We have a SPENDING problem

Back in July of 2011 I wrote about the Spending Problem facing our county.  It is amazing how similar the talking points of the President and Democrats are today compared to 16 months ago.  This should come as no surprise as this is the party that fails to create and pass a budget, so how could they possibly know what the financial condition of our country is.  If this was a public company the board and all of the senior management would be fired.  But we have people so clueless about the economy that they not only didn't fire these clowns, they put them all back in office. 

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results.  What does the public think is going to happen.  We have had four years where the Senate has failed to pass a budget and not surprisingly we have had four consecutive years with trillion dollar budget deficits.  Now we face a fiscal cliff and the President and the Democrats continue to spout the same campaign rhetoric we have heard for the past 2 years -Tax the Rich.  Well I, and others have shown that the proposal made by Obama to increase taxes on the rich will do nothing to reduce the deficit or fix our fiscal issues.  In fact, that tax on Millionaires, (those making more than $250,000), will only fund the Federal government for 8 days.

We need real expense reductions, not political reductions.  Politicians are famous for claiming that spending is decreased when the rate of increase from one year to the next is lower.  Most normal people would classify a decrease as actually spending less on a program in the current year than you did the prior year.

Now we hear from the President and top Democratic leaders that entitlement programs are off the table.  Well, when you consider that Defense, Social Security, Medicare & Medicaid and Welfare programs make up 74% of the Federal Expenditures and interest on our ever growing debt accounts for another 6%, not considering these programs leave you very little opportunity to cut costs.

 

We heard from several Democrats today, that the Republicans need to present a plan on what expenses they would cut.  Well, that was done long before we were in this crisis state.  Remember, Paul Ryan presented a plan last year to fundamentally deal with this fiscal crisis and all the President did was call him names.  The President was also presented with another plan prepared by Simpson-Bowles that presented yet another bi-partisan approach to dealing with the fiscal crisis.  And what did our President do with the plan -NOTHING!!  So far he has yet to produce any credible plan in writing that attempts to deal with the fiscal crisis.

It is now the President's turn to present the American people with his solution on how we stop spending $1.5 trillion more than we create in revenue each year and how he plans to bring down the massive Federal Debt that has grown by $5 trillion since he has been in office.  This country needs leadership on this issue and publicly criticizing the Republicans and others who want to see real reform is unacceptable.  This President needs to lead.

He wanted a second term, well now he got it.  The question is, what will he do with the opportunity?  Based on his past performance, I am not optimistic that any real progress will be made to deal with this fiscal crisis.  We might avoid the fiscal cliff for now, but we will continue to spend and continue to claim the rich don't pay enough.  

As I stated in the beginning of this post, expecting this President and these politicians in Washington to do anything else would be insane.