Economy Alarm: Red Ink From Spending Agenda ‘Will Destroy the Country From Within’
Debt Commission: ‘This Debt Is Like a Cancer’
Democrats Promised to Restore Fiscal Discipline and Tame Exploding Deficits
“With the recovery package, we not only created jobs – about 2 million saved or created with more being rolled out – but pulled us back from the brink of even deeper recession. In his [President Obama’s] budget, which we passed one hundred days after his swearing-in, he had a blueprint for how we go into the future, create jobs, stabilize the economy [and] do so as we reduce the deficit – [it’s] very central to everything we do – reduce the deficit.” (Matt Cover, “Pelosi Says Jobs ‘Permeated’ Congressional Actions in Year of 10 Percent Unemployment,” CNSnews.com, 1/25/2010)
“The only thing certain is that Obama is on track to boost a federal debt that stands at $10.7 trillion. Clearly mindful of that, Obama said: ‘We will need to do everything in the short term to get our economy moving again’ as well as ‘begin restoring fiscal discipline and taming our exploding deficits over the long term.’” (“Obama: Stimulus lets Americans claim destiny,” Associated Press, 2/17/2009)
Credibility Crash: Bipartisan Debt Commission Sounds the Alarm that Nation’s Fiscal House Is Collapsing
The co-chairs of President Obama’s debt and deficit commission offered an ominous assessment of the nation’s fiscal future here Sunday, calling current budgetary trends a cancer “that will destroy the country from within” unless checked by tough action in Washington.
The two leaders — former Republican Senator Alan Simpson of Wyoming and Erskine Bowles, White House chief of staff under former President Bill Clinton — sought to build support for the work of the commission, whose recommendations due later this year are likely to spark a fierce political debate in Congress.
“There are many who hope we fail,” Simpson said at the closing session of the National Governors Association meeting. He called the 18-member commission “good people with deep, deep differences” who know the odds of success “are rather harrowing.”
Bowles said that unlike the current economic crisis, which was largely unforeseen before it hit in the fall of 2008, the coming fiscal calamity is staring the country in the face. “This one is as clear as a bell,” he said. “This debt is like a cancer.”
The commission leaders said that, at present, available federal revenues are fully consumed by just three programs: Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
“The rest of the federal government, including fighting two wars, homeland security, education, art, culture, you name it, veterans, the whole rest of the discretionary budget is being financed by China and other countries,” Simpson said.
We can’t grow our way out of this,” Bowles said. “We could have decades of double digit growth and not grow our way out of this enormous debt problem. We can’t tax our way out…”
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