Reader Ken left a link in the Übercomment thread yesterday to a piece over at The Market Ticker entitled The Only Part That Mattered In Obama’s Telethon. Read the whole thing, but I’m going to excerpt two parts – a lead-in and today’s QotD:
Entitlements consume, for all intents and purposes, every dollar of tax receipts in the here and now. Not tomorrow, not as growth in medical spending occurs, not in the future.
Right here, right now, today.
Note that we haven’t spent one nickel on defense yet. Nor have we paid the interest on the debt, which is quite mandatory. Nor have we funded one of our so-called “discretionary” programs, including Homeland Security, Energy, Education, HUD, Department of State, Veterans Affairs, Justice or anything else.
What President Obama told you is that The Federal Government has no plan to deal with this, not now and not in the future. It cannot even meet its own entitlement spending from the taxes it collects, leaving the entirety of the rest of the government, including national defense, to be put on the credit card.
You were told, today, that our government is insolvent.
Not “might become” insolvent if we don’t change our ways.
The United States is insolvent, right here, right now, today, and The President announced it for all who cared to listen worldwide on national television.
(Emphasis in original.)
I quoted that so that I could put this in context. It’s a comment by “Peter99” to the piece:
Although there’s nothing new in here, the beauty of this ticker, IMO, is that it succinctly and unambiguously shows that the leaders of this country, both parties, starting from when the gov’t got into the entitlement business up through today, have collectively, increment by increment, created a situation that cannot be salvaged without pretty much dismantling the system as it exists.
And, even the least discerning reader should be able to see that, no matter how it occurs, the dismantling is going to be extremely painful for everyone.
As I said, RTWT. And all the comments.