THE LATEST DATA ON GOVERNMENT’S SPENDING ADDICTION
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its latest debt numbers this week, projecting that the federal government will spend “only” $492 billion in money it doesn’t have in 2014.
How comforting, right? The previous 2014 deficit estimate was $514 billion – while the actual deficit for 2013 clocked in at $680 billion.
Those numbers are jaw-dropping, to be sure, but they pale in comparison to the debt racked up by government in 2012 ($1.1 trillion), 2011 ($1.3 trillion), 2010 ($1.3 trillion) and 2009 ($1.4 trillion).
“This will be the fifth consecutive year in which the deficit has declined as a share of GDP since peaking at 9.8 percent in 2009,” the CBO report stated.
Ok … and that’s supposed to be good news?
The bottom line is our federal government continues to leverage the prosperity of future generations by spending hundreds of billions of dollars it doesn’t have – and we’re supposed to be encouraged because the pace of the generational rape has slowed?
First, the numbers …
(Click to enlarge)
(Chart via CBO)
And now the bad news …
According to the CBO, these “small” deficits won’t last long.
“Between 2015 and 2024, annual budget shortfalls are projected to rise substantially—from a low of $469 billion in 2015 to about $1 trillion from 2022 through 2024 — mainly because of the aging population, rising health care costs, an expansion of federal subsidies for health insurance, and growing interest payments on federal debt,” the report stated.
We know Democrats in Washington, D.C. won’t do anything to address this issue, but will “Republicans?”
Um, no … but thanks for asking.
There is precisely zero common sense leadership on fiscal issues in our nation’s capital and these numbers (likely lowballed) prove that – both in their retrospective and forward-looking projections.
28 comments
Marry a stripper, who is addicted to alcohol and heroin and hooks on the side, and what kind of marriage should you expect…???
Elect an anti-American, racist, bitter, revenge-minded, class warfare socialist, who has never had a real job, who has had the government and democrat party promote him to un-Godly riches and power on Affirmative Action…
What did you expect????
Marry a stripper, who is addicted to alcohol and heroin and hooks on the side, and what kind of marriage should you expect…???
Well, not a boring one at least.
You may consider lies, irresponsible, unaccountability and corruption Exciting…but the problem is: Society has to pay for your Stupid mistakes and poor judgment…
I’m sick of my family suffering, and doing without, so people who contribute nothing but a begging hand, can feed your ignorance and immorality…
Society has to pay for your Stupid mistakes and poor judgment…
Society reelected Obama. Hell, my vote for Obama didn’t even count thanks to the electoral college. But hey, I understand, you have to take your overwhelming ODS rage on someone, right?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Oy6DwHAi70
So typical…once the Disaster, I warned of, materializes…like most Dumb@$$ liberals, you try to dis-avow what you did…
You are just as responsible as all the other idiots, who F*#ked up the country, via your-filthy lord-god Obama….
Why try to run from it now????
Yep. You warned us of a disaster. Thank goodness your predictions always come true. Remember? Romney won! Disaster averted!
All hail GrandTango the Clairvoyant!
LMAO…You Dolts ALWAYS fall back on what you see as the ONE time, I was wrong…Your one glowing moment…
But I was not wrong about the mess Obama is making, was I???…Even you are not so F*#king stupid to try and deny how F*#king Wrong and Stupid you were about Obama, are you????
One time? LMAO!
You’re a joke, Damned Tango – nothing more… possibly much less. You don’t even make a good sock puppet.
Society has to pay for your Stupid mistakes
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NOT WITH *MY* TAX DOLLARS!
It takes a strong man to marry a stripper.
Raise revenue, cut spending. Close the gap. We should have a surplus every year and it should be spent on paying down the debt.
Easy peasy. Let’s do this.
Lets see. Step one terminate all persons over the age of 70. Think of the savings on medicare, social security, etc. Disband the military. If we ever need them we can always draft them, right? Smirks I never realized how easy all your advice is to implement. We might even been able to avoid raising revenue the savings will be so vast.
Your comment is rather childish.
Fits (pun intended) right in with your original post in terms of being simplistic.
Do I really need to post a TL;DR manifesto in every comment? Because I posted quite a long one just the other day on this. Do I need to draw a complete Congressional budget to win your pointless approval?
Will it stop your trivial, “simplistic” replies that don’t provide any better suggestions (or any suggestions whatsoever for that matter) or add to the conversation?
Sitting behind your computer screen, all issues are so easy to solve. Lets look at your “proposals”. Raise revenue. How? When? How much? Who decides? Cut spending. Which spending? What will be the effect to those on the receiving end? Who decides? What replaces things like assistance to veterans, the disabled, etc.? If details aren’t provided then you rival carpetbagger Davis’ rhetoric.
