Too bad, Barry

Even if Congress passes legislation -- a good bet -- the finished product will fall far short of Obama's extravagant promises. It will not cover everyone. It will not control costs. It will worsen the budget outlook. It will lead to higher taxes. It will disrupt how, or whether, companies provide insurance for their workers. As the real-life (as opposed to rhetorical) consequences unfold, they will rebut Obama's claim that he has "solved" the health care problem. His reputation will suffer.

It already has. Despite Obama's eloquence and command of the airwaves, public suspicions are rising...

Read the whole thing

Budget Deficits for Dummies

Funny in that bizarre, other-worldly way where you know you are totally screwed and you are not quite sure if you will be able to do something about it...

HAT TIP: InstaPundit

A graph is worth a thousand words

Unless we cut spending now, we’ll be setting up an inflationary ride like nothing we’ve seen before.

Surprise, surprise: Obama's health care plan is going to cost lots more than he said it would!

June 12 (Bloomberg) -- Health-care overhaul legislation being drafted by House Democrats will include $600 billion in tax increases and $400 billion in cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel said.

Democrats will work on the bill’s details next week as they struggle through “what kind of heartburn” it will cause to agree on how to pay for revamping the health-care system, Rangel, a New York Democrat, said today. He also said the measure’s cost will reach beyond the $634 billion President Barack Obama proposed in his budget request to Congress as a down payment for the policy changes.

Asked whether the cost of a health-care overhaul would be more than $1 trillion, Rangel said, “the answer is yes.”

House Health-Care Bill to Include $600 Billion in Tax Increases

Obama and God

What does God have in common with Obama?

• Neither has a birth certificate

What's the difference between God and Obama?

• God does not think he's Obama
  
  
• Liberals love Obama
  
  
• Obama gets better press
  
  
• God only demands to be worshipped once a week
  
  
• God asks for only 10 percent of your money
  
  
• God gives you freedom to live your life as you choose
  
  
• God's plan to save us is actually written down for you to read

From The Rush Limbaugh radio show today, June 10, 2009

The comparison to God comes after recent comments by Newsweek editor Evan Thomas, who said on MSNBC's "Hardball" that Obama was "sort of God."

Health Reform's Savings Myth

"Health-care reform is entitlement reform" has become a mantra of the Obama administration. The idea is that Congress can add a massive health-care program this year -- covering the uninsured -- and use the same measures that pay for the health reform to fix the broader budget problems. If that sounds too good to be true, there's a reason.

Read more

Get ready for one of the most vicious of all vicious cycles

Obamanomics is a disaster, and it couldn’t come at a worse time. Four years ago, the country may have been resilient enough to shake off the worst effects of Obama’s policies, but with our economy already reeling, his taxes will kill any chance at recovery. We will spend years running up massive deficits — which will prompt Obama to impose higher and broader taxes. Get ready for one of the most vicious of all vicious cycles.

HotAir: Martin Feldstein's prediction

WSJ: Tax Increases Could Kill The Recovery

We're bleeeding to death!!!

This should scare the pants off of you!

The Biblical-proportion deficit predictions we’ve been hearing about are based on spending targets, but more importantly, on receipt targets. If spending is more than budgeted, the deficits will be larger, but only if receipts come in as expected. If receipts are greater than expected, then the deficits will be smaller than predicted (that was the Reagan-era phenomenon). If receipts are lower than expected, then the deficit will be larger. If both are off, such as spending being more than budgeted, and receipts are less than predicted, the deficit death spiral will be enormous.

And that is exactly what is happening, at such an accelerated rate that the economy is contracting… for the first time in decades and decades.

See multiple charts and graphs.

Based on this alarming trend, one would expect the OMB and CDO to revise their deficit predictions and for the press to report on it with all the vigor of Chicken Little.

Don’t hold your breath waiting for that to happen.

Hemorrhaging – Especially Uncle Sam

It IS Obama!

FACT CHECK: Obama disowns deficit he helped shape

WASHINGTON (AP) - "That wasn't me," President Barack Obama said on his 100th day in office, disclaiming responsibility for the huge budget deficit waiting for him on Day One.

It actually was him - and the other Democrats controlling Congress the previous two years - who shaped a budget so out of balance.

Read more

2010 budget shows significant rise in spending

Obama's First Hundred Days (Otherwise known as The Last Days)

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.