National debt skyrocketing, Obama wants to spend even more

A month ago the excellent Mark Steyn wrote a column titled "Mad Debt--A threat to liberty." I've taken the liberty of editing it below. So if something sets you off, don't blame Mark.

Under the “historic” “resolution” of the debt crisis, the government has promised to cut federal spending by $900 billion over ten years. “Cutting federal spending by $900 billion over ten years” is Washington gobble-speak for increasing federal spending by $7 trillion over that period. But since they’d originally planned to increase spending by eight trillion, Washington considers that a cut.

Wow. So if they’d planned to increase spending by $10 trillion and then settled for merely spending the $7 trillion, they could have saved three trillion instead of a paltry one trillion. See how easy this is?

As part of this historic “cut,” congress also raised the “debt ceiling”--to roughly $15 trillion bucks. Do you think your congressman or senator has any serious intention of having the goverment repay the 15 trillion racked up in his and your name?

Look into their eyes and you can see the answer. And if they aren't willing to pay down the debt now, what are the chances they’ll do so by 2020 when, under these historic “cuts,” the debt’s up to 23-25 trillion?

I’m not a “declinist”-- I’m way beyond that, in the express lane to total social collapse. The fecklessness of Washington is an existential threat not only to the solvency of the republic but to the entire world. If Ireland goes under it’s lights out on Galway Bay, but when America goes under it will drag the entire developed world down with it.

When I go around the country saying stuff like this, a lot of folks agree. And they usually say, “Fortunately I won’t live to see it.” I always reply that unless you’re over 90 you will live to see it. Forget about mid-century. We’ve got about four years to try to turn this thing around.

If we fail, by 2020 just the interest payments alone on the government's debt will be greater than our entire defense budget.

We'll be spending one-fifth of all federal revenue on...interest payments.

Do we have to tell you that this means this vast amount of money won't be available for spending on real needs? If you're a Democrat or "progressive" apparently we do.

Pious celebrities often simper that they’d be willing to pay more taxes for more government services. But a fifth of what you pay won’t be going to government services at all. Unless by “government services” you mean the People’s Liberation Army of China--which will be entirely funded by U.S. taxpayers by about 2015.

And these numbers assume interest rates will remain at their present historic low of three percent or so. Last week one of the Obama administration’s favorite economic analysts predicted that in just ten years, interest rates on ten-year U.S. Treasury notes would be almost nine percent.

That's three TIMES the current interest rate.

If that forecast is right the Chinese will be able to quintuple the size of their armed forces at no net cost to them--since we'll be paying them that in interest.

Time is running short. If you think we’ve got until 2050 or 2025, you’re part of the problem.

Yes.