America’s biggest spenders have chosen a wonderful Christmas gift for themselves: More of our money.
Last week, deficit spending reached a new extreme. This week, Congress gave our federal government an 8% pay (spending) raise. Next week, they plan to borrow almost $2-trillion more to keep their spending spree alive. No payments until after Christmas, of course—and the bills are sent to the next generation.
President Barack Obama led the way in his speech that endorsed “spend[ing] our way out of this recession.”
Sadly, Congress and the Obama Administration are such jolly givers that they may push Santa into the unemployment line. The new borrowing is beyond our ability to pay.
It should have been a warning to slow down when the Treasury Department announced we’d overspent our income by $292-billion—in just the first two months of the new fiscal year. Instead, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and friends pushed through a $447-billion spending package that is 8% higher than last year’s domestic spending and 25% higher since Democrats took over Congress in 2007. With 5,224 earmarks. Senate approval is expected this weekend. President Obama’s campaign pledges to end earmark abuse seem to have joined the Ghost of Christmas Past.
Now, visions of super-sized sugar plums dance through their heads as lawmakers next week plan to expand their own credit line by about $1.9-trillion more.
The plan is to attach the debt ceiling provision to a military spending bill and vote on it next week. The cynical goal is to accuse those who vote “no” of being against the military. It’s likely that more billions in earmarks will be included as sweeteners to attract votes.
Earlier this year, explosive spending forced Americans to grapple with just how much $1-trillion is. That’s still an impossible struggle. But now, Congress is going to approve borrowing twice that amount! It’s beyond comprehension.
Yet it doesn’t stop there. Plans are afoot to spend billions more as soon as the New Year arrives–to “stimulate” our economy, of course. “100 billion, 150 billion, 75 billion — those are all figures that are being talked about,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D, MD) told reporters.
Perhaps there’s a limit to the ruling party’s appetite for more spending. But if so, it hasn’t been spotted yet.
For the second day, Republican Senators boycotted the scheduled markup of the Kerry-Boxer (S.1733) cap-and-trade bill. Senator Inhofe (R-OK) appeared briefly to emphasize that the minority is holding firm to their demands that the Environmental Protection Agency complete a comprehensive economic analysis.
Rather than use a procedural gambit to trounce the rights of the minority, Senator Boxer announced the committee would receive a briefing from committee staff on the actual provisions of the latest version of the bill. That is certainly not objectionable, but common sense suggests a thorough understanding of the legislation would be a prerequisite for a markup.
In addition, just as Senators prepare to gain a better understanding about the legislation, Senator Rockefeller (D-WV) hinted, “some people are talking about not doing it [global warming] until after the 2010 election.” Senator Olympia Snow (R-ME) went as far to say, “Obviously, it’s not an issue we will be readily addressing this year.”
While some Members will inevitably allocate time to the 2010 elections, the focus will still be the economy. Senator Evan Bayh (D-IN) stressed that “jobs should be our top priority and we shouldn’t do anything that detracts from that.” Representative Bob Etheridge (D-NC) echoed Senator Bayh’s remarks, saying, “Three things ought to be the top priority: jobs, jobs and jobs.”
There’s one thing cap and trade will not do and that’s “save or create jobs.” It will destroy them. Our preliminary analysis of the Boxer-Kerry cap and trade legislation kicks 1.8 million people into the unemployment line as soon as 2012 and ultimately raises unemployment by over 2.7 million.
Even the EPA’s analysis under the most generous assumptions did not project a green economic stimulus. Out of the groups that came to The Heritage Foundation to explain the economic results of their respective cap and trade models (including the Environmental Protection Agency, the Energy Information Administration and the Congressional Budget Office), there was no disagreement on how cap and trade would affect employment. Higher energy prices will put a chokehold on the economy - causing fewer jobs and lower income.
Dan Holler co-authored this post.