Obama Presents a Joke

The big news story of the day is the President presenting his 2012 budget, which is more of a joke than a real plan for fiscal sanity.  This was the best illustration I saw:

$3.73 trillion — total spending this year (25 percent of GDP, highest levels since World War Two).


$46 trillion — total spending over the next decade.

$8.7 trillion — total new spending over the same period.

$26.3 trillion — Total new debt, including entitlement obligations, predicted by 2021.

$7.2 trillion — Total deficit predicted by the end of the decade.

$1.1 trillion — How much the White House estimates the proposal will reduce the deficit over the next ten years.

$4 trillion — How much the president’s deficit commission recommended reducing the deficit over the next ten years to avoid financial catastrophe.

$1.6 trillion — The projected annual deficit for 2011 (11 percent of GDP), up from $1.3 trillion in 2010.

$2 trillion — Amount the budget will raise taxes on business and upper-income families over the next ten years, which includes letting the Bush-era tax rates expire in 2012 (for incomes $250,000 and up).

$50 billion — Amount the administration plans to spend this year on infrastructure and transportation “investments.”

That last amount is slated for Obama's, and liberals', beloved high-speed rail.  That they honestly believe such a system is a good idea belies their lack of seriousness.  Like it or not, this nation turned away from rail as a means of human transport 80 years ago.  The Great Depression pretty much killed it.  The Government tried to bring it back in the 1970s with Amtrak, which is a near total failure.  Yet they want to try it again?  How can you seriously propose this?  I know one of the ideas is that it's supposedly a cleaner, "greener" mode of transportation (which is doubtful, in my mind), but the cost is beyond unaffordable.  This article spells it out pretty nicely.