Obama Has Lowest Average 1stQ GDP Growth of Any President on Record

Even if you leave out the first quarter of 2009—when the recession that started in December 2007 was still ongoing--President Barack Obama has presided over the lowest average first-quarter GDP growth of any president who has served since 1947, which is the earliest year for which the Bureau of Economic Analysis has calculated quarterly GDP growth.

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Government Spending Affects Gross Domestic Product

We have tried spending a lot of money to jumpstart the economy, and it has failed. Now we need to cut spending and lift the uncertainty paralyzing economic activity. That approach will not just be more fiscally responsible. It will also empower individuals and entrepreneurs, and they are the only ones who can bring on a real recovery...

National Center for Policy Analysis

Canada has the lowest ratio of net debt to gross domestic product among the Group of Seven industrialized countries and will keep that distinction until at least 2014

Obama Stimulus Made Economic Crisis Worse, `Black Swan' Author Taleb Says

The first two fiscal years in which Obama has served will see the two biggest federal deficits as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product since the end of World War II

Obama Added More to National Debt in First 19 Months Than All Presidents from Washington Through Reagan Combined, Says Gov’t Data

And then there's this:

CBO's bad news today

6/30/10:

...Specifically, Elmendorf noted that spending on major mandatory health care programs such as Medicare is on track to double by 2035, up to 10% of GDP from 5% today. That increase is the equivalent of $700 billion this year in additional spending, Elmendorf said.

Add in the less dramatic increase in Social Security spending, and the cost to federal coffers of mandatory entitlement programs will reach 16% of GDP by 2035. That's not very far below what the government has spent on all federal programs and activities on average over the past 40 years...

And later in the article:

The only way to bring the federal budget into better balance would be to sharply reduce U.S. spending, drastically increase taxes to rates never before seen in the United States or some less dramatic combination of the two, Elmendorf said.

Read the whole thing

The Revenue Limits of Tax and Spend

From WSJ: Whether rates are high or low, evidence shows our tax system won't collect more than 20% of GDP!

We have one chance to save America

The Coming Deficit War
Dick Morris

We predict Republicans will takeover of both Houses of Congress. The question is: Once they achieve power, what will they do with it?

Clearly the dominant issue for the new Congress in 2011 will be how to bring down the deficit. Democrats will, of course favor tax increases, and Republicans will resist them. But drowning out the partisan rhetoric will be the editorial drumbeat from the economic and journalistic establishments that will call for compromise, splitting the difference between the two.

Here is where the Republicans' new congressional majorities must hold the line. Every single GOP member of the House and the Senate must make a firm commitment to oppose any and all tax increases. In the coming congressional and senatorial primaries, it is our duty as voters to support only those Republicans who sign the no-tax pledge of the Americans for Tax Reform.

When Obama took office, he had one paramount goal in mind: to increase the size of the federal government. Socialism is not an epithet or even an economic philosophy. Whether a nation is socialist or not is determined by a single, simple statistic: What percent of the economy (gross domestic product) goes to the public sector? When Obama took office, the U.S. public sector (federal, state and local) spent about 30 percent of GDP. Now it is 36 percent. If Obamacare lives to be fully implemented, it will pass 40 percent.

The United Kingdom has a public sector that accounts for about 40 percent of its economy. Germany is at about 48 percent. France is at 50 percent, and Sweden at 54 percent.

If Obama is allowed to let the public sector expand to 40 percent of our GDP, we will become a European socialist democracy, to our everlasting detriment. We will thereby inherit the sclerosis that afflicts Europe -- permanently high unemployment and low economic growth.

But after his swearing-in, President Obama couldn't say that he was going to raise taxes to move us toward socialism. So, instead, he raised spending to do it and borrowed the money to pay for it. Now, with interest rates set to rise (because the Fed is not printing money as fast as it was), our debt service burden will be so onerous that it will become obvious to everyone that the deficit Obama has created is unsupportable.

