The interest bomb

By Tom Quiner

“We don’t have a spending problem.”

This is what the president says when it comes to federal deficits.

Nancy Pelosi, the Minority Leader of the House agrees.

Tom Harkin, the junior Senator from Iowa agrees.

In light of annual trillion dollar deficits since Obama took over, what do we have if not a spending problem?

The president’s mouthpiece, Press Secretary Jay Carney explained what the problem is:

“I think every economist worth this — whose insights into this area are worth the paper on which his or her Ph.D. is printed, would tell you that the principal driver when it comes to spending of our deficits and debt is health care spending. And that’s just a fact.”

Chew on his statement for a minute.

Jay Carney acknowledges with his statement that it is a FACT that Obamacare is failing. After all, the essence of Obamacare, the single most important reason it was passed, was the pledge that it would “bend the cost curve” downward.

The president, along with the entire leadership of his party, pledged that we would see savings of $2500 a year in our health insurance premiums thanks to the brilliance of leftist social engineering.

Now Mr. Carney tells us that it is a FACT, not an opinion, but a FACT that Obamacare is failing us.

There is not a single conservative in America that is surprised, thanks to the perverse incentives built into Obamacare, including:

√ It is cheaper to NOT buy insurance if you’re healthy.

√ There’s no incentive to buy insurance UNTIL you get sick.

√ Insurance companies HAVE to cover you, even if you’re sick.

√ Insurance companies HAVE to charge the same premiums to people with terminal cancer as world-class triathlon champions who have never been sick a day in their life.

All of this is not the reason for this essay.

We do have a spending problem, because Obama has increased spending at almost every level of government, not just healthcare.

Yes, government spending on healthcare is a huge problem, and now it is getting exponentially worse since the passage of Obamacare.

But federal spending is out of control everywhere, from entitlements to education.

Here’s why this is the single biggest problem facing our republic: the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), a non-partisan number-crunching arm of Congress, says interest rates are going to double in the next four years.

That will push federal spending to $1 trillion PER year on the interest alone.

That will elevate interest payments to the third largest number in the federal budget by 2017.

This year, says the CBO, federal spending on healthcare will amount to about five percent of GDP. In a decade, when Obamacare is fully implemented, it will consume 12 percent of GDP.

The CBO says government debt will exceed our entire national output (GDP) by the year 2021.

Interest payment on increased deficit spending caused by Obamacare and irresponsible government spending at every level will necessitate draconian cuts in poverty programs, defense, and every level of government. The longer we wait, the more draconian the cuts.

If we don’t act now and wait too long, we face economic collapse.

How can we avoid it? After all, the piper has to be paid.

The interest bomb will kill us if we don’t get a grip on spending fast.