creators.com opinion web
Liberal Opinion Conservative Opinion
Terence Jeffrey
Terence Jeffrey
15 Feb 2012
Can Obama Order Grocers to Give Away Bread?

In October 2009, I published a column titled, "Can Obama and Congress Order You to Buy Broccoli?" … Read More.

8 Feb 2012
Did Mass. Constitution Authorize Romney to Mandate Health Insurance?

You can now divide Americans into two groups: Those who believe government rightfully has the power to force … Read More.

1 Feb 2012
Romney Told Catholic Hospitals to Administer Abortion Pills

A defining moment in Mitt Romney's post-pro-life-conversion political career came in his third year as … Read More.

Obama's Deficit Charade

Share Comment

President Obama posed as a fiscal conservative Monday when he hosted a "fiscal responsibility summit."

Close inspection reveals that what he is actually proposing, however, is a massive increase in government debt — thus raising the already unsustainable burden of government that is certain to fall on our children unless the welfare state is somehow curtailed.

In the first seven fiscal years overseen by the high-spending President Bush, the annual federal budget deficits were truly obscene. Yet, they never exceeded $500 billion.

In fiscal 2002 through 2008, according to the historical tables published by the Office of Management and Budget last fall, the annual deficits were $157.7 billion, $377.5 billion, $412.7 billion, $318.3 billion, $248.1 billion, $162 billion and $410 billion. (The Congressional Budget Office has since calculated that the fiscal 2008 deficit actually ended up being $454.8 billion.)

President Obama said Monday that his "administration has inherited a $1.3 trillion deficit" for fiscal 2009.

The extraordinary size of that deficit is due, of course, to what one would have hoped were passing circumstances and one-time policies: a recession, a $700 billion bailout of the banking industry and that part of the $787 billion "stimulus" President Obama signed last week that will actually be spent in this fiscal year.

"And that's why today I'm pledging to cut the deficit we inherited in half by the end of my first term in office," President Obama said at his summit.

But what does that mean? The administration says President Obama's promise to "cut the deficit we inherited in half" means he will reduce it from $1.3 trillion in fiscal 2009 to $533 billion in fiscal 2013.

This $533 billion deficit — that President Obama vows will be the lowest annual deficit he runs in any of the next four years — is larger than any deficit the profligate President Bush ran before this recessionary year.

In fact, President Obama's planned $533 billion deficit for fiscal 2013 is more than twice as large as the $248.1 billion deficit Bush ran in 2006 and more than three times as large as the $162 billion deficit Bush ran in 2007.

In other words, President Obama is planning to permanently increase the scale of government borrowing — even before we are hit by the fiscal tidal wave that will come when the bulk of the baby boom generation retires and begins collecting Social Security and Medicare benefits.

The truth is this: Our federal government has been wading ever deeper into red ink for a full half-century, and President Obama is now planning to wade deeper and faster than any president who has gone before him.

According to the Bureau of the Public Debt, the overall federal debt has increased every single year for the past 50 years.

The last time it declined from one year to the next was from 1956 to 1957.

Overall federal debt increased even in each year from 1998 to 2001, when the OMB was calculating annual federal surpluses. This seeming contradiction, budget experts tell me, results from the fact that when they calculate the annual surplus or deficit they do not account for the interest the government pays itself on paper for the money it has borrowed out of the Social Security, Medicare and other entitlement trust funds to pay for current expenditures in other government programs.

The interest paid on the money the government has borrowed from Social Security and Medicare taxes to fund other things does not require the government to dole out real cash today. It will require the government to dole out real cash tomorrow, however, when the number of retired people receiving Social Security and Medicare benefits balloons compared to the number of younger working people paying taxes to support those programs.

Every dollar President Obama borrows and spends, like every dollar President Bush borrowed and spent, adds to the permanent burden of government laid on the backs of our children.

Last year, then-Comptroller General David Walker reported that every American household would have to put up $455,000 to cover the $53 trillion gap that already exits between the entitlement benefits promised to living Americans and the tax revenue currently expected to pay for those entitlements.

