Thursday, June 11, 2009

Finally! Ryan and Krugman Read My Memo!

Back on February 5th, from yours truly:

All the polls now agree: Porkulus is tanking. The majority disapproves.Why?

There are likely several reasons, but I think that if one digs enough, the plurality of Americans will say that it's silly spending funded with debt.

Not their personal debt--but the debt the US Government will incur to finance Porkulus.

In the last year or so, Americans have learned that debt can and will bite. They've read the newspaper, or at least have seen network news. They see the foreclosures, the property-value cliff-diving, the mass layoffs. They've watched their retirement savings shrink.

They get it that banks aren't lending because THEY hold too much lousy debt, and the banks required Federal welfare to survive, just like two of the Big 3 automakers. And they know that that Federal welfare was borrowed money, too.

And--this is the important one--they know that the US will have to repay those T-Bonds and bills someday, with tax dollars extracted from their wallets and those of their children.

They understand that much of the spending is frivolous at best. Bike paths, monuments, ephemeral-green-energy dreams, ....you name it, it's in there.

Now Ryan and Krugman agree (!!) that debt might be a problem.

No duh.

So when the two combatants agree on a fundamental threat to the U.S. economy, Americans should heed this alarm as the real thing. What's worrying both Krugman and Ryan is the rapid increase in the federal debt - not so much the stimulus-driven rise to mountainous levels in the next few years, but the huge structural deficits that, under all projections, keep building the burden far into the future to unsustainable, ruinous heights.

We are told today that 45% of Americans think that the rest of Porkulus spending should just be cancelled. For that matter, popping $10 Trillion into ObamaCare (debt-financed) and another umpty-zillion into the ObamaBudget (largely debt-financed) should be off the table, too.

HT: Sykes

No comments: