When is a freeze not a freeze?
President Obama’s proposal to freeze parts of federal government spending over the next three years is a lot like a smoker buying a truckload of cigarettes one year before promising to “freeze spending” on cigarettes the next. He can keep smoking for years to come without spending another dime.
Federal government spending has increased so much over the last year — by some estimates at a rate of 34% — that in December of 2009 the debt limit had to be raised to $12.4 trillion to help absorb a record-shattering $1.4 trillion deficit.
The promise to freeze spending is actually a guarantee that spending will remain at record high levels for the next three years. It effectively prevents a reduction in federal spending.
How disingenuous of our President.
By Sherry Jarrell
Learning from Dogs 
I fear that western governments are pathologically incapable of reducing their spending.
They will do almost anything, including see the country virtually bankrupted, before doing anything that is actually effective.
Well, that’s how it is over here; I am a bit surprised to see you have caught the British disease, too ….
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Enormous increases in military spending and sending money, no strings attached, to the richest people in the world, are the causes of the exploding deficit. So called “conservatives” will not say this.
Now military spending supports economic activity, and the money ought to have been sent to the baks (but not those particualr bankers, and the banks ought to have been nationalized… as AIG, de facto, was).
Anyway, glad to see world war is around the corner, the “conservatives” have got to be, because that is the only way to explain the extravagant “defense” spending…
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No, Patrice, social re-engineering programs represent the vast majority of government spending, a fact no amount of “claims to the contrary” can undo. The one think a government should provide for its people is the defense pf its very existence, to protect its people and borders from those who seek to destroy us, so says the Constitution. Has absolutely nothing to do with being an economic conservative, as you must well know.
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Sherry: I posted on my own site the augmentation of the military spending, from the census bureau. The graph is amazing, shooting skyward as all other programs plumet.
See the annex to:
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2010/01/29/the-more-serfs-owe-the-richer-their-lords/
Against a graph like that, what is the Reaganosaur to do? Bellow some more?
The fact that the USA, with 4% of the world population wastes more than 50% of the WORLD military spending does not have to do with defense, but with PLUTOCRACY, the greatest danger said my fellow commie comrade, president Ike.
By the way, last I checked the borders of the USA did not go through Iraq and Afghanistan. But I only know geography, I do not live through the imperialistic fantastic dream, where the central Eurasian native has become the new red skin… (Happily, NASA is going to be set up right… See my site for details…)
By the way, where is your social re-engineering in the following?
United States Federal, State,
and Local Government Spending
Fiscal Year 2006 [3]
Function Amount
(billion) Percent
GDP
Overall government spending
Federal, State, Local $4,704.1 36.1
Spending by major government function
Pensions $747.1 5.7
Health Care $783.8 6.0
Education $786.8 6.0
Defense $622.2 4.8
Welfare $411.4 3.2
Interest $312.3 2.4
Just asking…
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