Over the past week, we did an in-depth, multi-day analysis of how the Obama administration has failed in an epic way across five dimensions. As you will see over the next week or so, it is not only the President that is an epic fail in the American political sphere today. So, let’s get started, it is going to be a long trek as the political class came out of the holiday season with more incompetence than ever before.
This is the third post in this month’s insanity series:
1) The Bankrupting America website always does a great job of finding financial, political, operational and other problems with our current set of politicians and the government functions they operate. On January 28, 2015, they published the following set of financial figures that are sure to scare any American, based on the latest Congressional Budget Office analysis, “The Budget and Economic Outlook: 2015 to 2025”:
- The annual Federal budget deficits will stay steady, at the still unacceptable level of an amazing half a TRILLION dollars every year, through 2018, at which time they will start to grow steadily again, resulting in an annual deficit number of over $1 TRILLION.
- This is an incremental debt burden of over $8,500 for every American household in just one year.
- If the 2025 annual deficit, or any deficit, actually gets to $1 TRILLION in a year, that will likely put it about 4% or so of the nation’s GDP level, or about 50% higher than the historical average.
- The cumulative deficits over the next ten years will about $7.6 TRILLION or about $65,000 for every U.S.household.
- For comparison purposes, every American Presidency prior to Obama ran up a cumulative $10 TRILLION national debt burden. Thus, the Obama Presidency and the budget trajectory it put the country on will add far more debt to the national debt than EVERY previous Presidential administration combined.
- If these numbers are attained,the CBO predicts: “Such large and growing federal debt would have serious negative consequences, including increasing federal spending for interest payments, restraining economic growth in the long term, giving policymakers less flexibility to respond to unexpected challenges, and eventually heightening the risk of a fiscal crisis.”
- And while Obama promised that Obama Care would reduce everyone’s annual health insurance bill by $2,500 on average and would “not add one dime to the Federal debt,” the CBO predicts that just under $2 TRILLION will be spent to insure, in a best case scenario, about 25 million Americans, or a cost of an amazing $80,000 or so for each Obama Care customer and the law will add over $640 billion to the national debt, indicating that another two Obama promises/deceptions will go down in epic flames.
More Obama promises broken and broken very badly, epically bad. At what point do we all start assuming that everything and anything this President says is a lie, a deception, or likely to be wildly inaccurate?
2) Obama has been making a big push for raising the minimum wage even though there are far more pressing economic problems and crises to be focusing on (for a detailed look at his economic policy failures, please go to XXXX). The reality of his insanity of focusing on raising the minimum wage was pointed out numerically by a recent analysis on the Townhall website which quotes George Will:
- Less than 3% of the American workforce earns the Federal minimum wage.
- More than 60% of those earning the minimum wage now will get a raise above it within a year.
- More than half of the minimum wage earners are either students or part time workers from households with average incomes of about $53,000.
- There are more than 10 million Americans who are unemployed or under employed. The rollout of subsequent Obama Care requirements will likely increase that number, especially the number of part time workers. Millions of recent college graduates cannot get work in their fields of study and millions of them are having to return home to live with family in order to financially survive. A very high percentage of American households, as we have previously reported, would not be able to afford a car repair bill of medical emergency bill of $1,000.
3) As we have proven many times, political class insanity and wasteful spending are not contained just to the Washington D.C. political class and Federal government bureaucracies. A recent government audit found that the Virginia Department of Transportation wasted at least $3 million by failing to fine a nonperforming contractor, as reported by www.watchdog.com.
The state government inspector general found that the Department wasted at least $3 million by not holding a contracted company, Serco Inc. accountable for incomplete or undone work. Serco currently has a contract with the state to provide roadside assistance and other logistical service to the Department.
As we always ask, how many homeless people in Virginia could have been sheltered for the wasted $3 million? How many Virginia homeless could have been fed for the wasted $3 million? How many drug addicted Virginians could have been treated for the $3 million? The answer: a lot. The could have been but they were not because of the wasting of millions in taxpayer wealth just in this one instance.
4) When the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, the growing of opium poppy was outlawed and almost wiped out because drug use and abuse was not compatible with their tenets. Opium poppies are the base component of heroin.
Let’s review: we invade the country looking for Bin Laden, overthrow the Taliban, install an incredibly corrupt government and about a dozen years later the country has set a one year record for growing opium poppies. This claim was recently put forth by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. As you can see from the graph below, not only was a record set, but the probability for more and more poppies to be cultivated in the future is trending strongly upwards:
Thus, after more than a dozen years of having a military presence in the country, over 2,200 American servicemen have been killed, many more thousands have been wounded, hundreds of billions of dollars have been expended, and despite the Federal government’s best efforts, the flow of illegal Afghanistan-sourced drugs is probably at an all time high, probably ending up in American streets and addicts' bodies also at a record pace. Just another Federal government/Washington political class initiative that has gone horribly wrong for a horribly long time.5) The Federal government, via NASA, is working on the next generation of space rockets that are named Orion. Despite giving NASA billions of budget dollars over the years, according to a recent article on the Gizmodo.com website, as reported in the December 19, 2014 issue of The Week magazine, the computer processors being used TODAY on the Orion vehicles were built in 2002. Yes, the next generation NASA rockets will be operated by thirteen year old technology. Apparently, these processors are less powerful than the processors in current smartphones on the market today. The article quoted NASA's spokesperson Matt Lemke: “It’s state of the art compared to previous technology but it’s not state of the art compared to what you can get at Best Buy.” Typical government procurement: overpriced, out of date technology. Insane.That will do it for today’s insanity. We learned that our national debt burden is about to explode to unheard of and dangerous heights as a result of the Obama administration’s lack of budget skills, the administration is worried about a minimum wage issue that is minute compared to the much larger economic crises in the country, the state of Virginia can waste taxpayer wealth with the best of them, the unintended consequences of Washington’s efforts in Afghanistan is to create a record high production of heroin, and we are likely paying top dollars for antiquated parts for our country’s latest space rockets.Wasteful spending, excessive spending, stupid spending. Sounds about right for today’s political class. More insanity tomorrow and beyond.Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:
www.loathemygovernmobama,washington post,politifactent.com
It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.
Please visit the following sites for freedom:
Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w
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