Obama gangland tactics at work.

White House pushing to gag stimulus critics
From Michelle Malkin.com
By Michelle Malkin
May 30, 2009

In keeping with his past campaign tactics to shut critics up through brute force, the White House appears to be taking steps to crack down on critics of the trillion-dollar porkulus law.

Is anyone surprised? Mark Tapscott at the Examiner reports:

A new White House policy on permissible lobbying on economic recovery and stimulus project has taken a decidedly anti-First Amendment turn. It’s a classic illustration of Big Government trying to control every aspect of a particular activity and in the process running up against civil liberty.

Check out this passage from a post on the White House blog by Norm Eisen, Special Counsel to the President on Ethics and Government Reform (emphasis added):

“First, we will expand the restriction on oral communications to cover all persons, not just federally registered lobbyists. For the first time, we will reach contacts not only by registered lobbyists but also by unregistered ones, as well as anyone else exerting influence on the process. We concluded this was necessary under the unique circumstances of the stimulus program.

Writes Tapscott:

The key passage is the reference to expanding regulation from registered lobbyists to “anyone else exerting influence on the process. We concluded this was necessary under the unique circumstances of the stimulus program.”

This is the Camel’s nose under the tent…

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YOU now OWE more than HALF A MILLION DOLLARS, not counting your mortgage, credit cards and other debt!

From Investor's Business Daily
May 29, 2009

What We Owe: $64 Trillion, And Counting...

Debt: OK, take a deep breath. You might need it after we tell you this: You now owe more than half a million dollars, not counting your home mortgage, credit cards and other debt. Don't remember running it up?

Well, technically, you didn't. The government did it for you. And USA Today has done us all a favor by taking out a calculator and doing the basic math. It's beyond ugly.

Each household owes an additional $55,000, thanks to the soaring spending by the federal government on retirement programs just in the past year.

All told, each household at the end of 2008 owed $546,668. That's four times what American households owe for mortgages, car loans, credit cards and other debt.

Looking long term is where it really gets scary. Recently, we learned the U.S. had $101 trillion in retirement and health care obligations over the next 75 years. The only problem is, at current tax rates we'll have only $53 trillion to pay for it all.

That leaves a gaping hole of $48 trillion.

It gets worse. The stimulus plans and bailouts pushed into the budget by President Obama and congressional Democrats will add $9 trillion to our national debt over the next 10 years alone.

Add to that an expected $1.1 trillion spent over the same time to fund a government takeover of our health care system — an estimate most health care experts, by the way, believe is laughably low — and you have the makings of an epic financial tragedy.

Total federal debt will soar from 41% of GDP to 82% in just 10 years — more debt than we rang up in 235 years of existence. And over the next half-century, Americans will owe $63 trillion — 4.5 times our current GDP of $14 trillion.

"We have a huge implicit mortgage on every household in America," David Walker, former U.S. comptroller, told USA Today. "Except, unlike a real mortgage, it's not backed up by a house."

Americans can't be blamed for hyperventilating when they see such numbers emerging from the most fiscally irresponsible government in our nation's history.

Even the nation's president, in a moment of unguarded frankness last week, admitted that "we are out of money."

Was that supposed to inspire confidence? Or was it merely a prelude to asking for a spate of new taxes to pay for it all — turning the U.S. economy from a vibrant, job-creation machine into a stagnant, European-style welfare state?

The current administration already has proposed or is mulling as many as 10 new taxes — everything from a European-style VAT (a national sales tax) to intrusive new taxes on beer, fast food, cigarettes and other sinful indulgences, to cap and trade, which is nothing more than a federal tax on energy.

Two weeks ago, Standard & Poor's warned Britain it could lose its AAA rating because its national debt will soon hit 100% of GDP. Well, guess what? We're heading down the same road. A story in the usually staid Financial Times of London last week said it all: "Exploding Debt Threatens America."

More brutal was last week's assessment of Russia's Pravda, the former house organ for the Soviet communist regime: "The American descent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed." Ouch.

