Thank you, President Obama (Congress, Baby Boomers, death, wisdom)

[JimMe]

This is sincere gratitude. I'm grateful to Obama for waking more and more people up to the unsustainability of federal spending. And he did it by outspending all of his predecessors.

Since WWII the U.S has amassed a large and growing debt--most of which was hidden from public view. For years politicians have focused our attention on the debt caused by the direct borrowing through the sale of government bonds. But as long as the ratio of debt to GDP was within an acceptable range economists assured us that we had nothing to worry about. Besides most of that debt was owed to American citizens who bought those bonds.

Hidden from view was the borrowing that the government was doing by raiding the Social Security funds and dropping an IOU in that supposed "lock box," thus creating future unfunded liabilities. In 1992 Ross Perot tried to warn us about the looming debt crisis but the warning went unheeded. By the way, I didn't vote for Perot. Maybe I should have.

And so we continued on our profligate ways. But increasingly our debt is owned by China and Japan, not by American citizens. And remember the unfunded liability in Social Security and Medicare? Those total about 70 trillion now and as the baby boomers retire the bills are coming due. Recently Congress again tried to distract us by raising the debt ceiling (what the government is allowed to borrow by issuing binds) to 14 trillion. Peanuts compared to our unfunded liabilities.

Until now our credit card spending really wasn't too painful. Remember the frog in the pot of water being gradually boiled to death? That was us until Obama came along. Then he did something quite unexpected. He increased spending astronomically. That was like raising the heat under the pot of water and now more and more people are waking up to the fact that we are being boiled to death--so to speak. That's a good thing. Because when the frog realizes that the water is too hot it jumps out of the pot. Thanks to Obama we may be seeing a lot of people jumping out of his boiling caldron, and not a minute too soon. We can turn this around and I don't just mean Obama's spending spree. I mean the national 50-year spending spree that we have been on. It's time for adults to take charge of the check book.

[GregW]

I could care less about the Federal Debt because I, and the government, have no intention of paying any of it. So long as my Social Security and Medicare are available after I retire in a couple of years I will not care where the money comes from.

[thinkin about it]

How does Obama take the fall for the financial history of the United States post 1900 again? Is it his bipartisan-supported stimulus bill? (which literally every mainstream economist in the country thinks was needed to thwart what would surely otherwise be the greatest depression in American History?)

[sanrene]

Originally Posted by GregW

I could care less about the Federal Debt because I, and the government, have no intention of paying any of it. So long as my Social Security and Medicare are available after I retire in a couple of years I will not care where the money comes from.

Do you think it will be available at current levels?

[HappyTexan]

Originally Posted by GregW

I could care less about the Federal Debt because I, and the government, have no intention of paying any of it. So long as my Social Security and Medicare are available after I retire in a couple of years I will not care where the money comes from.

So you will worry about it then when it's too late to fix ?

[Dockside]

Originally Posted by GregW

I could care less about the Federal Debt because I, and the government, have no intention of paying any of it. So long as my Social Security and Medicare are available after I retire in a couple of years I will not care where the money comes from.

Get ready to grab your ankles, because I see a definite movement out there to stick it to the baby-boomers. AARP is much to liberal to be any help, boomers might have to create their own lobby to fend off the government grabbing everything we've ever made, saved or contributed.

[JimMe]

Originally Posted by GregW

I could care less about the Federal Debt because I, and the government, have no intention of paying any of it. So long as my Social Security and Medicare are available after I retire in a couple of years I will not care where the money comes from.

I could have my Louis's wrong but wasn't it Louis XV of France who is credited with saying "Apres moi, le deluge" (After me, the flood) And flood it did. He was followed by Louis XVI who lost his head in the revolution. And the rest, as they say, is history. My question to you is: are you (we, since I'm two years away from retirement also) a Louis XV type or a Louis XVI type?

[JimMe]

Originally Posted by thinkin about it

How does Obama take the fall for the financial history of the United States post 1900 again? Is it his bipartisan-supported stimulus bill? (which literally every mainstream economist in the country thinks was needed to thwart what would surely otherwise be the greatest depression in American History?)

I'm not saying he should be blamed for the profligate spending of his predecessors. I'm saying his own massive deficits are finally opening our eyes to the peril we face from his and all previous deficit spending of the past 50 years have put us in. People are seeing Greece's plight (self-inflicted) and wonder if that is not our future.

As far as the stimulus plan being bipartisan--hardly. And if anything saved as from the fiscal abyss it was likely the bank bailouts--which Obama did support while he was in the Senate but which were engineered by Hank Paulson of the Bush administration. But the jury is still out on the wisdom of that measure.

[AuDiBelle]

Yes, we have been on a steady path towards insolvency ramped up 1000 notches by the recent Obama spending spree. I'm glad the public is finally waking up to the fact that we cannot continue down this path or risk turning into a 3rd rate country.

[burdell]

Originally Posted by HappyTexan

So you will worry about it then when it's too late to fix ?

We passed that point when the country decided to ignore Eisenhower's warning about the Military-Industrial Complex. It's now a parasite so invasive it can't be killed without killing the host.