There are several reasons why some people still don’t understand the fiscal disaster that Barack Obama and the Democratic Party are visiting on our nation. The first is the sheer enormity of the numbers involved. It is hard for anyone really to comprehend the difference between “billion” and “trillion.” The second is that we have been hearing about spending increases, deficits, and so on for so long that it isn’t immediately obvious why the current crisis is different. We conservatives criticized the Bush administration and the Republican Congress for excessive spending; now we’re criticizing the Democrats for the same thing. What’s the difference? The third factor, as usual, is deliberate media myopia. The mainstream press could educate voters about what is going on, but prefers not to.
Pictures, as always, are better than words. Like this chart from Investors Business Daily:
IBD editorializes:
Just last year, U.S. public debt totaled $7.5 trillion — a sum equal to all the indebtedness accumulated from our 225 years in existence as a nation. But by 2020, total U.S. public debt will be $20.3 trillion — an increase of 171% in just 10 years.
And that assumes that Obama’s rosy budget assumptions all come true. The reality, if the Democrats are not stopped, will be much worse.
Last year, debt as a share of GDP — the recognized measure for how indebted a country is — stood at 53%. By 2020, it will be over 90%.
And that’s not including the hundreds of billions of debts run up by Social Security and Medicare, which, technically, the government says it “owes to itself.”
But that 90% number is key. A recent study conducted by economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff for the National Bureau of Economic Research found that high levels of debt can have a severe impact on a nation’s economy — and thus, its ability to pay.
“Above 90%,” they reckon, “median growth rates fall by 1%, and average growth falls considerably more.” So all the budget’s grandiose projections, including economic growth of over 3% a year, are doubtful at best.
We are not only stealing money from the pockets of our children and grandchildren. We are impoverishing them as well.
This chart, created by Veronique de Rugy (via InstaPundit), shows how rapidly we are mortgaging our children’s future. The key point here is that this chart ends just as the Democrats’ spending and debt explosion is beginning. The sharp upward trend will accelerate dramatically under Obama’s budget. Click to enlarge:
Is it going too far to say that the Democrats are selling our children into servitude in order to finance a government that is wallowing in luxury we cannot afford? That sounds extreme, doesn’t it? But for how many years do you think your own children will have to labor to pay off the debt that the Democrats are inflicting on them?
I don’t think Barack Obama will get a second term, but at the pace the Democrats are going, four years may do more damage than our country can recover from. Incompetence, for better or worse, is not a ground for impeachment. So it is urgently necessary that the Democrats lose control over the House, and if at all possible the Senate, in November.
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