Uh oh: The deficit's rising again . . . but it's getting ready to explode

Of all the claims Obama supporters make in the hope of making his record look good, the biggest laughter maybe that he "reduced the deficit." After giving us deficits north of $1 trillion every year of his first term, we're supposed to be grateful that he's now bleeding red ink to the tune of only half that? Keep in mind that the last deficit of the Bush/Republican Congress combination was $192 billion. Deficits started rising again when Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid began their reign of error on Capitol Hill, and exploded when the mortgage meltdown of 2008 brought about TARP. That was the first time we ever had a deficit over $1 trillion, and it was only supposed to happen one time because it was an "emergency." But Obama promptly gave us another "emergency" in 2009 with his $862 billion stimulus blowout, and the Democrats quietly added that spending to the budget baseline - so a supposed one-time emergency expenditure became permanent, as anyone who was paying attention could have told you it would.

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That's how we got $1 trillion deficits for five years running. For Obama to now claim some sort of accomplishment because it briefly went down to $439 billion is pretty rich. But guess what. The deficit is back on the rise. It is expected to hit $544 billion next year, but the real news is what's coming soon after that:

The deficit is rising again largely because spending is climbing rapidly again, an estimated 6% this year, or triple the rate of inflation. As a share of GDP spending will climb by 0.5-percentage points to 21.2%. December’s budget deal explains the $32 billion increase in 2016 in discretionary spending (the kind Congress approves each year). Defense spending will “edge up slightly,” CBO says, while domestic discretionary climbs by 4%. That leaves the big money to the usual suspects—entitlements. Outlays for Medicare (net of premiums), Medicaid, the children’s health insurance program and ObamaCare subsidies will increase no less than 11%, or $104 billion, this year. Even an estimated federal revenue increase of 4% for the year can’t keep pace with this kind of spending blowout. Receipts will rise to 18.3% of the economy, which is well above the average of 17.4% from 1966 through 2015. So even as revenues return to their historical norm, they can’t compensate for the spending on entitlements that Mr. Obama has refused to reform. Now for the bad news. CBO estimates that deficits will continue to rise each year after Mr. Obama leaves office. “As a percentage of GDP, the deficit remains at roughly 2.9 percent through 2018, starts to rise, and reaches 4.9 percent by the end of the 10-year projection,” says the budget office. This assumes that the economy grows by 2.7% this year and 2.5% next year before levelling off to an average of 2%, which also assumes there is no recession even though this expansion is already long in the tooth into its seventh year.

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I hope you've enjoyed your brief delusion that the nation's fiscal situation was getting better. It wasn't. And it really isn't now.

So even these troubling projections rely on optimism that's probably not warranted. Assuming 2.7 percent growth this year and 2.5 percent the following year means you're assuming we'll see a better performance than we've seen throughout Obama's entire presidency. Why would anyone expect that when we're living under the same policies? Without reforming entitlements, there's no way to stem the spending blowout that's going to give us deficits in the $1 trillion range once again. And when we're already pushing $19 trillion in debt, do you realize how fast that rises when you start adding another $1 trillion to it every year? Now let's game this out: As much as we all want to believe she's about to be indicted, there's a real chance that Hillary Clinton will be the next president. What do you think she would do if faced with a deficit this size? What did her husband do 17 days into his presidency after promising a "middle-class tax cut" all throughout his campaign? He claimed he had discovered to his horror that the deficit had increased so much that he was so sorry but he couldn't do it. And he's the honest one in that marriage! Relatively that is. If Hillary is president, she's going to use the soaring deficit as an excuse to do the exact same thing Bill did, but probably with much bigger numbers. That's what happens when you're dealing with a monster and you refuse to do anything but just keep feeding it, which is exactly what the political class has been doing for decades with regard to spending, deficits and debt. By the way, what about all those 10-year budget deals that increase spending at first but supposedly cut it in the "out years"? You know those are all complete Bolshevik, right? The "out year" cuts never happen, as these projections prove. There's a lot of blame to go around for not fixing this problem, but let's zero in on Obama, shall we? A president's job is to lead and be straight with the nation about the priorities that need attention. At any point in the past seven years, Obama could have looked at our entitlement programs and recognized that they were leading us to fiscal ruin. What did he do? He expanded them, particularly Medicaid through ObamaCare. I'd say any time a problem is obvious and a man's been president for seven years and never even tried to do anything about it, he's got to be at the top of your list of people to hold responsible. I hope you've enjoyed your brief delusion that the nation's fiscal situation was getting better. It wasn't. And it really isn't now.

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