December, 2016, Part 3, Political Class Insanity - Pelosi In Still In Charge (Unfortunately) and Fiscal and National Debt Insanity

It has been almost a month since Donald Trump has been elected which means at some point in the future we may run out of material to talk about. With the demise of the Obama administration, eight years worth of wasteful and excessive spending for nothing in return, foreign affairs blunders, Obama Care disasters, and assorted other administration and government blunders and screwups might end with the onset of a new administration. Trump may usher in a new paradigm of government actions that are limited, effective, cost efficient, and protective of the Constitution. If so, then this blog would run out of material to discuss and would have to be shut down.

But I doubt it. Even if Trump is truly a different type of President, he is still fighting over 500 embedded and entrenched politicians in Congress and thousands and thousands of government bureaucrats who will not go peacefully into the night for the good of the country. I wish him well and hopefully he can fix at least some of the myriad of problems the American political class creates everyday but until then, enjoy the latest political class insanity from Washington and beyond:

1) The way the Constitution is set up is that Congress sets up budgets and money for government functions and the executive branch is then responsible for spending that money for the purposes Congress intended it to be spent for. It is a major check and balance that the Founders built into the Constitution to control the executive branch from spending money on things that the people’s representatives said it should or should not be spent on. It is Democracy’s machinery in action.

But as we have pointed out many times during this current Presidency, including in the following post:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2016/11/retro-2-obama-presidency-end-of-error.html

Obama has often treated the Constitution as suggestions rather than the overarching rule of the land. His current impeachable offense was outlined in a November 30, 2016 article on the Political Insider website based on info from the the Center For Immigration Studies:

• Obama has left our southern border so wide open that far more Latin American kids are flooding over the border that the Health and Human Services budget for such needs has been blown out by the volume of people coming in.
• To cope, rather than going back through Congress for incremental appropriations as required by the Constitution, the Obama administration is illegally raiding other budget buckets to fund the housing needs of the juvenile illegal immigrants.
• Other critical government programs that are having their budgets ravaged include Medicare, the Ryan White AIDS/HIV program, cancer research funds, and flu research funds, all programs that were paid for and needed by Americans, not illegal immigrants.
• So far the bill for the illegal immigrant youths is $167 million, $167 million that cannot be used to heal elderly Americans, treat American cancer and HIV patients, or provide flu protections for Americans. 
• Oh, by the way, that $167 million is a monthly, ongoing total, not the overall cost.

So if you have cancer or HIV or flu or you have an elderly relative or friend that is not receiving the Medicare care they should be getting, remember that Obama is to blame for 1) not shutting the down the border like he is legally required to do and 2) he broke the law by transferring taxpayer funds to efforts that he had no legal basis to do.

2) One of the most inane, funny, and sad politicians we have tracked over time is Nancy Pelosi, House minority leader and former Speaker of the House. She had the most ridiculous and pathetic response to a question from every politician of all time when she claimed that the Obama Care legislation had to be enacted so that we could all, including her, could see what was actually in the legislation. Never mind actually READING the legislation before voting on it, she felt we had to enact it first and then find out what was in it. Ready, fire, aim. 

Some of her less fine moments were captured in the following post:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/search?q=comedy+central

We were really getting worried that she might lose her leadership position in the Democratic Party. The Democrats have just lost the Presidency to Trump, are minorities in the House and the Senate, are enmeshed in controversy over how the Democratic leadership fixed the nominating process for Hillary Clinton, etc. That would have been a logical time to relieve her of her leadership position because really, how much worse could someone else do?

But good news! Apparently, the whole Democratic Congressional group is not the most logical and smartest body in Washington. They decided to keep Pelosi in charge which guarantees a continued stream of inane and silly quotes and actions.

3) To prove our point about the total inadequacy of Pelosi’s leadership, both as Speaker and leader of the minority in the House, Terence P. Jeffrey, writing for the CNS News website on November 30, 2016, reminded us of how much the Federal government debt has grown during the time that Pelosi was the House leader of Democrats, from January 3, 2003 until now. 

Specifically, since she assumed that leadership role the national debt has risen $13,546,533,671,676.73. This comes out to an almost $114,000 debt load for EVERY American household. In other words, every household would have to write a check for $114,000 or so to pay off the unfunded debt that the Federal government has accumulated during her tenure. Since a very high percentage of households barely have enough savings to fund an unexpected family expense, this number is obviously outside the reach of probably the majority of American families today.

Now, she obviously had help, from both parties, in running up such an insanely large national debt. But as being one of the top leaders in Congress for over two decades, she certainly did little, if anything, to put the brakes on the out of control spending in Washington. 

And as we have pointed out many times, the country and Americans have very little to show for this $13 TRILLION debt. Our roads and bridges are still falling apart, our schools still continue to under educate our kids, most of our military forces are still not combat ready, no societal benefit has occurred for this debt load. Thanks Ms. Pelosi, we owe a lot of this to you and you only.

4) Let’s finish up today’s insanity with a continued discussion of the country’s national debt. According to F. McGuire, reporting for Newsmax on November 30, 2016:

• This past Black Friday marked the first time that the national debt had exceeded $19.9 TRILLION as it makes its speedy run to an atrocious $20 TRILLION.
• The debt load should get to that $20 TRILLION level in early 2017, likely in February according to estimates by the Bipartisan Policy Center.
• And that is just the beginning according to Barron’s: "If the Trump administration were to add no spending programs and cut no taxes, the rising costs of existing programs like Medicare and Medicaid would likely push the national debt to $45 trillion in 20 years’ time. So says the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office."
• A $45 TRILLION debt load would result in an annual interest rate payment on the debt of $750 billion IF interest rates stayed at the unnatural rates they are today.
• If interest rates ever get back to more natural levels, the annual interest payments on that national debt could be about $1.5 TRILLION a year.
• Using a rough growth estimate for the number of American households, within 20 years at higher, more natural interest rates every American household would have to pay over $10,000 a year just to cover the annual interest payments on the national debt.

Out of control, no other words capture how badly the American political class has mangled the current and future fiscal stability of the country. Obama has doubled the national debt in just eight years and at current spending trends, that national debt will more than double in twenty years. Or the entire house of cards collapses long before that and the fiscal viability of the country collapses with it, taking our standard of living and freedoms with it.

More insanity tomorrow.

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.loathemygovernment.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:

http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w