Monday, August 08, 2011

Reminder: the "Debt Deal" Sucks

Steyn:

“Cutting federal spending by $900 billion over ten years” is Washington-speak for increasing federal spending by $7 trillion over ten years. And, as they’d originally planned to increase it by eight trillion, that counts as a cut. If they’d planned to increase it by $20 trillion and then settled for merely $15 trillion, they could have saved five trillion. See how easy this is?

Yes.  We saw that, Mark.  We saw it clearly.  (And we bought more ammo.)

Steyn is not an optimist:

My prognosis is not as rosy as the Boehner-Obama deal, as attentive readers might just be able to deduce from the subtle clues in the title: After America: Get Ready For Armageddon. Oh, don’t worry, I’m not one of these “declinists.” I’m way beyond that, and in the express lane to total societal collapse.

Why would Mr. Steyn, an apparently level-headed fellow with a cute accent, write such stuff?

...by 2020 just the interest payments on the debt will be larger than the U.S. military budget. That’s not paying down the debt, but merely staying current on the servicing — like when you get your MasterCard statement and you can’t afford to pay off any of what you borrowed but you can just about cover the monthly interest charge. Except in this case the interest charge for U.S. taxpayers will be greater than the military budgets of China, Britain, France, Russia, Japan, Germany, Saudi Arabia, India, Italy, South Korea, Brazil, Canada, Australia, Spain, Turkey, and Israel combined.

Well.  That will leave a mark.

Meantime, the DC "Mind" rolls on, undisturbed.  We ask again:  "Who the Hell do you think you ARE?"

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