On top of this, President Obama has just promised to add more than $2 trillion to the national debt over the next four years.

To expand on a metaphor I used in a previous column, America is heading down the blind alley of big government toward the brick wall of national bankruptcy — and President Obama is now putting his foot on the accelerator. What's next: Liberals will use the coming crash as an argument for even more big government, quite possibly in the form of socialized medicine that seeks to control government spending by rationing the health care of all Americans.

Terence P. Jeffrey is the editor in chief of CSNnews.com. To find out more about him, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com

COPYRIGHT 2009 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.


Comments

1 Comments | Post Comment
AMERICA'S WORST NIGHTMARE
Dr. Sam Vaknin is an Israeli psychologist. Interesting view on our new president.
Dr. Vaknin has written extensively about narcissism.
Dr. Vaknin States "I must confess I was impressed by Sen.Barack Obama from the first time I saw him. At first I was excited to see a black candidate. He looked youthful, spoke well, appeared to be confident - a wholesome presidential package. I was put off soon, not just because of his shallowness but also because there was an air of haughtiness in his demeanor that was unsettling. His posture and his body language were louder than his empty words. Obama's speeches are unlike any political speech we have heard in American history. Never has a politician in this land had such a quasi "religious" impact on so many people. The fact that Obama is a total incognito with zero accomplishment, makes this inexplicable infatuation alarming. Obama is not an ordinary man. He is not a genius. In fact he is quite ignorant on most important subjects."
Barack Obama is a narcissist.
Dr. Sam Vaknin, the author of the Malignant Self Love believes "Barack Obama appears to be a narcissist." Vaknin is a world authority on narcissism. He understands narcissism and describes the inner mind of a narcissist like no other person. When he talks about narcissism everyone listens. Vaknin says that Obama's language, posture and demeanor, and the testimonies of his closest, dearest and nearest suggest that the Senator is either a narcissist or he may have narcissistic personality disorder (NPD). Narcissists project a grandiose but false image of themselves. Jim Jones, the charismatic leader of People's Temple, the man who led over 900 of his followers to cheerfully commit mass suicide and even murder their own children was also a narcissist. David Koresh, Charles Manson, Joseph Koni, Shoko Asahara, Stalin, Saddam, Mao,Kim Jong Ill and Adolph Hitler are a few examples of narcissists of our time. All these men had a tremendous influence over their fanciers. They created a personality cult around themselves and with their blazing speeches elevated their admirers, filled their hearts with enthusiasm and instilled in their minds a new zest for life. They gave them hope! They promised them the moon, but alas, invariably they brought them to their doom. When you are a victim of a cult of personality, you don't know it until it is too late. One determining factor in the development of NPD is childhood abuse.
"Obama's early life was decidedly chaotic and replete with traumatic and mentally bruising dislocations," says Vaknin. "Mixed-race marriages were even less common then. His parents went through a divorce when he was an infant (two years old). Obama saw his father only once again, before he died in a car accident. Then his mother re-married and Obama had to relocate to Indonesia, a foreign land with a radically foreign culture, to be raised by a step-father. At the age of ten, he was whisked off to live with his maternal (white)grandparents. He saw his mother only intermittently in the following few years and then she vanished from his life in 1979. She died of cancer in 1995".
One must never underestimate the manipulative genius of pathological narcissists. They project such an imposing personality that it overwhelms those around them. Charmed by the charisma of the narcissist, people become like clay in his hands. They cheerfully do his bidding and delight to be at his service. The narcissist shapes the world around himself and reduces others in his own inverted image. He creates a cult of personality. His admirers become his co-dependents. Narcissists have no interest in things that do not help them to reach their personal objective. They are focused on one thing alone and that is power. All other issues are meaningless to them and they do not want to waste their precious time on trivialities. Anything that does not help them is beneath them and do not deserve their attention.
