How I learned to stop worrying and love the deficit

Michael Kinsley asks an important question at the conclusion of his article in the LA Times:

The question remains: If the deficit doesn't matter, why have any taxes at all? And if there is some point at which the deficit does start to matter, and become dangerous, when is that point if $1.6 trillion isn't it?

We're now borrowing somewhere between 40 and 42 cents of every dollar the government is spending. Since certain dwarfish Princeton economists insist that this unprecedented level of borrowing is inconsequential, why not make it 100%? Just fire up the $100 printing presses and be done with the whole thing.

Wow, I feel so much better now. Yee-haw!

Oh yeah, that other stuff

Here's Mickey Kaus:

When did everyone decide that it’s high gas prices that are hurting Obama? Seems crazy to me. He’s losing two out of three wars, the economy is flagging, and his signature domestic achievement is unpopular. So it must be the gas!

Don't forget President "Present"'s general lack of leadership on anything of consequence. Darn those oil companies!

Extra - If it's Tuesday, it must be time for Oprah and fundraisers. Golf can wait.

Candy for everyone! - Real Clear Politics: "Politicians, not public, to blame for debt crisis."

No worries, we'll just keep on borrowing $188 million an hour from China, right? Awww...snap!

Happy Easter!

Devalued - Mark Steyn notes in "The Disappearing Dollar" that many of the measures of prosperity - the U.S. credit rating, the dollar, housing, education - ain't what they used to be.

And then there's this from the WSJ: "Dollar's decline speeds up, with risks for U.S."

Obama disassociates himself from the high gas prices his policies invited

Recently the President breezily dismissed his slumping poll numbers as a product of high gas prices. Like everything else in Obama's world, if it's bad it has nothing to do with him.

As gas prices soar above $4/gallon, let's reflect:

Incoherent energy policy? Check.

Domestic oil production scheduled to start declining next year? Check.

Starting a senseless war with a Middle East oil state? Check.

Royally ticking off the Saudis? Check.

Energy secretary who once said "Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe." Check.

Insensitive "Let them drive Volts" moment to father with SUV. Check.

Yet another useless commission to take the place of real leadership. Check.

Now let's burn off a couple hundred tons of Air Force One jet fuel. Obama's gotta fly back from California to celebrate Earth Day.

Extra - Volokh: "Don't blame the speculators."

More - Instapundit finds that some tourist destinations fear Americans taking a "staycation" due to gas prices.

Even more - From Doug Ross.

Poor fish! - The masthead on Google today gave me a chuckle.

A third more in taxes - Megan McArdle explains that without restraint in spending, taxes for everyone will have to go way, way up: "These are huge changes in the overall tax burden, and they will have big effects on people's lives and the economy."

Righty-tighty, lefty-loosey

Can somebody tell me if I'm crazy? This Lowe's commercial bugs the heck out of me. The woman slides under the sink and the rear of the wrench moves to the right as she says "righty tighty!" But if the back of the wrench is moving to the right, the head of the wrench is moving counter-clockwise or to the left.

Help me out here. I can't be the only one who has noticed this. And before I get the "perspective" thing, take note that it's a pipe hanging down from a sink - it should tighten just one way, unless it has some weird reverse thread.

Obama lies - That's what Factcheck said about the President's attack on Paul Ryan's plan.

Shared responsibility - Echoing a post I had below, David Harsanyi writes over at Real Clear Politics: "If Washington is so great, let's all pay for it."

Default by another name - Megan McArdle: "Inflation won't cure our debt woes."

Debt bomb - Kevin Williamson makes two salient points in this post "Enron writ large": one is that the S&P downgrade is (like Enron) a lagging indicator of what everybody already knows and the other is that if rates return to historic levels, interest payments on the national debt could quickly eclipse the big-ticket items in the federal budget.

Daisy, daisy - Big Government "The tax and spend machine": "Like HAL in the scene from "2001: A Space Odyssey" perhaps the machine cannot be turned off."

Three cups of doom! - If anybody saw "60 Minutes" this past Sunday, you'll know that "Three Cups of Tea" author Greg Mortenson is a big liar. But he had a very good explanation for begging off (the famous) Steve Kroft's request for an interview: he thought he was a suicide bomber.

Makes sense. NPR also had a story this afternoon: "'Tea' debacle reflects the murky waters of memoirs."

Fourteen trillion - fifteen trillion = negative fun! - Zero Hedge: "Total US debt now officially above the ceiling." Fire up the printing presses.