Now, we pay an average of 3.5 percent interest on our $12 trillion national debt. That works out to an annual debt service bill of about $400 billion. While large, it's not impossible. Defense spending, for comparison, is $550 billion, Social Security is $400 billion, Medicare is $300 billion, Medicaid about $200 billion.

But, when interest rates rise to 7-8 percent -- as they must now that the Treasury cannot just borrow newly printed money but must get real loans from real lenders to finance its deficit -- the burden will grow to close to $1 trillion, about a quarter of our budget. Put differently, the entire take of personal income taxes in the United States comes to about $900 billion. All of it will go to debt service.

The United States will become just like the subprime mortgage holders who borrowed at low teaser rates only to see their interest grow until they had to sign over their entire paychecks to the mortgage company.

Obama has been expecting this outcome all along. It is how he will achieve socialism in the United States. He will use the pressure his deficit creates to force higher taxes that will permanently expand the public sector.

Ronald Reagan increased the deficit to force liberals to stop spending. Obama has increased it to force conservatives to vote for higher taxes.

Once a spending increase is matched by a tax increase, it lasts forever. That is how Obama plans to move the government's share of the GDP permanently over 40 percent -- into socialist territory.

But the Republicans can and must stop him. By refusing to vote for a tax increase and cutting back Obama's crazy spending, slicing his stimulus package and ratcheting back federal Medicaid payments (by zero funding the increases built into Obamacare), Republicans can cut the deficit without higher taxes.

Indeed, the party should commit to lowering taxes by cutting capital gains levies to stimulate investment, jobs and revenues. The only tax that works economically is a tax cut!

Such a defiant stand, in the face of withering criticism from the media, economists and the Federal Reserve, can only be made by hardy souls. Indeed, such a stance by a Republican Congress will lead to exactly the same sort of government shutdown -- when Obama vetoes the budget -- as discredited the GOP in 1995-1996 and led to Clinton's re-election.

But history will not repeat itself. The Republicans will win this confrontation with the White House. Everybody in America knows that Obama has increased spending out of all proportion. Everyone knows that higher taxes would be devastating. And the Republicans must capitalize on these convictions so deeply held by the vast majority of voters to prevail in the coming deficit wars.

For now, our job as conservatives is to nominate only those Republicans who have taken the pledge not to raise taxes. Some may break their word. But we can be quite sure that those who do not give it in the first place will not hesitate to cooperate with the Democratic tax hikes that spell socialism for America.

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Dick Morris and Eileen McGann are authors of the new book "2010: Take Back America -- A Battle Plan." To find out more about Dick Morris and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com. Distributed By Creators.Com

Copyright 2010 Dick Morris And Eileen Mcgann

CBO report: Debt will rise to 90% of GDP

I doubt that anyone (outside of the slobbering Democrats who adore this monster) could not avoid thinking that Obama is purposely destroying this country that he grew up hating so much...although, I suppose, that it could simply be a matter of monumental incompetence, aided and abbetted by his party cohorts (but everyone claims he soooo intelligent...)

President Obama's fiscal 2011 budget will generate nearly $10 trillion in cumulative budget deficits over the next 10 years, $1.2 trillion more than the administration projected, and raise the federal debt to 90 percent of the nation's economic output by 2020, the Congressional Budget Office reported Thursday.

Read more if you can stomach it

American Economic Association: chances are slim for U.S. growth

U.S. growth prospects deemed bleak in new decade
Pedro Nicolaci da Costa
ATLANTA

Sun Jan 3, 2010 6:55pm ESTATLANTA (Reuters) - A dismal job market, a crippled real estate sector and hobbled banks will keep a lid on U.S. economic growth over the coming decade, some of the nation's leading economists said on Sunday.

U.S.

Speaking at American Economic Association's mammoth yearly gathering, experts from a range of political leanings were in surprising agreement when it came to the chances for a robust and sustained expansion:

They are slim.