If an issue raised in the Senate does not help Obama in one way or another, he has no interest in it. The "present" vote is a safe vote. No one can criticize him if things go wrong. Those issues are unworthy by their very nature because they are not about him. Obama's election as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review led to a contract and advance to write a book about race relations.
The University of Chicago Law School provided him a lot longer than expected and at the end it evolved into, guess what? His own autobiography! Instead of writing a scholarly paper focusing on race relations, for which he had been paid, Obama could not resist writing about his most sublime self. He entitled the book Dreams from My Father.
Not surprisingly, Adolph Hitler also wrote his own autobiography when he was still nobody. So did Stalin. For a narcissist no subject is as important as his own self. Why would he waste his precious time and genius writing about insignificant things when he can write about such an august being as himself? Narcissists are often callous and even ruthless. As the norm, they lack conscience. This is evident from Obama's lack of interest in his own brother who lives on only one dollar per month.
A man who lives in luxury, who takes a private jet to vacation in Hawaii, and who has raised nearly half a billion dollars for his campaign (something unprecedented in history) has no interest in the plight of his own brother. Why? Because, his brother cannot be used for his ascent to power.
A narcissist cares for no one but himself. This election is like no other in the history of America. The issues are insignificant compared to what is at stake. What can be more dangerous than having a man bereft of conscience, a serial liar, and one who cannot distinguish his fantasies from reality as the leader of the free world? I hate to sound alarmist, but one is a fool if one is not alarmed. Many politicians are narcissists. They pose no threat to others...They are simply self serving and selfish.
Obama evidences symptoms of pathological narcissism, which is different from the run-of-the-mill narcissism of a Richard Nixon or a Bill Clinton for example. To him reality and fantasy are intertwined. This is a mental health issue, not just a character flaw. Pathological narcissists are dangerous because they look normal and even intelligent. It is this disguise that makes them treacherous.
Today the Democrats have placed all their hopes in Obama. But this man could put an end to their party. The great majority of blacks have also decided to vote for Obama. Only a fool does not know that their support for him is racially driven. This is racism, pure and simple. The downside of this is that if Obama turns out to be the disaster I predict, he will cause widespread resentment among the whites.
The blacks are unlikely to give up their support of their man. Cultic mentality is pernicious and unrelenting. They will dig their heads deeper in the sand and blame Obama's detractors of racism. This will cause a backlash among the whites.
The white supremacists will take advantage of the discontent and they will receive widespread support. I predict that in less than four years, racial tensions will increase to levels never seen since the turbulent 1960's.
Obama will set the clock back decades... America is the bastion of freedom. The peace of the world depends on the strength of America, and its weakness translates into the triumph of terrorism and victory of rogue nations.
It is no wonder that Ahmadinejad, Hugo Chavez, the Castrists, the Hezbollah, the Hamas, the lawyers of the Guantanamo terrorists and virtually all sworn enemies of America are so thrilled by the prospect of their man in the White House. America is on the verge of destruction. There is no insanity greater than electing a pathological narcissist as president.
Comment: #1
Posted by: Gary
Fri Feb 27, 2009 5:32 AM
Already have an account? Log in.
New Account  
Your Name:
Your E-mail:
Your Password:
Confirm Your Password:

Please allow a few minutes for your comment to be posted.

Enter the numbers to the right:  
Creators.com comments policy
More
Terence Jeffrey
Feb. `12
Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
29 30 31 1 2 3 4
5 6 7 8 9 10 11
12 13 14 15 16 17 18
19 20 21 22 23 24 25
26 27 28 29 1 2 3
About the author About the author
Write the author Write the author
Printer friendly format Printer friendly format
Email to friend Email to friend
View by Month
Author’s Podcast
Michelle Malkin
Michelle MalkinUpdated 27 Feb 2012
Marc Dion
Marc DionUpdated 20 Feb 2012
Mark Levy
Mark LevyUpdated 18 Feb 2012

2 Jan 2008 Huckabee and Education

3 Jan 2007 Questions For a New Iraq Strategy

23 Jan 2008 A Party Against Pioneers