The rise of the concierge doctors

Boston Globe: "More doctors gravitate towards boutique practice"

Concierge medicine is expanding as more doctors - and patients - tire of assembly-line primary care, opting for something more personal, and pricey.

The numbers are still very small - a survey commissioned by a congressional agency last year identified 756 concierge medical doctors in the United States, up from 146 in 2005. And Florida-based MDVIP, a company that helps physicians set up these practices, said it will add six new MDVIP doctors in the Boston area this year, increasing its physicians statewide to 16.

But even a tiny number of doctors leaving traditional offices for boutique practices - out of thousands of primary care physicians - is enough to make some health care industry leaders nervous. They worry that more doctors will follow as insurers and government payers cut fees and hem in providers with regulations. And when even one doctor makes the switch, there are substantial side effects, leaving hundreds of patients to scramble for a new physician.

In an informal survey, half the primary care doctors at one Massachusetts hospital indicated they had considered the switch to concierge medicine. Take a wild guess why:

The pressures on doctors have only intensified. The state’s mandatory health insurance law means even more people with coverage are seeking doctors. Insurers are squeezing payments to doctors, and regulators and insurers are pressing providers to make care less expensive.

“It’s hitting home here at Newton-Wellesley,’’ said Dr. Leslie Selbovitz, chief medical officer. “As health care reform matures, doctors are questioning whether they want to be part of the new world order.’’

The unmistakable trajectory of Obamacare is towards a two-tier healthcare system. Good intentions.

It's for the kids - Mark Steyn "Losing the Future": "How do you 'invest in the future'? By borrowing $188 million every hour."

You're welcome, Junior.

It's OK because it's Obama - The President reverses himself on signing statements so he can keep his "czars" so they can do the work he's supposed to be doing.

Now fire up Air Force One. Bammy's gotta jet to Chicago to complain about the lame-o phones in the Oval Office. Hope and change!

More - From Althouse and Hot Air.

Update - From the Vokokh Conspiracy: "The Obama Administration...seems to be brazenly violating the Constitution."

It's Friday! - Fun fun fun fun.

Regrets, he's had a few - ABC News: "Harry Reid 'embarrassed' about 2006 opposition to raising debt limit."

Here's a question for you: "Why is it right to increase our nation's dependence on foreign creditors?" Why indeed, Harry. Or Barry.

Extra - From Patterico.

We all need to pay for the government - Derek Thompson writes "We need higher taxes, and not just for the rich": "President Obama is going to have to break his campaign promise and raise taxes on Americans making under $250,000. There's really no way around it."

While I agree with the statement that Washington has a spending problem and not a tax problem, that doesn't change the fact that we need to cut spending and raise taxes. And it's not just a matter of revenue (which is considerably higher if all tax rates are increased); it's a matter of equality. If everybody has "skin in the game" it might force Americans to re-focus on how much government they want and whether they're getting a bargain for the money.

Howard Dean was on NPR yesterday and although the ex-DNC chair is a highly partisan player, even he acknowledged that: "...the middle class tax cuts that President Obama is defending that George Bush put in are not compatible with the balanced budget. ... Everybody has to pay more taxes."

We're living in a fantasy world where Americans are paying only 60 cents for every dollar of government received. It's time to bring the cost/benefit ratio back in line.

Shorter Obama: "I'm utterly unserious about debt, but I'd like to be re-elected"

The President's speech today reminded me of what Gertrude Stein said about Oakland: "There's no there there." It would be wrong to cut anything of significance, we'll have somebody look into defense spending, and if we're still short, we'll have yet another deficit commission. Are you kidding? Atlantic contributor Clive Crook is spot on: "Obama's speech was a waste of breath"

Obama had a difficult assignment in this speech, partly because of the exaggerated hopes for it (see previous post). Even allowing for that, it was weak both politically and substantively. My instant unguarded reaction, in fact, was to find it not just weak but pitiful. I honestly wondered why he bothered.

There was no sign of anything worth calling a plan to curb borrowing faster than in the budget. He offered no more than a list of headings under which $4 trillion of deficit reduction (including the $2 trillion already in his budget) might be found--domestic non-security spending, defense, health costs, and tax reform. Fine, sure. But what he said was devoid of detail. He spent more of his time stressing what he would not agree to than describing clear proposals of his own.

There was specificity on one aspect of deficit reduction: getting somebody else to pay.