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WSJ: THE STIMULUS DIDN'T WORK

The data show government transfers and rebates have not increased consumption at all

Some Inconvenient Truths About Medicare and the New 'Public Plan'

By Regina Herzlinger and Robert Book

[Remember, Medicare is also a government program that has run, already, into serious trouble.]

The fundamental problem with health care reform is the absence of realistic plans to reduce unit costs. Without cost controls, tens of millions of newly-insured people will further cripple U.S. global competitiveness, which is already grievously injured because the U.S. spends roughly 70 percent more on health care, as a percentage of GDP, than other developed nations, yet cannot point to commensurate 70 percent increases in value.

[Those who ignore the past are condemned to repeat it!]

Medicare's alleged cost-controlling ability is illusory, driven by faulty math, regulatory power to shift costs to the private sector, and pricing formulas that pass expenses to taxpayers and future generations.

The 800-pound gorilla is Medicare's unfunded liability for future benefits, estimated by Medicare Trustees at $38 trillion. Medicare created this massive liability by charging current enrollees too low a price: government used the payments by working non-beneficiaries to make up the shortfall. If Medicare were a private insurance company, it would have to increase its costs by an additional trillion dollars annually to account for the interest on this debt (assuming 3% interest). But the federal government's accounting ignores this expense. [What would happen if you pretended that you really didn't have certain expenses? You'd end up in jail where I'm convinced at least half these crooks belong!]

Will government continue to rob Peter to pay Paul when it prices the new public plan? If so, an estimated 83 million people would eventually move out of private plans into a grossly underpriced Medicare, vastly increasing the liability. At $38 trillion, it already equals than two and a half times 2008 GDP.

Medicare's cost advantages are dubious in other ways...

Read the whole thing

Ten Tax Facts for Tax Day Tea Parties

GATEWAY PUNDIT REPORTS:

#1. Under the Obama budget, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that the national debt will double over the next five years; and it will triple over the next 10 years to $17.3 trillion.

#2. Under the Obama budget, CBO projects that the national debt will soar over the next 10 years from 40 percent of GDP today to a shocking 82.4 percent. (Ronald Reagan left office with the national debt at 42 percent of GDP).

#3. The president’s budget also states that total federal borrowing will grow by $2.7 trillion this year alone, an increase of 27 percent in one year!

#4. The budget President Obama proposes for this year increases federal spending by an incredible 34 percent over the previous year, with a total of $4 trillion in federal spending, the highest ever.

#5. The federal budget deficit (not the national debt) would reach $1.845 trillion this year, according to the CBO, the highest ever. That would be more than seven times Reagan’s largest budget deficit of $221 billion, which caused so much consternation among Reagan’s critics.

#6. The CBO estimates that this Obama budget deficit will total an astounding 13.1 percent of GDP, more than one-eighth of the entire U.S. economy, for the federal budget deficit alone! Under George Bush, the federal deficit for 2008 was 3.2 percent of GDP. The deficit for fiscal year 2007, in the last budget adopted when Congress was controlled by Republican majorities, was $162 billion, or 1.2 percent of GDP.

#7. The Obama budget also includes $1 trillion in tax increases on the upper 5 percent of income earners, mostly tax rate increases. But the top 5 percent of income earners already pays 60 percent of all income taxes.

#8. The Obama budget projects that revenues from the corporate income tax will more than double in 3 years, increasing, in fact, by more than 124 percent.

#9. Another $645 billion tax increase comes from President Obama’s anti-global warming cap and trade system, which is essentially an energy tax on the production and use of carbon energy, such as oil, natural gas, and coal.

#10. While the Obama administration claims to have cut $2 trillion from the budget over 10 years, fully $1.5 trillion of those “cuts” actually represents the troop drawdown in Iraq, which was already scheduled to occur under the Bush administration. Of the remaining $500 billion in budget “savings,” fully $311 billion is categorized as “interest savings” but is actually an additional tax increase on upper income earners.