President Obama, in his State of the Union address, attempted to shore up support by telling the American people that the federal government has to be on a budget, just like the rest of us. The very next day, the Senate voted to approve an additional $1.9 trillion in debt.
The Democratic-controlled Senate has muscled through a plan to allow the government to go a whopping $1.9 trillion deeper in debt.
The party-line 60-40 vote was successful only because Republican Sen.-elect Scott Brown has yet to be seated. Sixty votes were required to approve the increase. The measure would lift the debt ceiling to $14.3 trillion. That’s about $45,000 for every American.
Democrats had to scramble to approve the plan, which means they won’t have to vote on another increase until after the midterm elections this fall. To win the votes of moderate Democrats, President Barack Obama promised to appoint a special task force to come up with a plan to reduce the deficit. The House must still vote on the measure before it’s sent to Obama for his signature.
The $1.9 trillion increase adds an additional $6,200 of tax burden for every American.
Common budgetary practice suggests that one should actually cut back spending, not increase it when you are trying to save money and get out of debt. As usual, Congress takes exactly the opposite approach.
Though the bill has yet to hit the President’s desk for signing, Mr. Obama will likely pen his name to it, and once again prove that what he says and what he does are on two different sides of the spectrum.
In the interest of fair reporting, we do want to remind readers that President Obama has put a freeze on government salaries, which should save American taxpayers $15 billion next year, or about $60 per tax payer.
“Families across the country are tightening their belts, The federal government should do the same.” President Obama state of the union speech Jan 27th ’10.
That’s a cute paragraph near the end about saving $60 per taxpayer for freezing government salaries. It shows how deeply hopeless balancing the budget really is.
The US government cannot reduce their budget. Rather, they will increase it just to keep services where they are today. This has proven to be the case time and time again during deep recessions/depressions as government inlays drop precipitously at the same time that record number of people need assistance, meaning outlays increase dramatically. The net effect is a geometric increase in budget deficits, and we all know what that means to a debtor nation that is soon to be $14 trillion in the hold. Our bonds will be worthless eventually, and then the real fun begins.
Freeze on government salaries? Wage earners in this country have been taking pay cuts for decades. Maybe its time for Congress to take a pay cut and live by “per diem rules” when trsaveling on the peoples business. Our Senators and Congress people were, originally, supposed to be “citizen representatives”. They need not travel first class, and certaintly not like rockstars, unless they want to pay those costs out of their own pocket.