He is still proposing an increase, not a decrease, in marginal rates on high incomes combined with restricted tax expenditures for those at the top of the income distribution--that is to say, two rounds of increases in high-income tax rates. The rich can pay for it all. That is Obama's tax policy. The whole point and key virtue of the Bowles-Simpson approach to taxes is that it held out the prospect of a deal between Democrats and Republicans: lower marginal rates in return for higher revenues. Obama appears to rule this out on principle.

The speech was more notable for its militant--though ineffectual--hostility to Republican proposals than for any fresh thinking of its own. It was a waste of breath.

As readers of this blog might know, I was interested to hear Obama's solution to the Social Security's pending insolvency. What we got was an amorphous platitude that could have been uttered by Obama anytime since 2005:

While Social Security is not the cause of our deficit, it faces real long-term challenges in a country that is growing older. As I said in the State of the Union, both parties should work together now to strengthen Social Security for future generations. But we must do it without putting at risk current retirees, the most vulnerable, or people with disabilities; without slashing benefits for future generations; and without subjecting Americans’ guaranteed retirement income to the whims of the stock market.

That's leadership: we should work together, but I won't propose the slimmest of solutions and, by the way, those other guys want to kick Grandma into the street. This was a campaign speech, nothing more, and much less.

Extra - Kaus Files: "Social Security fixes are still in a mystery box."

More - Power Line: "A sorry, cowardly performance."

Even more - The Pentagon says: "What's all this about cuts?"

Plus - Victor Davis Hanson: "Obama vs. Obama."

And this - CBS News reminds us that the national debt is on pace to nearly double to $26.3 trillion by 2021. But Obama's going to cut $4 trillion over 12 years, so we got that goin' for us.

On this 150th anniversary on the start of the American Civil War - William Tecumseh Sherman called it.

By the way, the single best Civil War history book I've ever read is James McPherson's "Battle Cry of Freedom."

Fair's fair - Roger Kimball predicts that Obama will play the "fairness" card in his speech tomorrow on the federal budget. Because if somebody earns more money than you, well, that's just not fair. (H/T Instapundit.)

The 2011 budget is just a sideshow now

Over at Contentions, John Podhoretz writes that the recent budget battle to cut the advertised $38.5 billion from the remainder of the 2011 federal budget will only cut around $15 billion, due to a series of accounting tricks. Furthermore, he warns "The budget deal may collapse" as Tea Party-backed freshmen find they've been duped.

If the deal falls apart, the House Republicans should just pass a series of (rider-free) continuous resolutions until October, slicing off a billion each week. The House is only one-third of the budget battle; throw a government shutdown into the hands of Harry Reid and Barack Obama.

But given that we're bleeding money anyway, I would prefer if Washington would just pass the budget and move onto the main event: Paul Ryan's 2012 blueprint. That's the crossroads with one path towards fiscal sanity and the other towards decline.

"We in America have created a suicidal government" - Robert Samuelson: "Big Government on the Brink."

"Tempted" by Squeeze

Here's an interesting piece of music trivia: although some would argue that this is Squeeze's best-known song, it didn't crack the top 40 in any country. (In America, Squeeze's highest charting song was the inoffensive pop ditty "Hourglass.") As a lad, I saw Squeeze in 1985 for their Cosi Fan Tutti Frutti tour.

Perspective - Via Political Wire, the federal debt increased $54 billion in the eight days Congress hammered out a deal to cut $38.5 billion from the remainder of the 2011 budget.

Debt problem? What debt problem? - Mark Steyn: "The Democrats' solution to a problem is to deny there is one."

And then there's this from Doug Ross: "Good news: Dallas Fed chief says U.S. in budgetary death spiral." Essentially he says that the urge to get our of our debt problem is to monetize the debt (i.e. print money) and this would be "a direct path to economic perdition." So we got that goin' for us.

Younger workers flee high taxation in debt-ridden country - CNBC: "Spain's biggest export: young people." That could never happen here, eh?

What just happened in Wisconsin? - This is what happens when I watch reruns of "Community." Fox News: "Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice take big lead after county corrects vote count."

Extra - Althouse called it.

More - Mary Katherine Ham: "Small state-wide election with vital national implications soon to have no national implications whatsoever."

Takin' the motorcade to Air Force One - Zero Hedge: "Obama's advice to those complaining about surging gas prices: Suck it in and cope."

Abridged CBO Director's blog on Ryan's budget - "It's an unsavory sandwich, but we're all gonna have to take a bite." One key deficit-cutting provision is halving government spending on health care from 12% of GDP now to 6% of GDP.

