Actually, no. A million here and a million there and you still aren't talking about real money. It's not just that the Obama vacation distracts people, it's that people actually believe if we just cut a little here, tightened a little there, we'd be out of our spending problem. We wouldn't, and the focus on the piddling things takes away attention from the real problem.
We spend around $300 billion on interest on the national debt, every year. That's 81,000 Obama Christmas vacations. It's almost a thousand dollars for every man, woman, and child in this country. I want to be fiscally sound, and at one time I was a budget hawk, but the more time I spent with the budget the more I realized that until we get serious about entitlements, it just doesn't matter.
Yep. And that is with the interest rates paid at historically
low rates. If they were to rise to the average over the last century, the debt service would be even higher.
I believe Democrats have absolutely no interest in addressing this and Republicans (at least the establishment types) are scared to even talk about it.
As I have said elsewhere, entitlement reform is inevitable. We can make the painful adjustments now, or the really,
really painful adjustments later. I would vote for any candidate that proposed spending cuts, even if accompanied by tax increases. But the spending cuts are non-negotiable for me. The only way we can get the deficit under control is spending cuts. Not reductions in increases, or the magical "we'll cut spending in the out-years, 5-10 years from now, but claim credit for the cuts now" spending cuts, but spending cuts
now. Of course, the evil morons aka Democrats, will demagogue the issue and tell voters, "Give me one more fix (tax increase) and I promise, I'll get my spending under control." That is why Democrats are such scum, worthy of only contempt.
Without courageous Congressmen (and women), however, who are willing to make the hard decisions
now, the later choices will be even harder. If we don't make hard choices now, then the choices will get made for us later and the later choices will be really really bad for seniors, as in, "We won't be increasing entitlement spending next year, we won't be covering
any of your life-saving medicine at all, sorry" kind of hard. My father, who is a loyal MSNBC watcher and an even more loyal Democrat, when I pin him down about entitlement spending and the inevitable collapse they entail, literally says, "I hope I die before the spending cuts hit." He literally is willing to leave me, and my kids (and their kids) to deal with the carnage. He sees this as "winning." That makes me want to punch him in the mouth, but MSNBC says that if we just taxed the rich more, he might make it to then end of his days before the crisis hits. After that, he doesn't care. I thank God that in the history of this republic there are better men than him.
