The Big Picture "federal budget debate is out of control"

[RedEarth]

You got the sense that a great deal was happening if you focused on the budget news from Washington last week. But looking at each event by itself provided a very different view than if you took a step back and looked at the whole picture

Federal borrowing will have increased by approximately 900 percent in the 25 years between 1981 and 2006. Net interest payments on the national debt will soon be about 10 percent of all federal spending. Gross interest payments will soon exceed the amount the Pentagon spends each year and be the single largest item in the budget.

The growing debt and interest payments do not seem to be of much concern for most policymakers in Washington. The desire to spend more in all categories of federal activities is at least as strong today as it has ever been.

The large interest payments that have been baked-in to the federal budget pie are a dagger pointed directly at all programs and federal taxes. Interest payments are the most mandatory of all federal spending. Unless the appetite for high deficits continues, everything else in the future will be in jeopardy and under extreme pressure because of how much the government has already borrowed and will continue to borrow.

......

The deficit is not declining. The talk about cutting it in half by the end of 2009 is just that: talk. The only way the deficit will be cut in half by the end of this decade is if the definition of "half" is revised.

http://nationaljournal.com/collender.htm

[MadMaddie]

1. I am not a mathmatical genius but at the rate they are spending

and the path they are on to start more wars....it's sobering...All they have ever done is talk....mostly lies....

[Astrad]

2. The truth is

if the democrats want to rectify this situation and live up to their 'social conscience' agenda they are going to have to cut military spending significantly. The day I hear a prominent democrat advocate that truth is the the day I feel hope return...

[no_hypocrisy]

4. Setting up democrats in the future to look like the "bad Dad".

If and when democrats get into the majority and maybe the WH, and they try to fix the mess created by the republicans, they will have to enact very unpopular programs to raise the money to pay the debt and the budget. Raising taxes, upping fees for services, going after businesses incorporated in Bermuda and the Cayman Islands, cutting back on services, cutting the military budget (read, less money to McDonald Douglas, Halliburton, and other military contractors), less state aid, less aid to education (read, increasing local property taxes), etc. Doing more with less. Never mind that this will potentially raise the stock market and some people will actually benefit. The next republican candidate will bellow, "Look at the democrats who CAN'T WAIT to take their hand, put in your pocket, remove your wallet, and take your money." The dems will get reamed for being responsible.

[yurbud]

3. karma: they are doing a neoliberal bust out on the US: break them buy

cheap:

Bust out scam:

http://professorsmartass.blogspot.com/2006/03/sopranos-explains-republican-agenda.html

Best short definition of neoliberalism:

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=376

[teryang]

5. What debate? The crooks have gone hog wild.

In the days after 911 the legislature went crazy. Daschle gave the airlines twenty billion dollars outright. They still went belly up. Tens of billions of dollars were simply given away. With the trumped up wars on terra, hundreds of billions are being squandered. It was and is a bipartisan effort.

A few lone voices crying in the wilderness could be heard in the wee hours of the morning on CSPAN from the floor of the house, criticizing the embezzlement of the nation's resources for the benefit of corporate cronies and campaign fundraisers. Only insomniacs heard the so called debate.