Sacred Cows to the Slaughter

An Obama administration official, the administration’s chief expert on Medicare and Medicaid spending, Chief Actuary Richard Foster, has said that Obamacare will not hold costs down, or allow Americans to keep the health insurance they currently have. Both key promises of the bill. Where was this admission two years ago when the president’s team was gearing up to sell Obamacare?

Now as Republicans get ready to cut spending for Obamacare, there is zero leadership coming out of the White House on how to fix any of the mess it has created. The federal deficit is projected to increase as a percent of GDP, in a year in which GDP is estimated to grow. And that’s in nominal terms! That means the deficit is growing faster than GDP, and there hasn’t even been a budget passed. This demonstrates a lack of focus and leadership coming from Washington in a time when deficits should be getting smaller, not larger.

The two political parties appear to be content with securing positions in government, not in securing the country’s finances. The Tea Party has been much maligned as a group of radicals, but a Sunday tea party at your grandmother’s house would seem a radical to-do compared to the do-nothings in Washington. Complacency isn’t a strategy, it’s a surrender.

You’ll see in today’s featured video that the Porkers of the Month (from Citizens Against Government Waste), want to raise your gasoline taxes to make up for the money they’ve spent on everything but infrastructure repairs. With gas prices pushing the $3.00/gallon mark all across the country, do you feel like the government should mandate a price increase to feed more of its wasteful spending?

The president should lead the country away from this largesse, but as Daniel Henninger wrote in the Wall Street Journal this morning, “Barack Obama believes what he believes. The ideas he came in with are the ideas he will go out with, and nowhere in that speech [the State of the Union] was there a fully formed policy idea reflecting authentic belief in the private economy.” Referring to the State of the Union, Henninger says that the president has no real desire to foster the private economy, and that his words were carefully chosen to give the appearance that he does.

The president wants America to “invest” in green energy, healthcare and education. But to invest you have to have the money to invest, and America doesn’t. Borrowing money from China and investing in America’s future on margin is, like any margin trade, risky. With commitments to Social Security and Medicare looking to bankrupt their trust funds within years not decades, time has run out. Margin calls are here. The deficit must be reduced and America must rationalize its balance sheet. The spending has got to stop, no matter what it’s for. Pick your sacred cow and cut it from the budget, because they are all going to slaughter.