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The Debt Tsunami
Hat tip, Instapundit
THE CONGRESSIONAL Budget Office has a tough job: to provide America's lawmakers with a reality check on their tax and spending plans. Not surprisingly, the CBO's projections are not always received cheerfully. Both President Obama and leading congressional Democrats were less than thrilled when the CBO estimated that the costs of universal health coverage would be much higher than advertised. To be sure, projecting the cost of legislation involves making assumptions and constructing models that may or may not prove accurate 10 years down the road. Nonetheless, the CBO, with its tradition of scholarly independence, is the best available arbiter, and Congress must heed its numbers -- like them or not.
That's not how "Hope & Change" Messiah operates
Now comes the CBO with yet more news of the sort that neither Capitol Hill nor the White House is likely to welcome: its freshly released report on the federal government's long-term financial situation. To put it bluntly, the fiscal policy of the United States is unsustainable.
German Prime Minister Angela Merkel and the Chinese have been telling President Obama the same thing, the one as a friend, the other as the largest holder of our debt.
Ah, ours is a President to whom you don't 'tell' things ...
Debt is growing faster than gross domestic product. Under the CBO's most realistic scenario, the publicly held debt of the U.S. government will reach 82 percent of GDP by 2019 -- roughly double what it was in 2008. By 2026, spiraling interest payments would push the debt above its all-time peak (set just after World War II) of 113 percent of GDP. It would reach 200 percent of GDP in 2038.
Or USA will cease to exist
Or we'd repudiate the debt, or we'd inflate our way out of it.
An important warning from a fairly unbiased source. But long before 2038 the fools who attempted to take on the debt load for us will be out of office and in the political equivalent of a locked ward. Remember, most of the payouts in the current budget have not actually been disbursed yet (and therefore need not be) -- that was one of the complaints about its efficacy as an economic pump primer.

Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2009-06-29
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=273153