments can be attributed to fraudulent claims paid to Medicare providers.

The waste wasn't just confined to entitlements.  Improper payments during last year were found in 22 government agencies and across 124 federal programs.  That is the definition of pervasive waste. The government-wide payment error rate increased form four percent to 4.5 percent in 2014.

Error rates were even higher for some popular government programs. For example, the school breakfast program recorded 25.6 percent of its expenditures as improper payments.  The Farm Security and Rural Investment Act had a 23.1 percent fraudulent payment rate, reports the GAO.

No private or public corporation could operate with those error rates. But the federal government gets away with it because elected representatives do not hold them accountable. The bureaucracy thumbs its noses at scrutiny because mismanagement won't get you fired.

That's why Dodaro is not optimistic about the federal government addressing this critical issue.  In his report, he wrote that "the federal government is unable to determine the full extent to which improper payments occur and reasonably assure that appropriate actions are taken."

This disclosure should sound alarm bells in the halls of Congress. But sadly it won't.  Washington has become jaded to the waste, fraud and bureaucratic bungling. That is an indictment of the cozy inside the Beltway cabal that talks austerity but always votes for more spending.

Until Congress gets serious about budget reform, the situation will never improve.  Spending will continue unabated.  Wake up Americans.  Start demanding a zero increase in spending until the bureaucrats clean up their act.

Obamanomics: How To Cut The Deficit By Spending More

President Obama's federal budget has been unmasked as part fantasy, part gimmickry and part shell game.  These "parts" mixed together yield a plan that shockingly adds $11 trillion in gross debt over the next ten years, propelling the nation's total indebtedness to a breathtaking $26 trillion.

With a straight face, Obama asserted his budget "will cut the deficit by $4 trillion over the next decade."  Only this president could utter such a deception while proposing a budget that actually grows public debt by 73 percent from today's level in order to fund deficit spending.

Undeterred by his pledge in February of 2009 to slice the deficit in half, the president's scheme shuns austerity in favor of more spending. His budget contains $47 trillion in expenditures over the 10-year planning cycle, the largest increase in government outlays in history.  

The proposal hikes spending on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, despite the president's assurances that his budget chips away at the programs.  Together those three entitlements account for roughly 40 percent of the federal budget.  It is sheer lunacy to suggest budget deficits can be arrested while entitlement costs escalate every year.

Based on his own rosy projections, the president admits his budget produces a $1.33 trillion deficit in 2012, meaning the government will have to borrow more money to cover the shortfall.  This will mark four straight years of trillion-dollar-plus deficits rung up by the Obama Administration.

By the end of his first term, President Obama will have added $5 trillion to the nation's publicly held debt.  No one-term president in the history of the United States has come even close to that standard. Yet Obama continues to blame everyone but himself for his broken promises to stem the tide of red ink.

In his latest lament, Obama attributed his super-sized budget to economic events "beyond his control."  The president grumbled that a "lot of us didn't understand" how bad the economy was going to get. That is a stinging rebuke of his fiscal team and his own grasp of the economy.

As soon as Obama's budget thudded on the desks of legislators, it was pronounced dead on arrival.  While the president blames Republicans for every impasse, his own party has not passed a budget in the Democrat-controlled Senate in nearly three years.  And they won't approve his latest offering either.

Even the most ardent Obama supporter has to cringe at his budget dishonesty. For example, the president's budget achieves $1 trillion in cuts by taking credit for money it never planned to spend. Nearly every budget category grows, one exception being the Department of Defense.

The president could restore fiscal integrity over 10 years by simply limiting the growth of spending to two percent a year.  The Cato Institute, a Washington think-tank, calculated that single action would result in a balanced budget by 2022.  It would keep spending at the current rate of inflation.

Meanwhile, the budget envisions $2 trillion in new taxes to reduce the deficit.  Yet the nation's debt continues to soar under the Obama blueprint.  Even if the president confiscated every penny of income from everyone making over $1 million a year, it would reduce the deficit by only $616 billion.

The president's budget charade has been masked by the parasitic mainstream media.  The Washington Post called the proposed budget cuts "draconian."  USA Today hailed the balanced approach of new taxes and spending reductions.  News reports neglected mentioning the ticking debt bomb hidden in the budget.

The media can no longer disguise the fact that President Obama has absolutely no intention of ending the spending spree he initiated when he assumed office.  He can make all the excuses he wants.

Most Americans want no part of a budget that saddles the country with Greece-like debt.