I'm still gobsmacked by a report from CNS News this morning.
The U.S. Treasury has released a final statement for the month of March that demonstrates that financial madness has gripped the federal government.
During the month, according to the Treasury, the federal government grossed $194 billion in tax revenue and paid out $65.898 billion in tax refunds (including $62.011 to individuals and $3.887 to businesses) thus netting $128.179 billion in tax revenue for March.
At the same, the Treasury paid out a total of $1.1187 trillion. When the $65.898 billion in tax refunds is deducted from that, the Treasury paid a net of $1.0528 trillion in federal expenses for March.
That $1.0528 trillion in spending for March equaled 8.2 times the $128.179 in net federal tax revenue for the month.
. . .
The federal government’s cash-flow situation was summed up pungently in Senate Budget Committee testimony by Erskine Bowles, who served as chief of staff to President Bill Clinton and is now the co-chair of President Barack Obama’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility.
"I'm really concerned," Bowles told the committee last month. "I think we face the most predictable economic crisis in history. A lot of us sitting in this room didn't see this last crisis as it came upon us. But this one is really easy to see. The fiscal path we are on today is simply not sustainable.
"This debt and these deficits that we are incurring on an annual basis are like a cancer and they are truly going to destroy this country from within unless we have the common sense to do something about it," said Bowles.
There's more at the link. Bold print is my emphasis.
Are the politicians, bureaucrats, economists and administrators responsible for this spending literally insane? Can't they see the inevitable consequences of their actions? If you or I tried to run our household budgets along the same lines, spending in one month eight times more than we were bringing in - and continuing that pattern for months and years on end - just how long do you think it would take before we ended up in bankruptcy court? Yet the US Government just goes on printing money, blithely spending it as fast as it rolls off the presses . . . and nowadays they don't even bother to print it - they just add a few zeroes electronically to the "credit" balance in the Government's books!
I'm delighted to see a report that Congress may propose spending cuts of almost $6 trillion over the next decade . . . but I'll believe it when I see it. Meanwhile, brace yourselves. The spendthrift chickens will have to come home to roost, sooner or later . . . and my money's on "sooner". This is completely, utterly, irredeemably insane!
Peter
But-but-but-but... Greenspan just said it's all OK, we need even more debt, it's all virtual and can be offshored at a moment's notice!
ReplyDeleteJust like the jobs that are needed to collect taxes so that the real debt can be paid.
Enjoy the third world: heading there at a fast pace...
Not even Greenspan's and Obama's hyper-inflation can stop it now. Denninger has been warning of it for a long time!
There are none so blind as those who will not see. Politicians have been using the tactic of spend-spend-spend to get re-elected for generations. All they need to do is call up the Fed and have them print more money. ("I can't be overdrawn! I still have checks left!") They will claim they were shocked, shocked, by the how sudden things deteriorated. The MSM will wail that "no one could have seen this coming". But the middle class will get the bill, as usual.
ReplyDelete$6T over 10 years is $600B/yr which is a bit more than 1/3 of the money congress wants to spend that we don't have.
ReplyDeleteStill, I guess adding $900B to the national debt every year is better than adding $1500B/yr.
Like drowning in shallow water is somehow better than drowning in the sea, where it's really deep.