Related - WSJ: "Medicare for a New Century."

Swooning for Paul Ryan - Taking a cue from Power Line, the NY Times' David Brooks writes an absolute love letter for Ryan's "serious" budget proposal.

Here's some comedy gold: "Will [Obama] come up with his own counterproposal, or will he simply demagogue the issue by railing against "savage" Republican cuts and ignoring the long-term fiscal realities?" Take a wild guess.

Extra - Betsy's Page: "Time for the adults to take over."

It's a Nobel Peace Prize cage match! - Not content to be second place to Barack "Cruise Missiles Away" Obama, Legal Insurrection reports that Mohamed ElBaradei is threatening war against "the Zionist regime" if Israel attacks Hamas.

That is one scary-ass graph

Paul Ryan lays out his "Path to Prosperity" with a graph that details "A choice of two futures." The status quo looks like a ski jump that ends somewhere around a debt level of 800% GDP, likely due to compounding interest.

Meanwhile, Democrat Chris Van Hollen tries his hand at stand-up comedy in this Hill article: "Dems 'likely' to offer budget alternative to Rep. Ryan's plan." Ha-ha, good one, Chris! Hey, do you know when would have been a good time to offer a budget plan? When you controlled the House of Representatives.

Can't wait to see the plan, Chris. Leadership!

My favorite so far: "More debt? You bet!" - Twitter feed: Obama 2012 campaign slogans. By the way, if I had a Twitter account I would suggest: "Welcome back, Carter."

Albatross - Megan McArdle: "Health care law still really unpopular."

Stupid college kids line up to embrace their destroyer

Heaven help me, I can't understand why these young whipper-snappers today give Obama the rockstar treatment every time he sets up his teleprompter in the student union. Take a look at his speech from the last time he announced his candidacy to understand how cynically he's broken every promise he ever made. If younger voters had inkling of an idea of what kind of future they're facing under this President's policies, they would boo Obama like Charlie Sheen in Detroit:

The national deficit is careening upward of $1.6 trillion this year, with a projected debt of $24 trillion by 2021. Those young people applauding Mr. Obama so heartily are the very ones with bull's-eyes on their backs for ruinous tax increases in their prime earning years. They also are going to find out that Social Security has been a huge Ponzi scheme, with them as the "marks."

Four more years! (That's the gap between graduating and finding a job for these kids.)

Individual mandate debate - The Boston Globe has the opposing viewpoints on the Constitutionality of Obamacare's insurance mandate with Harvard's Laurence Tribe defending the law while Georgetown's Randy Barnett taking the opposing viewpoint.

The $4 trillion man - The Wall Street Journal profiles House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan and his efforts to bring the federal budget somewhere in the same zip code as revenues. That includes Medicare which, as Ryan notes, cannot stay on its current path without bankrupting the nation.

Extra - Doug Ross on the Democrats' response to Ryan's proposal.

The professor and his shadow

Found this on a site about great pranks:

Don't worry, Europe! - Paul Krugman says your debt is not a big deal. NY Times: "Setbacks in Portugal and Ireland renew worries on debt crisis."

And, boy, this guy's a bummer: "Pimco's Bill Gross sees little value in Treasurys as U.S. debt grows."

(Almost) April is the cruelest month - So I went to my kid's Spring concert tonight where they performed songs like "Comes the Rain with Me" and "Welcome Spring!" Then we get outside and it's blizzarding snow.

Obamacare and the vile weed

Here's Jonathan Adler at the Volokh Conspiracy with "Justice Kennedy, the individual mandate and the broccoli question."

This, in the end, is why mandate defenders need to be able to provide a doctrinally satisfying answer to the broccoli question: If the federal government may require everyone to purchase qualifying health insurance plans from private companies, why can’t it also require everyone to purchase broccoli? Suggesting that Congress would never seek to do such a thing is insufficient, as citing political safeguards on federalism is no answer and does not respond to Justice Kennedy’s concern.

How would Justice Newman rule on this?

Heh.

Tax the rich...and hope they stay rich - Over at Opinion Journal, Robert Frank writes that states overdependent on wealthy taxpayers are inordinately hurt when that tax revenue disappears in a recession: "The top 1% of earners fill the coffers of states like California and New York during a boom - and leave them starved for revenue in a bust."

Riding the wave to 2012 - Pajamas Media: "Social Security: Obama and the Democrats dodge their debris."

On a related note, the non-partisan FactCheck.org had this one last month: "Democrats deny Social Security's red ink - Some claim it doesn't contribute to the deficit, but it does."

Slo-Mo-Town - Opinion Journal "A Requiem for Detroit": "Unlike New Orleans and Japan, the ruin we see in Detroit is entirely man-made."

"Like Syria" - That's what I kept repeating over and over again to the television while watching Obama's speech. There's nothing he said about Libya and Gaddafi that wouldn't apply to Syria and the Assad family.

Physics humor - Saw a red bumper sticker today with the text: "If this bumper sticker is blue, you're driving too fast."

Message management

AoSHQ: "Gates: Libya isn't in our national interest, Clinton: Yes it is."

And then there's this guy, back in 2008:

Should be an interesting speech tomorrow.

Extra - Or maybe the White House wants to limit the message.

Fantasy finances

Here's an interesting tidbit from this WashPost article "Pensions squeeze government budgets." Over two-thirds of the largest public pension plans assume a rate of return of 8% or greater, while the S&P average annual growth for the past 20 years has been less than 6%.

Just last week, the nation's largest public pension plan - California's CALPERS - voted down the recommendation of it's own chief actuary to adjust the plan's investment forecast to 7.5%. CALPERS stuck with their 7.75% expected rate because lowering the estimate would mean that California towns and cities would be on the hook for millions of new contributions. So they embraced the fantasy of unrealistic returns.

The California voters, it seems, are getting concerned.

How Social Security dies by torpor

Writing in the WashPost, Social Security trustee Charles Blahous lays out a credible scenario on how an unreformed Social Security could die by inaction:

If we delay until 2031, taxpayers would already be providing $280 billion annually in additional general revenue (read: income taxes), just to redeem trust fund bonds and to keep benefit payments flowing. These obligations of general revenue would be nearly as great as the amount required to fix the shortfall after 2037.

Given those circumstances, what would legislators do? Would they impose sudden benefit reductions and tax increases more than three times larger than in 1983, to preserve Social Security’s continued ability to finance itself? Or would they shrug and say, “Well, general-income taxpayers are effectively subsidizing Social Security already. Let’s just formally have them keep doing it.”

The answer seems obvious. Faced with a choice between wrenching benefit cuts and/or payroll tax increases vs. tearing down the wall between Social Security and the rest of the budget, legislators will tear it down.

And that would be the end of Social Security as we know it. No more separate trust fund. No more special parliamentary protections. No longer would benefit payments be shielded from the chopping block by the rationale that they were funded by separate payroll tax contributions. Social Security would be financed from the general revenue pool, and its benefits would thereafter have to compete with every other federal spending priority.

Remember how we've been told that those Social Security bonds are real and not an accounting trick? OK, let's assume that's true. It's 2037 and the Trust Fund is depleted and the Social Security administration can only pay out what's coming in through the payroll tax, meaning that everybody get an automatic 25% benefit cut. I wonder how the popularity of the system will fare after millions of workers do the math to find they've been duped into a giving the government a multi-decade free loan with a negative return on investment.

So, go ahead and do nothing.

Extra – Hot Air: "Democrats appear to belatedly awakening to this very danger."

Ron Swanson's Pyramid of Greatness

I like "Parks and Recreation" and I love Ron Swanson. (H/T EW with link to big version.)

NATO puts Libya on double secret probation - Here comes the mission creep. CNN: "NATO may go for enforcement of 'no fly plus'."

A bunch of economists agree - Politico: "Unsustainable budget threatens nation."

Extra - From the Corner.

Weird science - Here's a diversion for you: "NASA picks its Best and Worst Scifi movies."

Betty Friedan is dead - Who gives a fig what the National Organization of Women (NOW) has to say about Sarah Palin? You might as well ask Bert Convy or some other relic of the 70s. That organization has been a joke since the "one free grope" rule was invoked.

Missed this one yesterday - Veronique de Rugy: "Autopilot programs will squeeze out everything else." Bye-bye, discretionary spending.

The Great Un-decider - Hot Air: "Obama will punt on Social Security reform." With video goodness of Candidate Obama telling us that "a candidate for President owes it to the American people to tell us where they stand." The actual President: not so much!

Americans don't like it - And the taxes haven't even kicked in yet. Reason: "The Sisyphean struggle to sell Obamacare." As Factchecker Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post notes, most of the Democrats' perpetual sales pitch involves oft-repeated lies.

