BY FRANK SALVATO – I suppose I will have to come out publicly to ‘eat crow,’ as it were. I have often berated the Obama Administration’s assertion that it is the most transparent administration in U.S. history. Evidently it is. You see, I was looking at it all wrong before; silly me.
I was expecting the declaration of transparency to be applied to the inner-workings of the Obama Administration, you know, open meetings, accessible information; a transparent process of government. What I hadn’t understood until now is that this wasn’t the context of the declaration at all. The transparency Mr. Obama was talking about in his run up to the Presidency was one of “watch what I can do right in front of your face and get away with” transparency, and we are getting that transparency in spades.
Never before has an administration so transparently and blatantly lied to the American people. Yes, dishonesty, exaggeration and spin have become the standard operating procedure for almost every politician, lobbyist and special interest operative inside the beltway and the 50 government complexes, but the Obama Administration’s degree of expertise in this area is nothing short of Olympian and the perfect example of their proficiency comes to us in the form of the debt ceiling debate.
When President Obama, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid or House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi take to the many media outlets to profess the dire situation our country faces should we not grant this spendthrift administration the ability to incur more debt by raising the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling, they are lying – bald-faced – to the American people; they are creating a crisis where there is none. It’s a simple as that. If you don’t believe me just take a look at the Daily Treasury Statements published by the US Treasury Department and execute some elementary math calculations.
As reported at CNSNews.com,
“…according to the Daily Treasury Statements published by the US Treasury Department, the ongoing flow of federal tax revenue since the Treasury declared that it had hit the debt limit on May 16 has been more than sufficient to cover the combined costs of federal spending on interest payments, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, the Veterans Affairs department and federal workers wages and insurance benefits, including wages and insurance benefits for military personnel.
“Specifically, according to the Daily Treasury Statements, as of the close of business on May 16, the federal government had taken in $1.333454 trillion in tax revenues since the beginning of fiscal 2011. By the close of business on July 7, tax revenues for fiscal 2011 had grown to $1.629630 trillion. Therefore, between May 16 and July 7 the federal government took in a total of $296.176 billion in new tax revenue.
“In that same time period, total interest payments on the national debt equaled $14.632 billion.
“Thus, the new tax revenue of $296.176 billion the federal government took in between May 16 and July 7 was enough to pay the federal government’s $14.632 billion in interest obligations during that period 20 times over.
“Also during that same period, the federal government’s combined expenditures for interest payments on the national debt, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, the Veterans Affairs department and federal workers wages and insurance benefits equaled $270.151 billion.
“Thus, since hitting the legal limit on the federal debt on May 16, the federal government could have spent its $296.176 billion in new tax revenues to pay for its combined $270.151 billion in expenses for interest, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Veterans Affairs and federal workers wages and insurance benefits and still had $26.025 billion in additional tax revenue to spend on other government activities.”
This should make each and every honest American angry…very angry. We are being lied to by the people who we elected to honestly execute government. This serves as proof positive and beyond doubt that Mr. Obama and his Hyde Park, Chicago, kitchen cabinet of Progressive-Marxist activists are not only employing the repulsive tactic of fear mongering against the most vulnerable among us, they are lying – lying – to us all. Compound this ethical atrocity by acknowledging that the fickle and calamity-prone world markets are being directly affected by this blatant dishonesty and it wouldn’t be too out of line to foment thinking that would include charges at the Hague, were I to believe in the authority of the World Court, which, in this instance, sadly, I do not.
What should make taxpayers – and I single-out taxpayers because it has become crystal clear that there exists a demographic that finds it quite alright to continuously exist at other people’s expense (i.e. the freeloader, terminal welfare class) – even angrier is the fact that the federal government does not – repeat, does not – prioritize its expenditures. This is an outrageous and irresponsible abdication of constitutional responsibility and each and every American taxpayer must demand without exception that Congress establish a practice of prioritizing its spending starting now.
Non-prioritized spending allows Mr. Obama to make sure special interest projects – like funding Planned Parenthood and community organizing organizations – are funded with federal tax dollars even as he claims that the federal government may not have enough “money in the bank” to fund Social Security, Medicare and Medicare payments unless the debt ceiling not be raised.
A question: why doesn’t Congress already prioritize its spending? Answer: because then special interest spending would see the glaring light of day and the taxpayers would actually be afforded the knowledge of how their money – their money, not the government’s money – is being spent.
Speaking of abdicating constitutional duty, what are we to do about a Democrat faction in Congress that has refused to craft and enact a budget for two Congresses running even though it is the law that they do so? Who does a taxpayer call to have lawbreakers at the federal level held to task for arrogantly and blatantly breaking the law? Shouldn’t Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and the Progressive and Democrat Congressional Leadership be “frog marched” out of their Capitol Hill offices and charged with, at the very least, dereliction of duty for flagrantly violating/ignoring a law that they knew full well obligated them to craft and pass a budget each and every year?
Tell me, dear reader, why is it that Mr. Obama and his cadre of Progressive-Left and Democrat ne’r-do-wells don’t ever bring forward their plans for saving the country from the abyss of financial ruin? Why haven’t we seen Mr. Obama’s plan for debt reduction, spending caps and entitlement and tax reforms? Why, because if they brought forth their plans to the American people Democrats wouldn’t see control of Congress or the White House for the next fifty years. Mr. Obama and his ilk know full well that if they were to honestly explain their vision to the American people they would have to acknowledge that their entire financial agenda is about higher and higher taxes, more and more government control of everything and one big heaping helping of wealth redistribution.
As to the argument of wealth redistribution, ask yourself this, how is it that people who have been paying their mortgages faithfully for years are, courtesy of an economy crashed by the irresponsible in the “elite class,” suddenly being foreclosed upon only to find that the banks are turning their former properties into Section Eight government funded housing? Wouldn’t it make more sense to retool the mortgage so that, in the long run, the mortgage was satisfied? Ah, but that would be “spreading the wealth around,” now would it?
My friends, now is the time to make the stand that everyone has been saying we must make if our country is to survive. If our elected officials reach a “compromise” to lift the debt ceiling – even as it has been proven beyond doubt that an increase is not needed in order to avoid any semblance of “default” – the only thing that is certain is that the debt ceiling limit will be reached again. The only question is this: how fast will our spendthrift overlords get us to that point?
Nikita Khrushchev, when speaking of his country’s struggle with the United States during the early days of the Cold War opined, “We will bury you without firing a shot.”
Mr. Obama’s former Chief of Staff, and now Mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel said more recently, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.”
We’ve already, as a country, achieved the latter. My God in Heaven, I beg that we do not achieve Khrushchev’s reality, but as it stands now…