THE HYPOCRISY OF POLITICIANS KNOWS NO BOUNDS
From the Congressional Record, March 16, 2006
Mr. (Senator) OBAMA. Mr. President, I rise today to talk about America’s debt problem. The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies.
Over the past 5 years, our federal debt has increased by $3.5 trillion to $8.6 trillion. That is ‘‘trillion’’ with a ‘‘T.’’ That is money that we have borrowed from the Social Security trust fund, borrowed from China and Japan, borrowed from American taxpayers. And over the next 5 years, between now and 2011, the President’s budget will increase the debt by almost another $3.5 trillion.
Numbers that large are sometimes hard to understand. Some people may wonder why they matter. Here is why: This year, the Federal Government will spend $220 billion on interest. That is more money to pay interest on our national debt than we’ll spend on Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. That is more money to pay interest on our debt this year than we will spend on education, homeland security, transportation, and veterans benefits combined. It is more money in one year than we are likely to spend to rebuild the devastated gulf coast in a way that honors the best of America.
And the cost of our debt is one of the fastest growing expenses in the Federal budget. This rising debt is a hidden domestic enemy, robbing our cities and States of critical investments in infrastructure like bridges, ports, and levees; robbing our families and our children of critical investments in education and health care reform; robbing our seniors of the retirement and health security they have counted on.
Every dollar we pay in interest is a dollar that is not going to investment in America’s priorities. Instead, interest payments are a significant tax on all Americans—a debt tax that Washington doesn’t want to talk about. If Washington were serious about honest tax relief in this country, we would see an effort to reduce our national debt by returning to responsible fiscal policies.
But we are not doing that. Despite repeated efforts by Senators CONRAD and FEINGOLD, the Senate continues to reject a return to the commonsense Pay-go rules that used to apply. Previously, Pay-go rules applied both to increases in mandatory spending and to tax cuts. The Senate had to abide by the commonsense budgeting principle of balancing expenses and revenues.
Unfortunately, the principle was abandoned, and now the demands of budget discipline apply only to spending. As a result, tax breaks have not been paid for by reductions in Federal spending, and thus the only way to pay for them has been to increase our deficit to historically high levels and borrow more and more money. Now we have to pay for those tax breaks plus the cost of borrowing for them. Instead of reducing the deficit, as some people claimed, the fiscal policies of this administration and its allies in Congress will add more than $600 million in debt for each of the next 5 years. That is why I will once again cosponsor the Pay-go amendment and continue to hope that my colleagues will return to a smart rule that has worked in the past and can work again.
Our debt also matters internationally. My friend, the ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, likes to remind us that it took 42 Presidents 224 years to run up only $1 trillion of foreign-held debt. This administration did more than that in just 5 years. Now, there is nothing wrong with borrowing from foreign countries. But we must remember that the more we depend on foreign nations to lend us money, the more our economic security is tied to the whims of foreign leaders whose interests might not be aligned with ours.
Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that ‘‘the buck stops here.’’ Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.
I therefore intend to oppose the effort to increase America’s debt limit.
JIMSKI says:
Where is that guy. I want him for president.
O wait……………….
I see what you did there.
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15th January 2013 at 1:15 pm
A. R. Wasem says:
Comrade Hussein – Our scumbag Kenyan communist faux “president”. Absolutely no action by the fedgov during his “administration” has been Constitutional. Ergo, resistance to the continuation of said actions BY ANY MEANS is “legal” under our founding principles and documents. Each individual must decide for themselves the method of personally carrying out such resistance. Best Constitutional-Libertarian Regards to all.
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15th January 2013 at 1:23 pm
bluestem says:
Narcissist to the max. John
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15th January 2013 at 1:42 pm
card802 says:
Go back at look at any attempt to raise the debt ceiling.
If a republican president wants to raise it, all democrats are against it, if a democrat wants to raise it, all republicans are against it.
Purely partisan. Republicans will submit, democrats and the president will glow with another fresh victory for the party. Raise that ceiling, hell, blow that fucker to the moon.
Let the bond bubble pop, lets get this over with…..
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15th January 2013 at 1:53 pm
Eddie says:
What happens when somebody gets elected President? Do they take you behind the curtain and show you who is really in charge?
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15th January 2013 at 2:57 pm
Ron says:
You sure dont here about any real cuts,thats for sure.Theyre like heroin addicts.
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15th January 2013 at 2:59 pm
crazyivan says:
@EDDIE,
“What happens when somebody gets elected President? Do they take you behind the curtain and show you who is really in charge?”
No, but they do convince them that THEY are not in charge, unequivicouly and right fuckin now.
Kennedy had a hard time swallowing that one.
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15th January 2013 at 3:21 pm
Kill Bill says:
Asking the same two parties to fix the huge fuck-up that they are, and the mess they have created, is like asking a madman to defuse the ultimate weapon they have created.
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15th January 2013 at 4:16 pm
Kill Bill says:
What happens when somebody gets elected President? -Eddie
First they perform frontal lobotomy, then they put them in this bubble, kinda like the one Get Smart used, and then they pipe only the information, true and false, they want him to have, then they parade him around and act like he is something very important which vastly overinflates the already hugmongous ego and reads the script they were given.
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15th January 2013 at 4:21 pm
Muck About says:
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15th January 2013 at 4:44 pm
Muck About says:
One more try..
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15th January 2013 at 4:46 pm
IndenturedServant says:
The part that I just cannot get my head around is how, what had to be a majority of voters, either did not to see what was being created or simply did not care. Maybe the tin foil hat crowd is right and it was all intentionally engineered and we were all duped.
Regardless of the real answer, any answer is just more than I can get my head around on account of the level of arrogance, narcissism, depravity or willful ignorance involved. Fuck!
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15th January 2013 at 4:49 pm