The President's Brain is Missing! (When it Comes to the Budget)
Over at AOL News, John Merline asks the obvious question in light of President Obama's proposed 2012 budget, which looks to spend a total of 3.7 trillion smackers: Wha happened?
President Barack Obama's 2012 budget proposes to spend $3.48 trillion on everything except interest on the national debt. That's a 7 percent increase over what the government spent in 2010. And keep in mind that in 2010, there was a lot of stimulus money flying out the door….
The next time you hear howls of anguish over deep, tough, painful cuts in the federal budget, you might want to ask yourself how you'd feel if you had 7 percent more to spend next year than you did last year.
Here's a chart worth hanging on to:
Keep in mind that since 1950, total federal revenue averaged just shy of 18 percent of GDP, so it's not hard to understand why we're screwed.
Is there any hope for this scenario? Well, you know what, there is. Fresh from the latest issue of Reason is an article by Veronique de Rugy and me called "The 19 Percent Solution: How to balance the budget without increasing taxes," and it lays out how to bring sanity to the federal budget over the next decade. Please take a look and send around as you see fit.
Bad headline pun explained here.
