Posted on 05/15/2009 5:37:16 AM PDT by reaganaut1
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Obama inherited a $1.2 trillion deficit and has quickly pushed it up to $1.8 trillion, a whopping 13 percent of G.D.P. The new debt will continue to mount after the economy recovers. The national debt will nearly double over the next decade. Annual deficits will still hover around 5 percent or 6 percent of G.D.P. in 2019. By that year, interest payments alone on the debt are projected to be $806 billion annually, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
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Unlike just about every other Democrat on the planet, he emphasizes cost control as much as expanding health coverage.
So what exactly is the president proposing to help him realize hundreds of billions of dollars a year in savings?
Obama aides talk about “game-changers.” These include improving health information technology, expanding wellness programs, expanding preventive medicine, changing reimbursement policies so hospitals are penalized for poor outcomes and instituting comparative effectiveness measures.
Nearly everybody believes these are good ideas. The first problem is that most experts, with a notable exception of David Cutler of Harvard, don’t believe they will produce much in the way of cost savings over the next 10 years. They are expensive to set up and even if they work, it would take a long time for cumulative efficiencies to have much effect. That means that from today until the time President Obama is, say, 60, the U.S. will get no fiscal relief.
The second problem is that nobody is sure that they will ever produce significant savings. The Congressional Budget Office can’t really project savings because there’s no hard evidence they will produce any and no way to measure how much.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Obama talks about huge health care savings so he can pretend his spending plans (including health care) make sense. Once people have become hooked on government health care and private insurers have been driven out, it will be difficult to roll back socialized medicine. There will be political pressure to raise taxes through the roof. If Obama were honest now about the consequences of his plans, they would not pass.
Here’s a revolutionary thought...let’s get government completely out of healthcare. Cut out Medicare, Medicaid, all the rest. Push government back within the confines of the Constitution.
It’s time to take back the country.
Holy crap!
The Democrats do not intend on paying back the Stimulus and the Bailout money. The proof is they even told Chrysler not to sweat it. Anyone who loans the U.S. government a penny, including some States, is a person who does not expect to be repaid.
Sure he did, if you count the Porkulus as a Bush bill, which it was not. The New York Times can't go away fast enough for me.
Medicare is already bankrupt with daily bailouts from income taxpayers. Obama proposes fixing HIS huge deficit by passing a huge new entitlement, government paid health care. At least this writer figured it out.
”That means that from today until the time President Obama is, say, 60, the U.S. will get no fiscal relief. The second problem is that nobody is sure that they will ever produce significant savings. The Congressional Budget Office can’t really project savings because there’s no hard evidence they will produce any and no way to measure how much.”
Medicare will be defunct in 8 short years. So, we get wacked with significantly higher taxes, or the massive entitlement gets phased out. Which one do ya’ll think will happen?
The headline is what is important.
The fact that this ran in the NYT is significant. I would expect them to pull their punches on Obama, but if even a left-wing cheerleader like the NYT can see that spending is leading us to disaster then you know it is pretty bad.
You’ve got to wonder if California’s financial problems have been a wake up call for SOME on the left. Even the most dense lefty can see that Obama is following the same financial ideas that has turned Calif. into a disaster.
With the NYT printing this headline, will it now be OK for the MSM to start asking the question “are we going to far with our spending?”
Long past time if you ask me.
The author also fails to give "credit" to Obama not only for voting for, but also being of the main cheerleaders for, the 2008 TARP's $700B.
How about looking in the mirror, Brooks and pinning some of the blame on you and your moderate ilk for supporting Milhouse? Stinking clymer.
Yes, but they will also keep borrowing or printing money as long as they can.
What people don’t want to acknowledge is that we are living too long without the means to support ourselves or maintain the level of healthcare we want.
I’m scratching my head over that number. If he inherited 1.2 trillion, and pushed it up to 1.8 trillion, who then signed the 800 billion pork bill and the 400 billion budget spending. Brooks might want to whip out his calculator. Even if you just factor in the 800 billion, it puts the deficit obama inherited at less than 1.2 trillion.
You got that right. What a POS he is. Brooks and the rest of the stinking pukeneos are hoping we forget their nefarious subrosa activities when they squatted in the Repub party----such as religious cleansing and kicking conservatives to the curb.
====================================
And now------The Winner of the 2008 Best Election Night Performance Award in the category of:
"Neos Know Nothing About this Republican Disaster."
Billy Kristol (McC campaign mastermind)
"Thank you very much. But I could not have done it without the help of all the
punkeos--David Frum, Michael Gerson, David Brooks, Richard Perle.....and
my Dearest Daddy."
"Sniffle---my Dearest Daddy (who was Giuliani's foreign policy advisor) said,
"The historical task and political purpose of neoconservatism is.....to convert the
Republican Party and American conservatism in general, against their
respective wills, into a new kind of conservative politics suitable to
governing a modern democracy."
"Sob."
"I especially want to thank punkneo Douglas Feith for faking documents on his
home computer so we punkneos could dupe the president."
"Without Doug we would not have been able to transfer trillions of US dollars
into the Mideast, into the pockets of war profiteers, which enabled Richard Perle
to startup an oil business in Iraq with his cut."
Kristol smirked: "Making Iraq safe for Perle's oil business with US tax dollars was truly a noble punkneo effort."
==============================================
COMMENTS The 2008 political entrail readings showed the crucial conservative base stayed home. Too bad the pukes "forget" to tell McC that would be one outcome of the punkneo-RINO bi-partisanship. Be aware that many senior neocons are rank opportunists who squatted in the Repub Party for their selfish stealth purposes-----they are actually former Trotskyites that flew the coop when Stalin executed their hero.
AS FREEPER TADSLOS COGENTLY POSTED: "People forget that candy-ass Kristol, and his crony, metro-sexual Brooks are the original makeover artists for McCain post-2000. They are McC's original groomers and media switch operators.....obsessed with religious cleansing of the party. Kristol at his most smirkiest---urging McCain to fire his 2008 staff, to start all over at the 11th hour, as McC's numbers tanked. Shows how how ill-conceived, advised, equipped and poorly managed McC's campaign was. But then, what else to expect from a Republican candidate made up of neopunks Kristol and Brooks."
Watching Kristol smirking and squirming in his Fox seat election night as McC lost was a consolation prize to this abortion of a losing 2008 election cycle.
The pukeneos get $paid handsomely to $squat in the Repub Party......pocketing $big bonuses to religiously cleanse the party of so/cons the pukes despise.
PUNKNEOS IMPROVE OBAMA'S SEX LIFE Obaman's sex life is about to improve greatly---as Brooks, Kristol, Frum and the pukeneos line up for a turn under Obama's desk. I hear Rahm is installing a Take-A- Number dispenser to control the neopunks traffic.
Puke Billy Kristol blows whichever way the Beltway Winds are blowing. Kristol went from Moynihan's staff to Quayle's, from The Weekly Standard to the NYT, from Bush to Giuliani to McCain.
And the crumb-bum is still as secretive as ever....spewing blue-blood beltway Republicanism, and smirkingly kicking conservatives to the curb.
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