We'd like to disagree, but at least one of those newspapers is right. And unless we Americans stand up and tell our elected officials to stop this insane surge in spending and taxing, we'll pay for it for decades to come.
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IRS Tax Revenue Falls 34% in April vs a year ago - Oh, Oh! - bigger deficits than projected

IRS tax revenue falls along with taxpayers' income

from USA Today
By John Waggoner
USA TODAY

Federal tax revenue plunged $138 billion, or 34%, in April vs. a year ago — the biggest April drop since 1981, a study released Tuesday by the American Institute for Economic Research says.

When the economy slumps, so does tax revenue, and this recession has been no different, says Kerry Lynch, senior fellow at the AIER and author of the study. "It illustrates how severe the recession has been."

For example, 6 million people lost jobs in the 12 months ended in April — and that means far fewer dollars from income taxes. Income tax revenue dropped 44% from a year ago.

"These are staggering numbers," Lynch says.

Big revenue losses mean that the U.S. budget deficit may be larger than predicted this year and in future years.

"It's one of the drivers of the ongoing expansion of the federal budget deficit," says John Lonski, chief economist for Moody's Investors Service. The Congressional Budget Office projects a $1.7 trillion budget deficit for fiscal year 2009.

The other deficit driver is government spending, which, the AIER's report says, is the main culprit for the federal budget deficit.

The White House thinks that tax revenue will increase in 2011, thanks in part to the stimulus package, says the report from AIER, an independent economic research institute. But it warns, "Even if that does happen, the administration also projects that government spending will be so much higher each year that large deficits will continue, and the national debt held by the public will double over the next 10 years."

The government may have a hard time trimming spending to reduce the deficit when the recession ends. The 77 million Baby Boomers— those born in 1946 through 1964 — will start tapping their federal retirement benefits soon, which means increased government outlays for Social Security and Medicare.

"It will be doubly difficult for federal government to reduce expenditures and narrow the deficit as rapidly as they did following previous recessions," Lonski says. At the end of the last major recession, in 1981, Boomers were in their 30s. Their incomes were expanding, as was their appetite for goods and services.

The Boomers now are in their 50s and 60s and unlikely to keep increasing incomes for long, which means that revenue from income taxes could flatten in the next few years. Also, Lonski says, they are more likely to save for retirement than spend — and consumer spending is a big driver of the economy.

"The American consumer led us out of previous recessions with some semblance of gusto," Lonski says. "They're too old to do it now."
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Obama: 'We're out of money' - What planet is Obama from???

from American Thinker
by Rick Moran
May 23, 2009

I wish he would have realized that about $11 trillion ago. In a Memorial Day weekend interview with C-SPAN's Steve Scully, the President of the United States told the people of America that their government was flat broke:

SCULLY: You know the numbers, $1.7 trillion debt, a national deficit of $11 trillion. At what point do we run out of money?

OBAMA: Well, we are out of money now. We are operating in deep deficits, not caused by any decisions we've made on health care so far. This is a consequence of the crisis that we've seen and in fact our failure to make some good decisions on health care over the last several decades.

So we've got a short-term problem, which is we had to spend a lot of money to salvage our financial system, we had to deal with the auto companies, a huge recession which drains tax revenue at the same time it's putting more pressure on governments to provide unemployment insurance or make sure that food stamps are available for people who have been laid off.

So we have a short-term problem and we also have a long-term problem. The short-term problem is dwarfed by the long-term problem. And the long-term problem is Medicaid and Medicare. If we don't reduce long-term health care inflation substantially, we can't get control of the deficit.

So, one option is just to do nothing. We say, well, it's too expensive for us to make some short-term investments in health care. We can't afford it. We've got this big deficit. Let's just keep the health care system that we've got now. (HT: Drudge)

Scully does a good job of boring in on Obama's evasions so the interview is well worth the read.

This is a man who hasn't a clue. Yes, we are in a recession and a financial crisis. So your scare tactics that ratcheted up fear in order to get your stim bill, omnibus spending, and FY 2009 budget passed - a total of more than $5 trillion with interest added - are backfiring and you think you can work your way out of it by spending a trillion more on a health insurance boondoggle?

What planet is this guy from?
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