President Barack Obama will propose on Monday a $3.8 trillion budget for fiscal 2011 that projects the deficit will shoot up to a record $1.6 trillion this year, but would push the red ink down to about $700 billion, or 4% of the gross domestic product, by 2013, according to congressional aides.
The deficit for the current fiscal year, which ends on Sept. 30, would eclipse last year’s $1.4 trillion deficit, in part due to new spending on a proposed jobs package. The president also wants $25 billion for cash-strapped state governments, mainly to offset their funding of the Medicaid health program for the poor.
When is it that we Americans will say we need to live within our means? It is hard to balance a household budget and requires some tough choices. We need politicians who are willing to make tough choices, too – increase taxes and/or cut spending. It isn’t fun to do at home, but is necessary; we must do the same in Washington.
I hadn’t been reading my daily Bible for a lesson for a while, but after one of your services a couple of weeks ago, I was inspired to read on the following Monday. I have not been able to plan for the future in these unseen times for several years now and was surely not expecting to get direction from a daily reading. The reading happened to be the story of Joseph and the Pharaoh. It has remained in my thoughts since then. The story was the Pharaoh’s dream about the 7 beautiful fat cows and the 7 ugly skinny cows. In the dream the ugly cows ate the beautiful cows. Joseph interprets the dream as 7 years of great harvests and 7 bad years of severe drought and prepares Egypt for the same. After I finished the reading I compared the Pharaoh’s situation with that of my own. If there is a correlation, which I tend to believe there may be, then the drought began about 2 1/2 years ago and we have about 4 1/2 more years to go. This has eased my mind so very much because I had been like a school child waiting for the school bus counting every moment. Now I know the fix is not coming tomorrow and I should be preparing for a longer run of difficult economical times.
Remember, please … revenue and appropriations bills come from Congress. The following numbers are therefore quite germane:
a) Republican control of Congress, 1995 to 2006 — average annual deficit $104 Billion.
b) Democrat control of Congress, 2007 to today — average annual deficit $1.1 Trillion.
Any questions?
3, it’s all Bush’s fault.
Perspective from Instapundit (check out the graph at the link):