Steyn on the Fiscal Crisis
Filed under: Economy,Quotes, Etc. of the Day,Taxes & Government — TBlumer @ 10:24 am
Pro or con on the “historic” shutdown-avoidance deal? I’d say the proof will be how much lower than $3.819 trillion the final year-end number comes in. Besides, the “drama” resumes on Thursday.
Mark Steyn understands that the current fiscal 2011 arguments, though important, pale in comparison to 2012 and beyond, and that being led by the most out-of-touch president in memory does not help (internal link added by me):
My comrade Jonah Goldberg compares America’s present situation to that of a plane with one engine out belching smoke. But, if anything, he understates the crisis. Air America doesn’t need a busted engine because it’s pre-programmed to crash.
Our biggest problem is Medicare and other “entitlements.” They’re the automatic pilot of Big Government. Whoever’s in the captain’s seat makes no difference. The flight is pre-programmed to hit the iceberg, if you’ll forgive me switching mass-transit metaphors in midstream.
For some reason, Obama, Reid, Pelosi, Harkin & Co. don’t seem to mind this. If you recall the smile on the face of the “automatic pilot” in “Airplane!” as he’s being inflated, that’s pretty much the Democrats’ attitude to binge-spending as a permanent fact of life.
For a sense of Democratic insouciance to American decline, let us turn to the president himself.
… The cost of a gallon of gas has doubled on Obama’s watch, and this gentleman (in Pennsylvania) asked, “Is there a chance of the price being lowered again?”
As the Associated Press reported it, the president responded “laughingly.” “I know some of these big guys, they’re all still driving their big SUVs. You know, they got their big monster trucks and everything . . . If you’re complaining about the price of gas, and you’re only getting eight miles a gallon — (laughter) . . .”
That’s how the official White House transcript reported it: Laughter. Big yuks. “So, like I said, if you’re getting eight miles a gallon, you may want to think about a trade-in. You can get a great deal.”
… Message: It’s your fault.
… America, 2011: A man gets driven in a motorcade to sneer at a man who has to drive himself to work. A guy who has never generated a dime of wealth, never had to make payroll, never worked at any job other than his own tireless self-promotion, literally cannot comprehend that out there beyond the far fringes of the motorcade outriders are people who drive a long distance to jobs whose economic viability is greatly diminished when getting there costs twice as much as the buck-eighty-per-gallon it cost back at the dawn of the Hopeychangey Era.
So what? Your fault. Should have gone to Columbia and Harvard and become a community organizer.
Another 10 years of this, and large tracts of America will be Third World.
… What’s about to hit America is not a “shock.” It’s not an earthquake, it’s not a tsunami, it’s what Paul Ryan calls “the most predictable crisis in the history of our country.” It has one cause: spending.
Even Mr. Steyn understates the urgency, as will be shown here and elsewhere in the coming week. |
