Math, Not Ideology

Much as I admire President Obama, I believe with something approaching certainty that his spending will bring this country to its knees. “Sustainability” is all the rage as a buzzword, but a $3.6 trillion budget is not “sustainable.” Doubling the national debt is not “sustainable.” Inaction in the face of $77 trillion in unfunded liabilities (Social Security, Medicare, entitlements) is not “sustainable.” This is math, not ideology.

- Author Christopher Buckley, writing at The Daily Beast

Mr. Buckley's assessment of our economic posture could not be more accurate when looking only at Obama's first 100 days. But Mr. Buckley's assessment hardly presents the full picture of the danger presented to our economy by the Obama drive to socialism. The numbers mentioned by Mr. Buckley are the tip of the Obama iceberg. Still on the horizon are Obama's plans to take over medical insurance and the student loan sector, both of which will add heavilly to our debt. And then there are the massive costs Obama seeks to impose on our economy using the canard that carbon dixoide is a pollutant. Obama's purpose there is to force us off oil and coal and into a utopian world of "green energy" No, Mr. Buckley's assessment, though accurate, doesn't even begin to contemplate the totality of spending and taxation planned by Obama.

And as an aside, you don't see many new oil wells going up, do you? Or what about offshore oil exploration? Coal fired plants? Nuclear power? Weren't these part of the centrist Obama campaign promises? But as should be obvious to all - even the most partisan of Obama supporters - Obama's campaign promises were not worth the paper upon which they were printed. Indeed, while Obama did and still does speak as a centrist, he governs from the far left.

As to energy, note that the global conditions that gave rise to $4 a gallon gas in the U.S. a year ago have not gone away. They are, like a cancer, merely in remission. India and China will recover and their thirst for oil will resume. Obama is only weakening our ability to withstand those inevitable costs as he steers us towards "green energy" that is wildly cost ineffective. In good times, we can subsidize those "green energy" boondogles and the population, looking at their energy bill, is none the wiser. But that will all come to a crashing halt when oil passes by the $300 a barrel mark on a trajectory ever upwards. God help us when that scenario hits, as it inevitably will.

We are rushing headlong into massive inflation at a minimum. You cannot print tons of money to without devaluing your currency. Little could be more well proven. And indeed, even China is no longer willing to buy Treasury securities. If what I heard on the news is accurate, than Obama plans to address this by having other U.S. government bodies buy the treasury securities, thus giving us the werewithall to fund spending through an accounting gambit in what can only be described as a government run fraud scheme. Such schemes inevitably fail, and catastrophically so. That coupled with the anti-business, pro-tax policies of the Obama administration hang like a sword of Damoclese over our economy.

I am daily amazed at the examples I see of the post modern left in action, claiming as reality whatever it is they want it to be. But math is not subject to such fantasy. Unfortunately for all us, two plus two always equals four.