Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Obama's trillions dwarf Bush's 'dangerous' spending

But no worries! WH Press Secretary Robert Gibbs says Obama will give a 'Reaganesque' speech tonight. 'Scuse me whilest I SPIT.

Don't listen to what he says; watch what he does.

It's big gargantuan gub'mint business as usual. The 'No Lobbyist' campaign lie promise went under da bus, and, apparently, so will the 'No Earmarks' promise.

Pelosi and Reid called Bush's budgets "dangerous" and "unpatriotic," but with Obama, they've changed their tune.

"We thought the Bush deficits were big at the time," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, told me this week as he prepared to attend Obama’s Fiscal Responsibility Summit. "But this is going to make the previous administration look like rank amateurs. We could be adding multiple trillions to the national debt in the first year."

At some point last week, the sheer velocity of Obama’s spending proposals began to overwhelm even experienced Washington hands.
In the span of four days, we saw the signing of the $787 billion stimulus bill, the rollout of a $275 billion housing proposal, discussion of Congress’s remaining appropriations bills (about $400 billion) and word of a vaguely-defined financial stabilization plan that could ultimately cost $2 trillion. When representatives of GM and Chrysler said they might need $21 billion more to survive, it seemed like small beer.

The numbers are so dizzying that McConnell and his fellow Republicans are trying to “connect the dots” — that is, to explain to the public how all of those discrete spending initiatives add up to a previously unthinkable total. Obama’s current spending proposals, Republicans point out, will cost more than the United States spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the general war on terror and Hurricane Katrina in the last seven years. And that’s before you throw in the $2 trillion fiscal stabilization plan.

“This is big government, man,” McConnell exclaimed, his matter-of-fact manner giving way to sheer amazement. “It makes previous attempts at big government pale in comparison — they’re going to go beyond the New Deal and the Great Society by far.”"

Surber breaks it down to the per minute:
"They want to spend nearly $6 trillion this year. That’s nearly $16 billion a day — $660 million an hour, $11 million a minute. Change. Hope. Burning money."

A trillion here. A trillion there. Pretty soon you're talking real money...