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发帖数: 29846 | 1 The spenders are negotiating among themselves how much debt they’re going
to burden you with.
There is something surreal and unnerving about the so-called “debt ceiling
” negotiations staggering on in Washington. In the real world, negotiations
on an increase in one’s debt limit are conducted between the borrower and
the lender. Only in Washington is a debt increase negotiated between two
groups of borrowers.
Actually, it’s more accurate to call them two groups of spenders. On the
one side are Obama and the Democrats, who in a negotiation supposedly
intended to reduce American indebtedness are (surprise!) proposing massive
increasing in spending (an extra $33 billion for Pell Grants, for example).
The Democrat position is: You guys always complain that we spend spend spend
like there’s (what’s the phrase again?) no tomorrow, so be grateful that
we’re now proposing to spend spend spend spend like there’s no this
evening.
On the other side are the Republicans, who are the closest anybody gets to
representing, albeit somewhat tentatively and less than fullthroatedly, the
actual borrowers — that’s to say, you and your children and grandchildren.
But in essence the spenders are negotiating among themselves how much debt
they’re going to burden you with. It’s like you and your missus announcing
you’ve set your new credit limit at $1.3 million, and then telling the
bank to send demands for repayment to Mr. and Mrs. Smith’s kindergartner
next door.
Nothing good is going to come from these ludicrously protracted negotiations
over laughably meaningless accounting sleights-of-hand scheduled to kick in
circa 2020. All the charade does is confirm to prudent analysts around the
world that the depraved ruling class of the United States cannot self-
correct, and, indeed, has no desire to.
When the 44th president took office, he made a decision that it was time for
the already unsustainable levels of government spending finally to break
the bounds of reality and frolic and gambol in the magical fairy kingdom of
Spendaholica: This year, the federal government borrows 43 cents of every
dollar it spends, a ratio that is unprecedented. Barack Obama would like
this to be, as they say, “the new normal” — at least until that 43 cents
creeps up a nickel or so, and the United States government is spending twice
as much as it takes in, year in, year out, now and forever. If the
Republicans refuse to go along with that, well, then the negotiations will
collapse and, as he told Scott Pelley on CBS the other night, Gran’ma gets
it. That monthly Social Security check? Fuhgeddabouddit. “I cannot
guarantee that those checks go out on August 3rd if we haven’t resolved
this issue,” declared the president. “Because there may simply not be the
money in the coffers to do it.”
But hang on. I thought the Social Security checks came out of the famous “
Social Security trust fund,” whose “trustees” assure us there’s
currently $2.6 trillion in there. Which should be enough for the August 3rd
check run, shouldn’t it? Golly, to listen to the president, you’d almost
get the impression that, by the time you saw the padlock off the old Social
Security lockbox, there’s nothing in there but a yellowing IOU and a couple
of moths. Indeed, to listen to Obama, one might easily conclude that the
whole rotten, stinking edifice of federal government is an accounting trick.
And that can’t possibly be so, can it?
For the Most Gifted Orator in Human History, the president these days speaks
largely in clichés, most of which he doesn’t seem to be quite on top of.
“Eric, don’t call my bluff,” he sternly reprimanded the GOP’s Eric
Cantor. Usually, if you’re bluffing, the trick is not to announce it
upfront. But, in fact, in his threat to have Granny eating dog food by Labor
Day, Obama was calling his own bluff. The giant bluff against the future
that is government spending.
How many of “the wealthy” do you require to cover a one-and-a-half
trillion-dollar shortfall every single year? When you need this big a fix,
there aren’t enough people to stick it to. “We are not broke,” insists
Van Jones, Obama’s former “green jobs” czar and bespoke Communist. “We
were robbed, we were robbed. And somebody has our money!”
The somebody who has our money is the government. They waste it on self-
aggrandizing ideologue nitwits like Van Jones and his “green jobs” racket.
How’s the “green jobs” scene in your town? Going gangbusters, is it?
Every day these guys burn through so much that they can never bridge the gap
. By that, I don’t mean that an American government that raises $2 trillion
but spends $4 trillion has outspent America, but that it’s outspent the
planet. In my soon to be imminently forthcoming book, I discuss a study
published last year by John Kitchen of the U.S. Treasury and Menzie Chinn of
the University of Wisconsin. Its very title is a testament to where we’re
headed:
“Financing U.S. Debt: Is There Enough Money In The World — And At What
Cost?”
The authors’ answer is yes, technically, there is enough money in the world
— in the sense that, on current projections, by 2020 all it will take to
finance the government of the United States is for the rest of the planet to
be willing to sink 19 percent of its GDP into U.S. Treasury debt. Which
Kitchen and Chinn say is technically doable. Yeah. In the same sense that me
dating Scarlett Johansson is technically doable.
Unfortunately, neither Scarlett nor the rest of the planet is willing to do
it. It’s not 2020 and we’re not yet asking the rest of the planet for a
fifth of its GDP. But already the world is imposing its own debt ceiling.
Most of the debt issued by the Treasury so far this year has been borrowed
from the Federal Reserve. That adds another absurd wrinkle to the D.C.
charade: Washington is negotiating with itself over how much money to lend
itself.
Meanwhile, the World’s Greatest Orator bemoans the “intransigence” of
Republicans. Okay, what’s your plan? Give us one actual program you’re
willing to cut, right now. Oh, don’t worry, says Barack Obluffer. To
demonstrate how serious he is, he’s offered to put on the table for fiscal
year 2012 spending cuts of (stand well back now) $2 billion. That would be a
lot in, say, Iceland or even Australia. Once upon a time it would have been
a lot even in Washington. But today $2 billion is what the Brokest Nation
in History borrows every ten hours. In other words, in less time than he
spends sitting across the table negotiating his $2 billion cut, he’s
already borrowed it all back. A negotiation with Obama is literally not
worth the time.
In order to fund Obamacare and the other opiates of Big Government
dependency, the feds need to take 25 percent of GDP, now and forever: The “
new normal.” It can’t be done. Look around you. The new normal’s already
here: flatline jobs market, negative equity, the dead-parrot economy. What
comes next will be profoundly abnormal. His name was Obamandias, King of
Kings. Look upon his works, ye mighty, and despair. Round the decay of that
colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far
away.
Do they still teach Shelley in high school? Or just the “diversity manual”
about “social justice” the Omaha Public Schools paid for with $130,000 of
“stimulus” funding?
— Mark Steyn, a National Review columnist, is author of America Alone. &#
169; 2011 Mark Steyn. |
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