Posted on 02/21/2013 4:09:06 PM PST by whitedog57
President Obama’s over-the-top speech on the effects of sequestration made it seem like it would be the end-of-days for the economy if sequestration went into effect. Or if ANY government spending is cut … or slowed.
Douglas Holtz-Eakin of the American Action Forum (AAF) was on CNN with Erin Burnett saying the sequestration won’t nearly be as bad as some say.
The government wastes $125 billion each year, and the actual amount of the sequestration cuts is only $44 billion (not the $85 billion Obama is screeching about).
Was Obama really saying that government can waste $125 billion per year, but it will be a catastrophe if we cut $44 billion??
Was Obama really saying that our economy is SOOOOO dependent on government spending that a slight shaving of the growth rate in spending is disastrous? Or is our economy so weak that we can’t cut any spending (Paul Krugman’s argument)?
If he had admitted these facts, I would have at least understood. But attacking Republicans for wanting to shave a teensy-weensy bit of the bloated government budget with theatrics such as “thousands of teachers will be laid off if the looming automatic spending cuts go into effect” is really way over-the-top.
But how is government spending and massive, massive debt helping the middle class, that group that Obama claims to be a champion of?
Here is a chart of wages and salaries compared to government debt.
And here is a chart of wages and salaries compared to GDP.
Both charts indicate that the more government does (regulate, spend, borrow), the worse off Americans become.
But President Obama is committed to the theme “All You Need is Gov.”
Although The Beatles song “Baby, You’re a Rich Man” should be re-recorded as “Baby, You’re Growing Poorer.”
Even the Government Accounting Office (GAO) says that Obama’s/Congress spending and debt are unsustainable .
“The projections in this Report indicate that current policy is not sustainable… Preventing the debt-to-GDP ratio from rising over the next 75 years is estimated to require some combination of spending reductions and revenue increases that amount to 2.7 percent of GDP over the period.” “It is estimated that running primary surpluses that average 1.0 percent of GDP over the next 75 years would result in the 2087 debt-to-GDP ratio equaling its level in fiscal year 2012, which compares with primary deficits that average 1.7 percent of GDP under current policies.” “It is noteworthy that preventing the debt-to-GDP ratio from rising over the next 75 years requires that primary surpluses be substantially positive on average. This is true because projected GDP growth is on average smaller than the projected government borrowing rate over the next 75 years.”
“If the primary surplus was precisely zero in every year, then debt would grow at the rate of interest in every year, which would be faster than GDP growth.”
“The differences between the primary surplus boost starting in 2023 and 2033 (3.2 and 4.1 percent of GDP, respectively) and the primary surplus boost starting in 2012 (2.7 percent of GDP) is a measure of the additional burden policy delay would impose on future generations. Future generations are harmed by a policy delay of this sort, because the higher the primary surplus is during their lifetimes the greater the difference is between the taxes they pay and the programmatic spending from which they benefit.”
n’est-ce pas?
Hard evidence means nothing to these people.
How can wages and salaries be falling if government is growing?? According to a number of studies I have seen, government employees earn somewhere between 15% and 35% MORE than their non-government counterparts!!
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