This morning’s blog traffic was only about 60% of normal volume. I guess it was a relatively slow news day yesterday. Of particular interest, however, were stories about Mike Huckabee and Donald Trump dropping out of the presidential run. Perhaps you found that interesting. Unfortunately, I didn’t. But what I did find interesting was the fact that we have just reached the $14.29 trillion federal debt ceiling. We all knew this was coming and now it’s here. Predictably, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner continues to warn us of dire and catastrophic consequences if the federal government is not allowed to increase borrowing and spending. Specifically, Geithnersaid that not allowing the US government to raise the debt ceiling “would have a catastrophic economic impact that would be felt by every American,” . He also said that it would take “extraordinary measures” to prevent from defaulting on its loans until August”.
Extraordinary measures, indeed? As if to say that it’s not extraordinary that the federal government currently borrows 43 cents out of every dollar it spends. And just as extraordinary, House Speaker John Boehner seems to agree with Geithner. Boehner wants to meet immediately with Pres. Obama in order to strike a deal regarding conditions for raising the debt ceiling. The House Speaker is talking tough, suggesting that any raise of the ceiling would need to be accompanied by trillions of dollars worth of spending cuts. Unfortunately, there does not appear to be any specific details or timetable associated with his view of the “deal”. Perhaps that’s not yet for public consumption, but more than likely there is no specific plan or timeline. And to be perfectly frank, the idea of meeting with Pres. Obama in order to convince him to cut trillions of dollars of spending is simply preposterous. This president has no intentions, now or in the future, of reducing spending. That should be obvious based upon Obama’s track record, radical liberal ideology, political base and union alliances.
So perhaps this is nothing more than a game of good cop / bad cop for conservative consumption. Perhaps the Speaker really does believe in big government spending and is just trying to buy time. And perhaps that’s why some of the rhetoric coming from Boehner and White House Press Secretary Jay Carney uses the same death metaphor. Within the last 48 hours both men have said that not dealing with the debt ceiling is like “whistling past the graveyard”. Clearly it’s imagery designed to frighten the public. I wonder if they’re using the same speechwriter.
But it doesn’t look like the public is frightened, at least according to a recent Gallup poll. Only 19% of 1000 adults sampled from all 50 states believe that the debt ceiling should be raised. And it doesn’t look like some prominent Republican politicians are frightened either, including South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley who opposes raising the debt ceiling under any circumstances.
So it begs the question; is the collective wisdom of the United States citizenry correct? Or does John Boehner know something that we don’t?
I would challenge Mr. Boehner with the premise that the United States of America has survived for over 230 years without the current level of entitlements and economic tinkering pushed by this administration. I would suggest that the trillion dollar stimulus package did not save jobs, but rather destroyed them. This was supported by a recent Ohio State University study conducted by Tim Conley and Bill Dupor. Their analysis purports that Obama’s stimulus spending has decimated over 1 million private sector jobs in order to save approximately 450,000 government positions. Of the 1 million jobs destroyed, most were in the health, education, professional and business service sectors. That hardly sounds like a recipe for getting this country out of our economic slump.
I would further challenge Mr. Boehner that increasing the debt ceiling and allowing the government to borrow and spend even more money simply perpetuates the waste, fraud and dependency on the government which comes from a centralized, and somewhat corrupt, massive bureaucracy. For example,
- Washington Post’s Debbie Cenziper published a story last week detailing how HUD has squandered hundreds of millions of dollars on stalled or abandoned government housing projects originally intended to “help” the poor.
- Newt Gingrich explained to David Gregory of Meet the Press on Sunday that our nation has subsidized welfare to the point where 46 million Americans are now on food stamps. Let that settle in for a moment. That represents one in every six Americans.
- Robert Johnson of the Business Insider published an article yesterday exposing that the US Post Office has lost $20 billion in the last four years. At the same time, the amount of mail has decreased by almost 12 billion pieces annually. It is rapidly heading for closure unless, you guessed it, Congress bails them out…. again.
So perhaps Mr. Boehner believes he has the franchise on wisdom and knows better than 81% of the American public. Perhaps his reasoning to raise the debt limit is prudent, despite the fact that it seems to defy math, logic and our government’ s track record of fiscal responsibility. If that’s the case, he’s in good company.
Because that type of thinking is well received by this White House.
Sources:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/15/john-boehner-debt-limit_n_862125.html
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2011/05/16/debt-ceiling-debate-takes-morbid-turn/?mod=WSJBlog
http://peterschiffblog.blogspot.com/2011/05/debt-ceiling.html
http://hillbuzz.org/2011/05/15/poll-only-19-of-americans-favor-debt-ceiling-increase/
http://sayanythingblog.com/entry/shocker-stimulus-spending-destroyed-1-million-private-sector-jobs/
http://www.businessinsider.com/post-office-bailout-2011-5
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