There’s going to be a time when the country has to accept the fact that decades of overspending has resulted in a bankruptcy.
It will probably coincide withe a dramatic decrease in the value of the the dollar as there is no political possibility of making he “tough” decisions to manage this fact before it becomes a full blown crisis.
So in effect, the decisions as to how much tax money people over 70 receive(or 62 really) and how much our military gets are eventually going to come whether anyone wants them to or not.(among many others)
When the precipitate drop on the dollar value occurs then the government will have no choice. The dollar is not immune forever from the possibility of a large drop in value in a short period of time, in fact the daily QE and deficit financing activities of the Federal Reserve increase the odds every day.
How long will it take? Who knows, but it remains an inevitability.
What is needed is a systematic analysis to separate wants from needs and tie them to actual consequences of action or inaction. The meat ax approach is not going to wash. When changes were made in social security full eligibility ages it was done so that it was sufficiently down the road to not affect those on the cusp of the qualifying age. That minimized the complaining and helped to get it passed. Similar things will need to be done in every program.
“What is needed is a systematic analysis to separate wants from needs and tie them to actual consequences of action or inaction. ”
I agree, but it’s never gonna happen.
Raise revenue
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Billions for defense, but not ONE cent for tribute!
Meh. The CBO is horrible at forecasting this year, let along 10 years away. While agree Spending is out of control and needs to be reigned in, IF the economy does start to grow at 3.5%+, You will see more revenue come in to shrink the Deficit. Look at the last 6 months deficit of last fiscal year and you will see what I mean.
As for the ageing population, that is 100% accurate. In 1980, a retiree was expected to live to age 71, it is now 83 for men and 87 for women. One thing it does not take into account, however, is antibiotics will no longer be effective most think in 5 or so years. That will greatly decrease life expectancy and may solve our debt problem as related to SSI and Medicare.
Hopefully they make changes in how antibiotics are given out to animals in the meat industry. There’s evidence that suggests a good bit of bacteria that can resist antibiotics comes from food animals. At that point, it doesn’t matter how heavily humans rely on them, we’ll still get resistant strains infecting us.
If you take that time line back to 1935 you will see that the post depression average debt to GDP actually moves that line higher. 2009 was the last Bush budget year and was a disaster because we were in the middle of two wars and the great recession. The debt to GDP has fallen ever year since, and this year we will fall well below post Depression averages.
But I agree that is not enough and we can do better. At the time we are so worried about this debt issue, we have the lowest taxes this country has seen in the last 50 years. If we would simply return taxes to where they were under Clinton, we would be approaching surpluses without any cuts. But if you want to really reduce deficits, increase taxes and make reasonable cuts. Here are what we could do if we would.
Return taxes to their level under Clinton
Cut the military budget to where it was in Bush’s first year in office plus the rate of inflation.
Strip the two wars out of the budget and impose an income surtax to pay for the wars. 5% across the board, until the wars are paid for. I would suggest a tax on oil, since that is why we went to war in the first place but that would never get through.
Raise the retirement age to 67.5 for everyone 50 to 55
Raise the retirement age to 68.5 for everyone 45 to 50
Raise the retirement age to 69.5 for everyone 40 to 45
Raise the retirement age to 70 for everyone 40 and under.
This will return us to a surplus and make Social Security solvent for another 70+ years. Perhaps by then life expectancy will be significantly longer and we can increase retirement age again.
“If you take that time line back to 1935 you will see that the post depression average debt to GDP actually moves that line higher.”
None of that accounts for future liabilities, then versus now…which officially makes the budget unbalancable today.
I would have zero problem raising taxes to pay off the DEBT so my kids will not have to deal with it. I also agree with increasing the age of SSI and those numbers are about right for how old someone needs to be. I would also like to see cuts elsewhere along with the military. So if the military cut a dollar, let’s cut a dollar from the discretionary budget. Do we really need to pay 2 million to find out if kids like to have sex in college and why? Cut all these BS programs and I bet you could find 20+ Billion there.
One thing you are missing on the deficit and debt is the trade balance. As long as we have a negative trade balance, we will run a deficit. The energy market is helping lower it, but we need to make more things here and ship finished goods overseas. If we do not address the trade balance, we will fall into a deep recession like we did in 2000-2003 (of course 9/11 played a role)
Is there any way we can get a war in Iran going?
I know we don’t have the money right now, but maybe we could take the cost off the books and call it emergency spending… that way, Israel will feel safer.
Why isn’t war a national priority like it was under Reagan and the Bushes?