Yes, it's another post about our crushing debt

Monty at AoSHQ links to a Victor Davis Hanson article then echoes my feelings exactly:

We are in a very real sense selling our own children into indentured servitude so we can continue to live beyond our means.
This makes me incredibly angry. It offends me on a very deep moral level. If we had simply arrived on the scene with the situation as it is, we'd be baying for blood and demanding fundamental changes. But since we have marinated in this dream-world for our entire lives, we simply take it as our due. There is the incoherent but widely-spread belief that...well, things will just work out, somehow, without anyone having to make any difficult decisions.

That's accurate: everybody except the "crazy" Tea Party is buying into the fiction that we can "grow" our way out of debt if we could just get the economy moving again even as the CBO reports that Obama's budget would double the national debt by 2021.

What's equally annoying is that a lot of newly-minted history buffs are pointing to Americans 100%+ debt-to-GDP load after World War II as a sign we can erase this debt again. Impossible. In 1946, Social Security didn't have pubic hair, Medicare wasn't yet enacted and America's economy was the only game in town, flush with returning GIs to fill the labor force. The situation this time is the exact opposite: our economy is losing ground to rapidly expanding economies (the ones lending us money), and the mandatory spending of entitlements and interest on the national debt are swallowing the federal budget.

What do we do? Congress is holding drag-out, knock-down debates on cutting $6 billion from the annual budget as we roll up over triple that amount in overspending in February alone. This is how the country dies, not with a bang but with the whimper of a downgraded credit rating.

Impeachment watch - They warned me in 2010 that if the Republicans gained control of the House of Representatives, there would be calls to impeach Barack Obama. And they were right!

Extra - Smug and sting at Instapundit.

Borrow from your left pocket to pay the right

Charles Krauthammer strikes back at White House budget chief Jack Lew over Social Security with "It's still an empty lockbox."

Invoking the “full faith and credit” mantra for those IOUs in the trust fund is empty bluster. It does not change the fact that, as the OMB itself acknowledged, those IOUs “do not consist of real economic assets that can be drawn down in the future to fund benefits.” Yet Lew continues to insist that these “special issue” trinkets will pay off seniors for the next 26 years.

Nonsense. That money is gone with the wind. Those trust fund trinkets are nothing more than a record of past borrowings. They say nothing about the future.

Consider: If Treasury had borrowed twice as much from Social Security in the past — producing twice as many IOUs sitting in the lockbox — would this mean the trust fund is today twice as strong? Solvent for 50-some years instead of just 26? Of course not. The trust fund “balances” are mere historical record-keeping. As the OMB itself admitted, future payouts will have to be met by future taxes and future borrowings — or by Social Security reform that, by reducing benefits, makes such taxing and borrowing unnecessary.

There is no third alternative. There is no free lunch. And there is nothing in the lockbox.

As I've noted for several fruitless years, those "special" Social Security bonds are an accounting trick and they represent claims on the U.S. Treasury that cannot be paid without either finding other sources of revenue and borrowing, or by monetizing the debt by printing money and allowing inflation to run away. Those "special" bonds don't exist in a vacuum: Social Security recipients want money and it has to come from somewhere.

Et tu, Streisand? - According to Lloyd Grove at the Daily Beast, the eggheads at the Aspen Ideas Festival have fallen out of love with Obama.

A trillion here, a trillion there - Pretty soon you're talking about crushing debt. WashPost: "CBO: Obama policies would require deficits of $9.5 trillion through 2021."

Related - Powerline finds that "slashing" the budget adds up to one-third of a french fry in a Big Mac meal.

Deciding not to decide

Remember when candidate Obama said that taking a position was "above my pay grade"? Good times. Here's Kimberley Strassel with "President 'Present.'"

While a bipartisan mix of Senators beg our President to take a position on the budget crisis, Obama's jetting off to South America for Carnival! But he'll be back in time for a Chicago party.

It's good to be the king President. Fire up Air Force One! Bammy wants deep-dish pizza.

Happy St. Patricks Day!

End of the line - Weekly Standard: "Mandatory spending to exceed all federal revenues."

Running out of other people's money

Kevin Williamson explains how we can't tax the rich to erase the deficit in "There aren't enough millionaires." For example: if we depend on only millionaires to wipe out the shortfall, we would have to increase their annual federal taxes by $6 million. Even people pulling down a cool million a year can't pay $6 million in taxes.

You can be fiscally sane, even when the government isn't - Megan McArdle has a common sense (cents?) rundown of the "10 quick pickups for your personal finances." For my money (yuk yuk), Beth Kobliner's "Get a Financial Life" should be required reading for every person starting out in a new job. Short version: save your money, dummy, and don't buy that Jet-Ski.

