by No matter who becomes president in November, he’s going to be confronted with a huge fiscal storm that no levee or dam will be able to hold back the flood waters of an insurmountable and unfathomable debt.
In his review of Dinesh D’Souza’s film 2016: Obama’s America, Dr. Gary North notes that there are at least three important topics that the film does not address. One of them is the real deficit that no one wants to talk about.
First, the deficit is vastly worse than
the movie portrays. The movie sticks with the non-issue:
the on-budget
debt of $15 trillion [now $16 trillion], which is chump change, while
never mentioning the central problem: the $222 trillion present value of the unfunded liabilities of the off-budget deficit,
meaning the deficits of politically sacrosanct Social Security and
Medicare.
This is the heart of the federal government’s highly
entertaining Punch and Judy show over the deficit, with Paul Ryan as
Punch and Obama cross-dressing as Judy.
While presidents bear some responsibility for the deficit crisis, spending bills originate in Congress. The President proposes, but the Congress disposes. Congress could say no to every spending bill proposed by the President, but it (mostly) chooses not to. Every congressman knows that spending bills buy votes. Bought votes keep them in office.
Some future generation will get the bill. Congress hopes that they can stay in office just long enough so they won’t get blamed for the fiscal crisis that is inevitable.
Ron Paul always was right for 36 years in
not pointing to the President as the main economic problem, but rather
the Federal Reserve System. So, any documentary that does not go after
the Federal Reserve when it talks about economic problems, but blames
the President instead, and also ignores Congress, is doing the general
public an enormous disservice. It keeps the Federal Reserve in the
background in the thinking of the viewers, when the Federal Reserve
ought to be in the foreground, with the presidency in the background.
This is basic economics. D’Souza does not know what he is talking about
with respect to economics.
Republicans imply that a $200 billion cut each year for ten years will get us back on track. They’re both wrong since the interest alone for the ten-year period will be in the trillions in addition to proposals for new spending and automatic increases.
Democrats want to convince voters that taxing the rich will fix the deficit problem. It won’t make a dent in it. All it will do is plunge us further into recession. Establishment Republicans are fearful in telling the truth about the deficit and the systemic changes that are needed because they will be voted out of office.
It’s going to take strong leadership and a willing public to take the needed medicine.
No comments:
Post a Comment