RedPlanetCartoons

A Twitter update from Iran (via Michael Ledeen):

The Iranian ppl want 2 B part of the world - how hard is that 2 understand?

is available at the American Spectator blog.

New York Post: Borrowing ‘Til the Nation Breaks?

Under President Obama, the 2009 budget deficit is set to reach a staggering $1.8 trillion. It took President George W. Bush seven years to run up $1.8 trillion in debt.

And these deficits aren’t merely a temporary result of the recession; the president’s budget would run deficits averaging nearly $1 trillion a year for the next decade.

The national debt would double. In other words, Obama would run up as much government debt as every president in US history from George Washington to George W. Bush — combined. Put simply, he’d dump $84,352 per household of new debt into the laps of our children and grandchildren over the next decade.

Obama and his supporters try to defend this debt with three arguments.

First, he asserts that he “inherited” his large deficit from Bush (despite his Senate votes in favor of nearly every policy that created the deficit). This argument could be plausible if Obama had tried to rein in — or at least not worsen — the deficit. But after “inheriting” a projected $1.2 trillion deficit for 2009, he decided this deficit was too small.

Based on the unproven notion that deficit spending can end recessions, Obama pushed through a massive “stimulus” spending bill whose very purpose was to bring the budget deficit to nearly $2 trillion. This suggests that even if he hadn’t inherited a big deficit, he’d have created one.

Second, Obama claims he’ll cut the deficit in half by 2013. So what? The deficit has quadrupled this year — a 50 percent cut from that bloated level would still leave deficits twice as high as before the recession. By the president’s own projections, deficits would rise back up over $1 trillion by 2018. The national debt would still double.

Finally, there’s the “Bush did it too” defense: Why criticize President Obama’s deficits when the debt started shooting up under President Bush? In fact, Bush received mountains of criticism for his deficit spending. Even supporters of Bush’s outlays can complain — just as someone driving 75 mph has every right to yell “maniac!” at the car that blows past him going 100.

In this case, George W. Bush ran $300 billion deficits while fighting a war; Obama is now promising us permanent $1 trillion deficits even after America returns to peace and prosperity.

The consequences of this debt are already being felt. In any economy, a limited amount of savings is available for everyone to borrow. The more Washington borrows from that pool to finance its debt, the lower the amount left for small business loans, mortgage loans, car loans or student loans.

This is why interest rates are spiking — and will continue to spike. The result will be less business investment (and therefore less job creation), and an even worse housing market.

And if China stops lending us its savings, the pool from which to borrow will shrink even more — pushing interest rates even higher.

Financial Times: Exploding Debt Threatens America.

USAToday: IRS Tax Revenue Falls Along With Taxpayers’ Income

CNBC: Treasury to Auction $104 Billion In Debt, a Record.

See the rest of this cartoon at the American Spectator blog.

Investor’s Business Daily: Obama’s Plan for a Debt-Ridden Future.

Under his budget plan for America’s future, spending will average 23.7% of GDP for at least a decade (a whopping 20% higher than in 2000-08).
Near-record deficits increasing at record rates will push the public debt of the U.S. beyond the economy’s plausible capacity to pay — 70% of GDP by 2012, heading quickly to 82% of GDP in 2019 and on pace to be astronomically higher soon thereafter.

American families over the last year have already lost 8% of their net worth — in part as a result of inept government meddling, past and present. For many of the same reasons, they are also buried under a mountain of mortgages and private-sector debts gone bad. On top of that, if the president has his way, they will soon be hit with more than a 100% increase in public debt (from $8 trillion this year to $17.3 trillion in 2019).

Furthermore, the Treasury (and taxpayers) will soon have to begin repaying to Social Security more than $5 trillion in payroll tax revenues that the government had taken from the trust fund and spent for earmarks and other purposes.

Even without the Obama surge in debt — and taxes to pay it off — taxpayers face the prospect of 60% to 70% income-tax rates in the future to pay for $48 trillion in unfunded liabilities under existing entitlement programs. Now the president plans to burden the economy’s limited taxpaying capacity with a universal health care entitlement.

Foreigners purchased two-thirds of the Treasury debt sold during 2004-08 — and now own 50% of U.S. public debt.

Scholars at the Peterson Institute for International Economics warn that the “net foreign debt” position of the U.S. is becoming unsustainable.

Even if the bond rating of Treasury obligations is not formally downgraded for risk, foreign investors may start to resist buying more U.S. debt and, if the situation gets worse, may start withdrawing from the U.S. economy the trillions of dollars of capital they have already lent us. Then what?

Byron York: New Poll Results are Devastating for Obama’s Gitmo Plan.

Overall, 65 percent of those surveyed oppose shutting Gitmo, versus 32 percent who say it should be closed. According to the poll’s internal numbers, large majorities of men oppose closing the prison, large majorities of women oppose it, large majorities of white people oppose it, large majorities of non-white people oppose it, people with graduate degrees oppose it, and people who didn’t finish high school oppose it. Pretty much everybody.

For Obama, the key numbers are the ones that break down opinion by political party. Ninety-one percent of Republicans oppose shutting Gitmo. Sixty-eight percent of independents oppose it, too. The only group that favors shutting down the prison is Democrats, and that is by a relatively narrow 53 percent to 42 percent margin.

When virtually the entire opposition party, plus 68 percent of independents, plus 42 percent of your own party oppose something you want to do, then you’re in trouble.

USAToday: Most Oppose Closing Gitmo.

Reuters: One in 7 Who Leave Guantanamo Involved in Terrorism.