End Game

Economist Robert Samuelson:

First, from 2011 to 2020, the administration projects total federal spending of $45.8 trillion against taxes and receipts of $37.3 trillion. The $8.5 trillion deficit is almost a fifth of spending...There is no way to close the massive deficits without big cuts in existing government programs or stupendous tax increases.

That's the guts of it...Unless you're confronting these issues -- and Obama isn't -- you're evading the central budget problems.

If investors lose confidence in Treasury bonds, they would demand much higher interest rates. The ensuing crisis would almost certainly compel abrupt spending cuts and tax increases that would make today's choices look gentle.

I really think that a bridge was crossed when we began to pretend to talk seriously in trillions of dollars. Pretend, because the numbers are so utterly beyond human comprehension that they are effectively meaningless.

Once the terms of discourse become meaningless, all arguments have about equal weight, and the entire discussion can only proceed as an absurd charade.

To make it worse, if such a thing is possible, the discussion leader in this case is a self-deluded narcissist with no insight whatever about his own limitations. Obama remains determined to pile on a massively expensive new entitlement program. What universe of the mind does he inhabit?

If anybody thinks this is going to end well, I'd very much like to see the scenario that they think will bring that about.

Byron