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Now We Know
by James Glaser August 26, 2009 Even President Obama and the White House are saying that things look bad. You knew it, I knew it, and the rest of the country knew it, but now the "man," (Barack Obama) knows it ,too. By JIM KUHNHENN, Associated Press Writer Jim Kuhnhenn, Associated Press Writer — Tue Aug 25, 9:44 am ET WASHINGTON — The federal government faces exploding deficits and mounting debt over the next decade, White House officials predicted Tuesday in a fiscal assessment far bleaker than what the Obama administration had estimated just a few months ago. Figures released by the White House budget office foresee a cumulative $9 trillion deficit from 2010-2019, $2 trillion more than the administration estimated in May. Moreover, the figures show the public debt doubling by 2019 and reaching three-quarters the size of the entire national economy. President Obama came to office with a lot of grand ideas, and right from the get-go he started spending money like a drunken sailor, or to put it another way, like George Bush. It seems to me that everyone I know at one time or another has gotten to a point in their lives where they had to control their spending. It might have been when they got laid off or lost their job, it might have been when a loved one had a serious accident or illness, or it could have been when they realized that their income was not keeping up with the cost of living. No matter what caused it, most people see the writing on the wall or the balance in their checkbook and decide to make a change in their spending habits. Either that, or they head to bankruptcy court. Americans have been trying to tell Washington for years that our national bank balance was in the red. Nobody listened. Barack Obama talked a good talk during the election campaign. He told us he was going to make changes in Washington, and many of us assumed that meant getting our fiscal house in order. That is what we thought, but it wasn't what President Obama had in mind when he took over. Even knowing that America was deep in debt, Obama continued to spend money we didn't have, and today he had to give the American people the bad news. You have to know, if President Obama and his administration have to put out some fiscal bad news, they are making it as light as possible. Their numbers are most likely are not even close to the truth about the trouble we are in. That is the way politicians of either party handle bad news, they spin it to sound better than it honestly is. So, now we know. Now America will have to think really hard about getting our spending in line with our income. This is a good thing. No, President Obama won't be able to do all the grand things he talked about during his campaign, but if he can get our fiscal house in order, he will go down in history as a great president. On the other hand, if President Obama continues to spend, while knowing the trouble we are in, he will go down in history as the president who destroyed the United States. |
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