The Looming Obama Debt Disaster

Is the United States Greece? The short answer is: not yet, but it will be if the Democrats remain in control in Washington for two more election cycles.
In the Telegraph, Edmund Conway summarizes a lengthy report by the International Monetary Fund on sovereign debt that came out today:

[T]he really interesting stuff is the detail, and what leaps out again and again is how much of a hill the US has to climb. Exhibit a is the fact that under the Obama administration’s current fiscal plans, the national debt in the US (on a gross basis) will climb to above 100pc of GDP by 2015 – a far steeper increase than almost any other country.

This graphic tells the story. Note what happened after the Democrats took control of Congress in 2007:
USnetdebt6.jpg
The United Kingdom, despite its rather weak economy, is in much better shape:
UKgrossdebt8.jpg
Conway writes:

[T]he US, according to the IMF’s projections, has more to do than any other country in the developed world (apart from Japan) when it comes to bringing its debt back towards sustainable levels. Here’s the killer table. The column to look at is on the far right: note how the US needs a 12pc of GDP chunk chopped out of its structural deficit (ie adjusted for the economic cycle). That’s $1.7 trillion.

The Democrats in Washington are both too stupid and too ideologically committed to read the writing on the wall. They are leading the United States over a financial cliff, and they have no intention of turning back. On the contrary: if they can, they will hobble our economy further by enacting a carbon tax. There is only one way to stop them, and to save our children–from whom greedy, selfish Washington liberals are borrowing trillions of dollars–from a lifetime of debt. The Democrats must be voted out in 2010, and Barack Obama must be denied a second opportunity to deconstruct the country that he doesn’t much like.

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