US government spending

I just wanted to keep a list of this, handy. Spending, of the US government, in trillions, per year:
2000----1.7
2001----1.8
2002----2.0
2003----2.1
2004----2.2
2005----2.4
2006----2.6
2007----2.7
2008----2.9
2009----3.5
2010----3.4
SOURCE

Britain de-centralizes health care

As the US goes full bore into heatlh care socialization, England is backing away from that train wreck. From the NY Times of all places:

Practical details of the plan are still sketchy. But its aim is clear: to shift control of England’s $160 billion annual health budget from a centralized bureaucracy to doctors at the local level. Under the plan, $100 billion to $125 billion a year would be meted out to general practitioners, who would use the money to buy services from hospitals and other health care providers.
Huh. I wonder why that is?

Okay, we all know why it is. Because as soon as the government becomes involved, things get dumb expensive.

Not that Harry Reid cares about this:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, seeking to console liberal activists who were disappointed by the final version of the national health care law, assured them that there would eventually be a public option.

Yep. We all knew that... right? We knew it was coming?
Look, the word Boondoggle will have to be redefined if this ever goes into full effect. Please, not for my sake. Not even for your sake. For your children's sake, stop this dumb thing.

To me, this whole argument about health care is like two people arguing over whether a house is properly painted. One person jumps to the conclusion that the house is horribly ruined, and sets a torch to it.
That's what's about to happen to our health care system.

Santelli sums it all up, politely

Okay, maybe not politely.
But he's saying what I've been screaming for about 2 years now, ever since a Democratic congress passed the first TARP:



Thank you, Santelli, for not being polite about it anymore. Since the dumb idiots in office won't listen anymore, maybe you can get the point through.

Barack spent $787 Billion dollars, and then said that he couldn't cut the budget. He passed a health care bill that cost roughly a trillion, and then said that he was going to be a deficit hawk.
C'mon man.
The debt is now 2.5 Trillion more then it was when he came into office.
Stop spending.

Watch a drunken whore complain about the prostitute problem

Barack, telling us that "people should learn that lesson about me", that he's actually going to 'call the bluff' of people who want to reduce the deficit.

I want to play the president at Poker.

$1.2 BILLION on walking and biking?

Ugh. More waste from a government that is now 90% of its GDP in debt.

From the Telegraph in the UK:

The Obama administration more than doubled spending on cycling and walking initiatives to $1.2 billion (£810 million) last year as it seeks to coax Americans out of their cars.

We are now 13 TRILLION in debt. I bike everywhere. I mean, I covered about 40 miles in one day a week ago. I run about 5 miles a day, 3 days a week during the summer.
I did not need the government to help me do that.
Can we stop pretending like a $1.2 billion dollar program to get people 'out of their cars' is worth it? Please?

Government payrolls are up

Paychecks from private business shrank to their smallest share of personal income in U.S. history during the first quarter of this year, a USA TODAY analysis of government data finds.

At the same time, government-provided benefits — from Social Security, unemployment insurance, food stamps and other programs — rose to a record high during the first three months of 2010.

There is no surer way to bankrupt a country then by spending more money on government benefits while personal income declines. Or, as an economist in the article points out:

The trend is not sustainable, says University of Michigan economist Donald Grimes. Reason: The federal government depends on private wages to generate income taxes to pay for its ever-more-expensive programs. Government-generated income is taxed at lower rates or not at all, he says. "This is really important," Grimes says.

Grimes is completely correct. As private income goes down, there is less money to fuel government programs. As government programs increase, it becomes harder to get rid of them. Once government programs swallow up more of the GDP, it simply becomes unsustainable.