No Social Security reform from this White House - Moe Lane reads between the lines of a story from the Hill and correctly declares: "No SS reform from Obama Administration."

This is all theater from this Administration to spray a patina of "fiscal seriousness" before the inevitable election year pivot to "defending Grandma's check." It's pretty obvious from Obama's kiss-off to the Deficit Commission that he's going to nothing to tackle our long-term debt problem.

Obama's got top men working on the government - Top. Men.

"The claim is a breathtaking fraud" - Don't know how I missed this one but Charles Krauthammer had an article the other day about how the White House is embracing the fiction that Social Security is fiscally sound.

Extra - Rep. Paul Ryan on what's driving our debt.

Earthquake in Japan - There's not much I can add at this late hour except that I was listening to NPR this morning and the reporter in Japan had to pause every minute or so to say "...here comes an aftershock."

Used cars for sale, slight water damage:

(H/T The Truth About Cars)

Everybody knows it's coming - Deficit commission chair Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson call our coming collapse "The most predictable economic crisis in history." The canary in the coal mine is that big investors like Warren Buffet are edging away from U.S. bonds.

In other economic news, President Obama has called a press conference tomorrow to talk about oil prices. My prediction: he's going to say the Commerce Clause can force Americans to buy a Chevy Volt.

More - Congressional Democrats to Obama on the budget: "Are you gonna do anything?" Obama: "No time! Gotta give my big speech on bullying."

Vote of no confidence - National Review Exchequer: "Biggest bond fund dumps U.S. debt."

What? What'd I miss? - That was sudden: "Wisconsin Senate GOP votes to strip state workers of collective bargaining rights."

Extra - Good review from Legal Insurrection.

Government spending: is there anything it can't do?

I guess President Obama was in Boston yesterday at a fundraiser for the DCCC. His speech was boilerplate stuff: what a terrible economy we inherited, look how we turned it around, and we need to address the deficit but let's give all these schoolkids their own laptops.

This section, however, boggles the imagination:

We’re going to have to make an investment to make sure that research and development, the cutting-edge technologies that drive our economy, continue to happen right here in Boston. You go over to MIT, you go over to Harvard, and they’ll be the first ones to tell you if we don’t have federal research grants, a lot of the work we do is not going to happen. And if it’s not happening there, then all those biotech firms, all those medical advances aren’t going to be taking place here, or along Route 128.

I love Obama's credulity here: these colleges say that unless they get a big pile of taxpayer cash, it's back to the Middle Ages because this research is "not going to happen." (As the Church Lady would say: "How convenient!") Remember how Thomas Edison took that big federal grant from Rutherford B. Hayes to develop the light bulb? And Steve Jobs built Apple on the taxpayer's dime? Thank heaven for public funding to underwrite Jonas Salk's research on the polio vaccine. Otherwise, it might never have happened.

Three Pinocchios - WashPost: "Did we say Obama's a liar on the level of budget cuts? We meant to say he's a triple liar."

Very bad things - Christian Science Monitor: "What happens if Congress doesn't rein in national debt?"

Today's most unexpected headline - Politico: "Reid: Save federal funding for the cowboy poets!" It's all about priorities, people. I mean "y'all."

The black hole - Over at Opinion Journal, Gerald Seib takes note that interest on the national debt is "a quiet cancer" on the nation's fiscal position. I think it was former newscaster David Brinkley who commented that interest on the debt buys America nothing: no Medicare, no highways, no shiny new aircraft carriers. And every year, we're paying a bigger share of nothing.

Sucks to be you, Generation Y

I'm bone-tired of hearing Nancy Pelosi and others complain that anything over $6 billion in budget cuts is tantamount to kicking schoolkids into the snow. I wonder where's the moral outrage of saddling these same kids with mounds of debt, high inflation, and an anemic economy. Over at National Review, they lay out the numbers in "An Emergency for Americans under 30."

A news alert for the Debt Paying Generation: President Obama’s budget for Fiscal Year 2012 brings the national debt from $14.1 trillion to nearly $26.4 trillion by 2021. This will take the amount of debt per working American by the end of this fiscal year - all 153,000,000 of them - from $101,150 to more than $161,631. Young Americans are going to get hammered by this debt if entitlement, welfare, and defense reforms are not under way within the next two to five years.
Those 115 million Americans between 5 and 30 years old are going to have to absorb virtually all of this debt.

