Water Through a Sieve: Obama Asks for THIRD Increase of Fed Debt Ceiling, Hike Will Skyrocket to $16.394 Trillion Debt (video)
Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on January 1, 2012
Because being in unprecedented debt of $15 trillion just isn’t enough for the Spendthrift in Chief. Open that wallet wide, America, and get a lot more skin in Obama’s game.
Trillions of dollars irresponsibly flowing away like water through a sieve… Reuters reports — Obama to ask for debt limit hike: Treasury official:
The White House plans to ask Congress by the end of the week for an increase in the government’s debt ceiling to allow the United States to pay its bills on time, according to a senior Treasury Department official on Tuesday.
The approval is expected to go through without a challenge, given that Congress is in recess until later in January and the request is in line with an agreement to keep the U.S. government funded into 2013.
The debt is projected to fall within $100 billion of the current cap by December 30, when the United States has $82 billion in interest on its debt and payments such as Social Security coming due. President Barack Obama is expected to ask for authority to increase the borrowing limit by $1.2 trillion, part of the spending authority that was negotiated between Congress and the White House this summer.
Under the agreement struck in August during the showdown over the government’s debt limit, the cap is automatically raised unless Congress votes to block the debt-ceiling extension. Lawmakers have 15 days within receiving the request to vote, which is largely symbolic because the president can veto it and Congress would be unlikely to muster the two-thirds majority to override it. Moreover, the U.S. House of Representatives also is in recess until January 17.
The deal called for raising the debt ceiling by $2.1 trillion to serve the nation’s borrowing needs into 2013 and also included mandatory cuts to the federal budget deficit. Since then, the extension has been increased twice by a total of $900 billion.
The debt limit currently stands at $15.194 trillion and would increase to $16.394 trillion with the request.
Remember when presidential candidate Barack Obama was OUTRAGED — yes, OUTRAGED — in 2008 while speaking in Fargo, North Dakota about the national debt being at 9 trillion dollars? That number seems benign now during the Age of Hopenchange. Obama told the crowds that GW Bush adding $4 trillion in debt was irresponsible and “unpatriotic.” Flip-floppery at it’s most hypocritical.
He said back then:
The problem is, is that the way Bush has done it over the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up our national debt from $5 trillion for the first 42 presidents – #43 added $4 trillion by his lonesome, so that we now have over $9 trillion of debt that we are going to have to pay back — $30,000 for every man, woman and child. That’s irresponsible. It’s unpatriotic.
Video flashback of July 3, 2008:
From Full Metal Patriot:
I thought the increase in the debt limit from August was supposed to prevent another borrowing increase prior to the 2012 election?
This latest request for more spending proves that this summer’s debt ceiling showdown accomplished almost nothing: there was no meaningful reduction in the debt or the deficit, there was no balanced budget amendment, there was no entitlement reform, and there were no spending caps or substantive spending cuts.
The only thing that was accomplished was yet another increase in America’s debt ceiling. And even that is not enough for President Obama.
Keep in mind, Obama has planned a $1 trillion dollar tax increase after the 2012 elections.
Frank Salvato at Big Government wonders what happened to the Tea Party wins of 2010 and analyzes the mounting economic disasters we’ve witnessed since those elections:
In absolute defiance of the fact that it is law that Congress must pass an annual budget for the federal government, Senate Democrats – once again, led by the indignant political disgrace that is Harry Reid – refused to abide by said law in passing, reconciling and advancing to the President an annual budget. It has been over 900 days – almost three years – since the last budget has been presented to the President for his signature or veto.
[...]
On this date back in 2008, as we were approaching the catastrophe that would be the “historic election” of someone who was, arguably, the most ill-prepared person in the history of our nation to the presidency of the United States, the US National Debt stood at approximately $10.7 trillion. Our federal budget deficit was at almost $500 billion and our Gross Debt to GDP Ratio was at 75.361 percent. We weren’t in the greatest financial shape and the horizon had some ominous clouds heading our way in the form of a mortgage meltdown that led to a significant recession, which led to a financial markets crisis, all of which put the world – the entire world – on the brink of financial calamity.
Today, three years later, President Obama and his financial gurus – otherwise known as the Manson Family of financial ineptitude – tell us we are “on the mend,” we have “turned the corner,” – even as unemployment remains around 9 percent on average, but that there is “a lot more work to do” and that we should allow him four more years to complete his work toward righting the ship of state – or, as the aware see all too well, his “transformation of the United States of America.” But what have his efforts achieved?
As it stands today, the US National Debt is $15.1 trillion. Our federal budget deficit is $1.3 trillion and our Gross Debt to GDP Ratio is 100.480 percent. An even more relevant number – in light of all the “fixing” that Mr. Obama, Mr. Reid and Ms. Pelosi have been doing – is the US Unfunded Liabilities, you know, the total the government is committed to paying out for all those nanny state entitlements, including Medicare, Social Security, Prescription Drug Benefits and, now, Obamacare. The Unfunded Liabilities held by the US federal government is a stunning $117.011 trillion. I’m going to write the full number out so you can see it, accurate to extent that the lower numbers are rolling so incredibly fast I can only be relevant to the billions digits: $117,011,381,000,000 and climbing.
On Tuesday it was announced that President Obama will ask for a third increase of the debt ceiling limit this year, raising that limit to $16.394 trillion.
Doug Powers at Michelle Malkin’s blog sums it up:
The government needs to borrow another $1.2 trillion so they can continue to protect us from bankruptcy. Predictably, the White House tried to get this done on the Friday afternoon heading into a holiday weekend, but circumstances prevented it from happening…
Another $1.2 trillion — almost $4,000 for every single American citizen. Is this request coming from the same administration that recently asked for stories about how important forty dollars is to each of us?
Reminder: No noteworthy cuts to federal spending have been made during Obama’s watch, so we continue to give Pakistan millions of dollars to produce a kids’ TV show. We’ve loaned *wink wink* hundreds of millions of dollars in crony-based loan guarantees to a bankrupt Solyndra and other companies that have financial ties to Obama. The government has spent millions on producing little-watched online soap operas targeting inner city residents. Team Obama has squandered nearly $12 million on an energy assistance program that both the current and former administrations have agreed shouldn’t even exist (entry #72 in Sen. Tom Coburn’s eye-popping December 2011 report on government waste). Annually, the government has mailed at least $120 million of retirement and disability benefits to dead federal employees, every year for at least the past five years (entry #7 of Coburn’s report), and spent $1.35 million for entrepreneurship training in Barbados (entry #50).
The list of Team Obama’s outrageous spending goes on and on.
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