Showing posts with label federal spending. Show all posts
Showing posts with label federal spending. Show all posts

Monday, October 8, 2012

Charts of the day


.

Alternate headline: Dear, Liza...*


Illustrating the absurdity that Bush was responsible for spending deficits:










And via Hot Air, a look at federal spending per household since 1965 in inflation-adjusted 1965 dollars:


(click to enlarge)






We're constantly being beat over the head, especially at election time that we need to spend more on our schools (we'd be neglecting the children, otherwise), firefighters and infrastructure (bridges!).

OK, sure. We don't want to be the meanies but... what the hell? Where is all that our money going?

A 152% increase in spending for declining classroom performance and an evidently declining national infrastructure?



*Is there a hole in the bucket?





Wednesday, December 2, 2009

The failed jobs program that dare not speak its own name

Over ten months into his term, President Obama will address the nation’s unemployment problem which the Labor Department does not expect to improve when it rolls out the latest figures tomorrow.

The President will hold a jobs summit starting tomorrow that will include a lot of different people but a lot of other different people are worried about any jobs program sponsored by the federal government would contribute mightily to our already spiraling-out-of-control debt while still other people(D) are mostly concerned with saving their electoral bacon next November.

That’s essentially the tone of the article here that fails to address the fact that we’ve been down this road before. President Obama’s first legislative baby was the $787 billion monstrosity called porkulus signed into law back in February and which was not going to let unemployment go above 8%. We are at 10.2% right now and probably climbing and the President’s big idea? More government.

Not that anybody at this summit is going to be as impolite to address the point of why they are there to spend more tax dollars when porkulus is continuing to do it quite nicely, thank you, without any discernable results.

Mr. Obama invited academics, business and labor leaders to a White House seminar to hear their suggestions for what might spark them to begin hiring again.

(because academics and labor are always at the forefront of job creation ideas. Just ask the city of Chula Vista how they fared with labor leaders' job creation ideas during negotiations in developing that city’s waterfront)

That Obama “invited” labor leaders had an odd ring to it as a summons to the West Wing would not consist of anything more than a shout down the hallway to the nearly ubiquitous White House presence of Big Labor.

And more proof that an Ivy League affiliation is actually becoming a liability, here’s somebody named Alan Blinder of Princeton:

Princeton University economist Alan Blinder, a summit attendee and a former Federal Reserve vice chairman, supports public works programs for low-wage workers. But he warned in a recent article against providing tax credits to employers. It would be difficult, he said, to distinguish between new hiring tied to the economic rebound versus hires sparked by tax credits.


Whaaa? So, there are “good” jobs and “bad” jobs? Blinder doesn’t want the jobs situation to improve if it cannot be tied directly to the wondrous programs that will be generated by this jobs summit? Idiots like Blinder are leading indicators that this jobs summit will be every bit the Charlie-Foxtrot one would imagine it to be.

Good luck with that, Mr. President.

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Its like Re-Gifting; only not as warmly received.

Seems we always have time to bemoan the “environmental legacy” we will leave our children, grand-children and great grand-children but nary can we muster a raised eyebrow regarding the “financial legacy” we will be leaving them.

Why is this? Perhaps its because, ironically enough, its always easier for politicians in power (and we the voters who put them there) to talk and act in the abstract rather than the concrete.

We can use historical trends, population growth forecasting, federal retirement ages, current and projected federal spending and revenue forecasting to come up with a pretty decent idea of how much our federal debt will be as a function GDP but…. that’s just a bunch of numbers and graphs. Lets burn food to tackle global-warming, instead! Yeah, we have no earthly clue as to how much, if at all, that will effect global-warming (if the man-made effect exists at all) but it sure sounds like a hell of a lot of fun and its what those Hawkeye farmers want to hear every four years in January, anyway. Woo-hoo!

Anyway, Pete Peterson and Dave Walker will testify before the House Budget Committee today about America's deteriorating fiscal health. Click here, for the Peter G. Peterson Foundation’s State of the Union’s Finances. Cheery stuff.