Just today, word came out that the Obama Administration has presided over the largest monthly deficit in American history, overspending by $223 billion in February. Yet it's next-to-impossible to get Congress to cut $6B, much less $100B, from the yearly budget which is now running a deficit over $1.6 trillion.

Sorry, kids.

Extra - Hit & Run: "Are we broke yet? Michael Moore says no, reality begs to differ."

More - Via Powerline, the budget cuts in perspective:

Too good to excerpt - Robert Samuelson: "Social Security is Middle-Class Warfare."

"We are setting a trap for ourselves" - Here's Tyler Cowen in the NY Times: "It's Time to Face the Fiscal Illusion."

Always look on the bright side of life

I know I can be a gloomy Gus with all my hand-wringing over America's debt, so it helps to read some encouraging words from eminent British historian Paul Johnson:

"Of course I worry about America," he says. "The whole world depends on America ultimately, particularly Britain. And also, I love America - a marvelous country. But in a sense I don't worry about America because I think America has such huge strengths - particularly its freedom of thought and expression - that it's going to survive as a top nation for the foreseeable future. And therefore take care of the world."

He goes on to say that the Tea Party movement "cheered me up to no end" and he's a fan of Sarah Palin.

The man is a menace! - Here's a NY Times story about David Koch's $100 million gift to open a cancer research center at M.I.T.

Steyn speaks - Here's Mark Steyn in an interview with Hugh Hewitt discussing the debt crisis and the reality of entitlements: "But the fact is, these entitlements are unsustainable. So Americans can tell pollsters they're quite happy with 1930's entitlement provisions for Social Security, but it ain't gonna be there."

Sebelius admits double-counting

It's electric! - Megan McArdle reports that Chevrolet has sold nearly 1,000 Volts. Rising gas prices should push sales of electric cars into the stratosphere, maybe four-digits.

We're all Keynesians kleptomaniacs now

It's depressingly familiar: another poll showing that – even as the country racks up record-shattering deficits – Americans of all political persuasions don't want to do a thing about spending.

Jeff at Protein Wisdom despairs: "And here we thought the country was ready to grow up" and Doug Ross follows up with a post titled "Poll finds lack of support for arithmetic, logic and reason."

As depressed as I was when Obama became President, I held out a long-expressed hope that only a Democratic President could reform entitlements, as "only Nixon can go to China." But it's now glaringly obvious that Obama is utterly and completely unserious about cutting the budget deficit in any meaningful way.

We're going to keep spending and borrowing and spending and putting it on the kid's tab.

More heartless governors - Guess who's talking about rolling back pensions for police officers unless he gets tax extensions? California's own Jerry Brown. Meanwhile, over in New York, Andrew Cuomo's proposed health care and education cuts to close a $10 billion deficit are not going over well with the state's Democrats.

Car's a clunker

According to the Detroit News, Consumer Reports took a look at the Chevy Volt and scratched its head:

"When you are looking at purely dollars and cents, it doesn't really make a lot of sense. The Volt isn't particularly efficient as an electric vehicle and it's not particularly good as a gas vehicle either in terms of fuel economy," said David Champion, the senior director of Consumer Reports auto testing center at a meeting with reporters here. "This is going to be a tough sell to the average consumer."

Well, I'm surprised by this assessment since everybody knows that the combination of a corporate model set in the 1950s mixed with an entrenched union (see 50s model) then infused with government intervention always produces gold.

Extra – Patterico "Great news about that Government Motors car": "So it’s not very good, but it is very expensive...And when this car fails, will GM need a bailout to pay for this boondoggle?"

Stop, hey, what's that smell? - The push for low-flow toilets in San Francisco has resulted in more sludge in the sewer system and a rotten egg smell.

To combat the stench, San Francisco has spent $14 million on bleach...from Halliburton! Cheney wins again!

Sea of red - Here's a little piece of trivia I found over at Big Government and this article titled "Financial reality, part III: Reforming Social Security." "If we were to double federal taxes on all Americans, our deficits would still be in excess of $400 billion per year." Yikes.

Oscars tonight - YouTube won't allow embedding of this video but it's one of my favorite Academy Awards moments. Louise Fletcher wins best actress for her role as Nurse Ratched in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and thanks her deaf parents with sign language.

What to focus on - Tigerhawk has a chart of the threat to the U.S. economy: "It's the entitlements."

Iran reactor don't run - Here's some good news to start your day from the NY Times: "Iran reports a major setback at a nuclear power plant." Could be the Stuxnet, maybe? Good.