"Is there a day of reckoning coming? Oh yes, there is. If we are lucky, we will all be sprouting daisies at that time. This would be a tough one to explain to our kids, grand kids, and so forth."
What can the United States government do right in this year of 2018? The same thing they have been able to do right the past few years - not much. In the era of when Americans elected the best of the best, it would now be the middle of September of 2017, and the final touches would be added to the GFY 2018 budget. It would be balanced, and the numbers and funding would all be in line.
Okay - back to reality. We elect people who cannot chew gum and walk at the same time. We elect people who cannot, nor will not, balance a budget. So here we sit. It is February 8th of 2018, and we do not have a GFY 2018 budget as yet. We do however, have a budget busting two year deal primed and ready to go. It will start to fix our past sins of what the sequester had done to our military. And that has been devastating. Then it will fund some amelioration for disaster areas. Plus, it will address (with funding) our newly discovered opioid crisis. It also contains some infrastructure money. It has everything in it except for one thing - enough money to pay for all this stuff.
Enter Rand Paul, our one true Libertarian in the Senate. "Hold the phone!", Senator Paul declares. How about some spending caps? Oh-oh. That turd in the punch bowl just showed up. Fiscal discipline. Oh yes - that is so yesterday!
The problem is, Senator Paul remembers what it was like to be in the minority. To sit on the sidelines and warn of the dangers of too much debt. It seems as if many of the folks on his side of the aisle have forgotten those days, as they all did it. Now the new manta is. "Don't worry about it! Our 4% GDP will eviscerate all this stupid debt!"
Even if this bill escapes the Senate, the Freedom Caucus in the House feels similar to Senator Paul. With our national debt being over $20T and headed to $21T, the cost of handling this debt is going to be a big problem. In the past years, with quantitative easing giving us almost free money, the cost of handling our debt has been somewhat painless. However those days are gone, and with the soaring economy, the interest rates are going to approach normal again. Then the cost of handling our debt will be enormous.
Tonight (EST), at 12:01, the government will once again shut down. This one might take a while, as the appetite to issue yet another CR is very tepid. And even if the government does not shut down, stand by for a growing debt of $22T. But who cares? Us Baby Boomers have proven to the Gen-X crowd as well as the Millennial kids, we don't give a rip. Let the good times roll!
Is there a day of reckoning coming? Oh yes - there will be. If we are lucky, we will all be sprouting daisies at that time. This would be a tough one to explain to our kids, grand kids, and so forth. We kicked the can down the road until there was no more road.
Add the Tax Reform debt of 1.5 trillion and we are at 23.5T after this bill passes.
ReplyDeleteRand Paul is so intelligent, well-read and well-versed, he is an aberration on the Senate floor. God, if only he could have been President!
His two hours on the floor this afternoon was mesmerizing. What a great speaker and clear concise positions that made sense to snowflake or deplorable. It was FUN.
The GOP's abandonment of fiscal responsibility was not un-expected, as the party in power loves to spend the money, just on different issues/items.
I'm sure by Monday we will be back to important stuff like Melania's disgust with 45, Porters lack of security clearance for 13 months while handling top-secret info., or his girlfriends writing of the excuses for him, the Grande Parade for El Hefe, even if it is on Veterans Day and he ducked his opportunity to serve. ie, back to normal.
GOP Fiscal Conservatives? BS
ReplyDeleteWhen the Congressional Budget Office last forecast the nation’s fiscal future in June, it projected a $689 billion budget deficit in the fiscal year that begins this coming fall. Analysts now think it will turn out to be about $1.2 trillion.
One major reason is the tax law that passed on Dec. 20, which is estimated to reduce federal revenue by about $1.5 trillion over the next decade, or $1 trillion when pro-growth economic effects modeled by the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation are factored in. A budget deal passed in the early hours of Friday morning includes $300 billion in new spending over the next two years for all sorts of government programs and $90 billion in disaster relief, without corresponding cuts elsewhere in the budget.
It is a stark reversal from 2010 to 2016, when congressional Republicans insisted upon spending cuts and the Obama administration insisted on raising taxes (or, more precisely, allowing some of the Bush administration’s tax cuts to expire). Those steps, combined with an improving economy, cut the budget deficit from around 9 percent of G.D.P. in 2010 to 3 percent in 2016.