President Obama Shouldn't Use Last Administration's Poor Spending Record to Justify His Own: Make Some Cuts

President Obama made the statement during his speech to Congress that he had a $1 trillion deficit as soon as he walked through the doors of the White House due to the last Administration's spending spree, including invading Iraq, etc. And the Democrats in Congress cheered.

Yet this is the same President Obama whose Office of Budget and Management says will add another $10 trillion in debt by the end of his two terms in office, at a minimum.

We're looking to President Obama to restore financial sanity in Washington, not use excuses like he made before Congress (see the first paragraph) to engage in his own budget-busting spending spree.

Someday a President will be forced to make catastrophic cuts in order to keep the country out of bankruptcy. And those cuts will be massive, and painful. It would be better to make cuts now and keep from reaching that point.

President Obama needs to shift gears, put the health care stuff on the back burner, and make some cuts. Get the budget under control and reduce the debt before adding more to it via this costly health care proposal that Obama is keen on passing.

Now the States Want Handouts Too: California and Massachusetts Put in Their Wish Lists

Well, well, well.

Now the states are lining up for handouts too, wanting the same kind of deal that Wall Street got. Two states--California and Massachusetts--want money as well.

The floodgates are now open; where will this end? And how many states will try to climb on this gravy train?

And I oppose bailing out the states. They should not be treated like banks; they need to make cuts to their budgets so they can operate within their means, just as the federal government must as well. The states need to start lowballing their expectations for monthly income so that they can budget responsibly.

All bills and debts eventually come due, and yet everybody wants the federal government to pay for everything, in the here and now. WE CAN'T AFFORD IT:

The Gross National Debt

Eventually the time will come where the federal government will have to crash it's own budget to pay what it owes to foreign banks; it's going to be really ugly when it does. This is no way to run a government.

This gravy train shouldn't leave the station or see the light of day. The states are responsible for their OWN budgets.

Congress is Asking Administration All the Right Questions: $700 Billion Bailout is Unbelievable

Democrats and conservative Republicans in Congress appear to be asking all the right questions about the Administration's plan to take over all of the "toxic debt" that Wall Street ran up.

The Secretary of the Treasury and the Federal Reserve Chairman appeared before Congress for a second day to push through the Bush Administration's bail-out plan. Congress gave the two a frosty reception again and started right in on the proposal, asking for modifications to the plan. And it appears that there has been a tiny bit of progress.

The Democratic position is that the plan should also help common people who are struggling with their mortgages and are in danger of foreclosure. They want to change the bankruptcy laws of the nation so that struggling homeowners can be thrown a lifeline too and restructure their mortgages.

Conservative Republicans think that this plan is financial socialism, which they don't agree with and won't support. They want everyone to stop and think this thing through before enacting a bad plan that gets rushed through just because the Administration wants it.

One of the committee members asked if it was possible to give Wall Street a fraction of what was asked for in the plan: $150 billion instead of $700 billion, with the possibility of the Administration coming back and asking for more. They got a big "NO!"

I'm still not convinced. I think that $700 billion is just the start and they'll come back and ask for another $500-$750 billion in six months. We can't afford that!

Rebate Checks Round 2: Bad Idea

There is a possibility of another round of rebate checks from the government to stimulate the economy. I disagree with this kind of thinking due to the fact that the feds will have to borrow tens of billions of dollars to pay for the package, just as they did earlier this year. In fact, they had to borrow $191 billion.

Going further into debt to China and other international lenders is a TERRIBLE idea, and I renew my objections to it. This proposal should not see the light of day.

No government should spend more money than it takes in. There's a reason that the economy is in the condition that it's in: we are $10 trillion in debt, our dollars are devaluing on the international market, which is also helping to drive up the price of fuel, which is driving up the cost of everything else.

This is NUTS, and we have to put our collective foot down somewhere to break this vicious cycle.