by | ECONOMY, GOVERNMENT, HYPOCRISY, TAXES
Over at Red State, Dan Spencer calls attention to the fact that today is a notable day:
“Deficit Day” is the date by which federal tax revenues run dry and the federal government begins adding even more debt on top of our exploding $16 Trillion national debt. This year Deficit Day falls on September 10th.
Two economists, James R. Harrigan & Antony Davies, stress the importance of this observance in their great article:
If lawmakers produced a balanced budget, Deficit Day would occur on December 31st, when the government spent the last dollar of its annual tax receipts at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve. But we haven’t seen a balanced budget since the Eisenhower administration.
Conventional wisdom holds that the Clinton administration ran surpluses. But this is a twisting of the facts. It is true that the debt held by the public-which excludes money the government borrows from the Social Security trust fund-declined by $433 billion from 1997 to 2001. But, over those same years, the government borrowed $827 billion from the Social Security trust fund. In other words, the only way to claim that the Clinton administration ran surpluses is to admit that the government has no intention of paying back that $827 billion it borrowed from Social Security.
The latest that Deficit Day has fallen in the past 40-some years has been mid-December, at the end of the Clinton administration. The earliest was the beginning of July, during the Great Recession in 2009.
I particularly like the part about the Clinton surplus and Social Security. The logic of declaring Clinton surpluses is the same logic inherent in the idea that Social Security is Pay-as-you-go (PAYGO), about which I have written many times.
The gimmick accounting that our federal government employs would get you thrown in jail in the private sector. The gimmick borrowing-plus-money-printing that our government employs would make you ineligible to be credit-worthy for anything.
It’s Deficit Day!
by | ARTICLES, BUSINESS, ECONOMY, HYPOCRISY
During recent campaigning, Obama has continuously exhorted the value of the auto industry. He went so far as to use their success as an example for bailing out other industries. During his famous “You Didn’t Build That” Speech, Obama said something that has been somewhat overlooked by his other immortalized phrase:
“I said, I believe in American workers, I believe in this American industry, and now the American auto industry has come roaring back,” he said. “Now I want to do the same thing with manufacturing jobs, not just in the auto industry, but in every industry.
You can view the video here
But a couple of weeks ago, the Treasury Department issued an updated report on the auto industry bailout.
The Treasury Department says in a new report the government expects to lose more than $25 billion on the $85 billion auto bailout. That’s 15 percent higher than its previous forecast.
The government still holds 500 million shares of GM stock and needs to sell them for about $53 each to recover its entire $49.5 billion bailout.
Shares that day were at $20.49
Under Obamanomics, a $25 Billion loss of taxpayer money is considered “a success” and “roaring back”. The spin is that the losses are less than the estimated $44 Billion, so hey, it’s okay! We saved the taxpayers $19 Billion!
Then, at the end of August, it was announced that the production of the highly touted Chevy Volt was to be suspended for a month. From Automotive News report:
“GM will close its Detroit-Hamtramck plant from Sept. 17 until Oct. 15, one of the sources said. Union representatives last week told the plant’s roughly 1,500 workers about the scheduled downtime, the source said.
It’s the second time this year that GM has throttled back on Volt production. The Detroit-Hamtramck plant was idled from March 19 until April 16 amid swollen Volt inventories.
But we didn’t hear about any of that at the Democrat Convention last week, did we?
And now this morning, Reuters is reporting that
Nearly two years after the introduction of the path-breaking plug-in hybrid, GM is still losing as much as $49,000 on each Volt it builds, according to estimates provided to Reuters by industry analysts and manufacturing experts.
Our taxpayer money. Sucked down the drain. Propping up an industry that couldn’t make it anymore on its own merits and produces a product that no one wants.
Why do the Democrats keep lying about it?
Remember what he said:
“ I believe in American workers, I believe in this American industry, and now the American auto industry has come roaring back,” he said. “Now I want to do the same thing with manufacturing jobs, not just in the auto industry, but in every industry.
If he wins a second term, what will Obama do with other fledgling sectors?
More bailouts? Nationalizing other industries? This is legal plunder. This is government welfare. This is wrong.
crossposted at Redstate
