You might not even know that 2016 has already started--not the calendar year, but the fiscal year for many companies, and for many units of government including the federal government, which starts its fiscal year on October 1.
So if you were wondering how much Washington politicians might add to the national debt once 2016 rolls around, you need to get caught up. They're already out of the gate and moving at warp speed.
The Congressional Budget Office announced last week that the deficit just for the first two months of the fiscal year had already topped $200 billion. In two months. That's $22 billion larger than the deficit racked up in the first two months of FY 2015.
On this pace, we would run the credit card to the tune of $1.2 trillion for FY 2016, returning us to the really bad old days of Obama's first five years in office, when the deficit topped $1 trillion every single year. And by the way, we ran up this deficit even with higher tax receipts, because the cost of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid has increased dramatically--and the Medicaid increase is attributable entirely to ObamaCare, which expanded Medicaid and is now trying to count the new Medicaid recipients as "newly insured."
What they really are is new wards of the state, and that's why their new status is driving the deficit back up so severely.
Get used to this. Unless ObamaCare is repealed and we get a handle on spending throughout the federal budget, there will be no way to stop the return of deficits this large on an annual basis. The aging population is putting more pressure on Social Security and Medicare. ObamaCare is adding to the rolls of Medicaid. And while these entitlement programs make up the bulk of the federal budget, we're still spending on everything from military engagements to highway construction to foolhardy subsidies for ethanol, not to mention funding of things like Planned Parenthood and Harry Reid's Cowboy Poet Festivals.
Some of the things we should spend on. Many we should not. And obviously some cost a lot more than others. But what we're completely missing these days is any sort of real decision-making when it comes to what we spend. Congress hasn't passed normal-order budgets (meaning an entire budget for an entire year) since 2009 because Reid and Nancy Pelosi wanted to lock in their spending habits with a series of continuing resolutions that just kept everything as it was.
Since Republicans have taken control of Congress, they've tried to pass real budgets, but Obama won't negotiate a serious deal with them so we continue to live with these short-term spending bills to keep the government operating, still based largely on the spending priorities set in place five years ago when the then-Democrat-controlled Congress stopped passing budgets altogether.
That means no one really looks at what we're spending and whether it's wise to continue, reduce or eliminate some things entirely. That's a process that should take place on an annual basis, but these days in Washington it never happens at all. And if Congress tries to make changes in spending that Obama doesn't like, he screams that they want to "shut down the government" and the media dutifully repeats that nonsense to the public.
We are on a path to fiscal ruin. The national debt has already surpassed $18 trillion, and if we're once again going to start adding $1 trillion a year or more to it, we're going to quickly reach a breaking point where debt held by the public exceeds the size of our entire Gross Domestic Product.
The government thinks it can borrow and spend forever with no consequences because a) it can print money; and b) surely its creditors would never let the U.S. government collapse. And yet things have gotten so bad that we have to borrow every month just to pay the interest on what we've already borrowed.
While the news media are having a conniption fit over whatever Donald Trump said about Muslims, it might not be such a bad idea for them to pay a little attention to this, you think?
You might not even know that 2016 has already started--not the calendar year, but the fiscal year for many companies, and for many units of government including the federal government, which starts its fiscal year on October 1.
So if you were wondering how much Washington politicians might add to the national debt once 2016 rolls around, you need to get caught up. They're already out of the gate and moving at warp speed.
The Congressional Budget Office announced last week that the deficit just for the first two months of the fiscal year had already topped $200 billion. In two months. That's $22 billion larger than the deficit racked up in the first two months of FY 2015.
