If, you know, he was ever leaving power this side of his becoming a centenarian:
The national debt is set to double by the time President Barack Obama leaves office, if it continues to increase at the current rate.
In January 2009, when Obama began his first term, the federal debt was $10.6 trillion. As of this week it has increased 57% to $16.7 trillion, the Washington Times reported.
As Congress is faced with raising the debt ceiling by October 17 or letting the government default on its bills, Obama has argued that doing so "won't add a dime" the federal debt.
"It does not increase our debt," Obama said. "It does not grow our deficits. All it does is allow the Treasury Department to pay for what Congress has already spent."
No, it does not increase our debt; it does, however, make that increase both possible and inevitable. It's like that nagging pain you've been having periodically that gets worse each time it recurs. It concerns you more each time to happens, but when it passes you forget about it, preferring to kick that can down the road rather than confront the unpleasantness of getting it looked at and taken care of now. Then eventually, when the attacks become so excruciating that you can no longer hide them, you wind up in the hospital and are told that it is a terminal condition that, had it been caught early, could have been cured.
Don't flip out (or look disappointed); I'm not making any veiled personal references with that metaphor, other than the one that stakes claim to all our bank accounts. But don't flip out at the notion of a "default," either - at least not a short one. All a default would really do is force the federal government to have to function like most of our households to: discipline and prioritize our spending habits. The unfettered bread & circuses of over eighty years running would be over; for the first time since the Coolidge Administration we would have to start living within our means. But in the short term there would still be plenty of tax revenue coming in to cover top priorities, including interest on that seventeen tril.
If, however, we let that fiscal super-mega-Jiffy-Popper continue to swell, today's subterranean interest rates subsidized by the Fed's hyperinflative debasement of the dollar will bounce up to where they really belong, and no amount of borrowing or taxing will be enough to even cover the servicing on the debt that O is, quite deliberately, running up.
This, you see, is the leverage that a debt ceiling provides the Right that a government shutdown cannot. The Dems love government shutdowns, because they know that (1) it doesn't shut much of the government down, (2) their propaganda hordes in the media ensure that the GOP gets the blame for it, and (3) it gives them PR cover to rule with an even hammier iron fist than they usually do, as we've seen just this week. But if the GOP refuses to raise the debt ceiling? That, my friends, is DefCon One for the Left. It's tearing the bandage off of a deep, sucking wound all at once. It's a dagger aimed straight at the heart of their governing paradigm. It would accomplish the same goal as a long shutdown - puncture the illusion of the necessity of Big Government - but in far less time.
Certainly, it would also hand Barack Obama the Final Crisis he's been looking for to put the finishing touches on his dictatorship. But that's why it's better to bring it to a head sooner than later, and on our initiative; why wait until Red Barry is ready to make his move? Force his hand now, while he may still have just two pair instead of that royal flush toward which he's working.
Some of this appears to be Speaker Boehner's strategy:
Best part of it is that this gambit doesn't fixate solely on ObamaCare but encompasses the reining in over overall entitlement spending. Ted Cruz may not remember that Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are all broke and inexorably garroting the nation's finances, but thankfully Speaker Boehner and Chairman Ryan do.
Call it "Comprehensive Fiscal Reform". The only kind of comprehensive anything that Barack Obama is guaranteed not to like.
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