Your honorable servants in Washington DC are really good at doing three things:
1. Borrowing lots of money from the Chinese government by ringing up massive Federal deficits. This fiscal year so far (with three months to go) another $1.1 trillion has been added to the U.S. deficit.
2. Passing pointless laws that no one wants, no one can understand, and no one can follow. Want examples? Start with the Internal Revenue Code, ObamaCare, and the new financial reform law which is nothing but a 2,300 page description of many new administrative agencies and their rule making authorities to come.
3. And, of course, spending lots of money on themselves, treating each member of Congress like a Renaissance prince straight out of the House of Medici. The idea of asking American taxpayers, many of them living paycheck-to-paycheck, to pay for the Hollywood lifestyles of Congressman is beyond reason.
The latest example of #3 above comes from an examination of the House Expenditure Report Database where we learn such interesting tidbits as Congress last year spent $604,000 on bottled water and millions of dollars on catered lunches, grocery shopping trips, and bar tabs including at one of my favorite hotels in DC, the Hyatt Regency on Capitol Hill.
Under normal circumstances, such actions would be despicable.
When 18% of all Americans are unemployed and fighting for financial survival and the nation is broke from trillions of wasteful spending, such largess is criminal.
But, of course, it's not just $152 tabs at Quiznos that are killing the country. Mr. Obama's new budget suggests spending $161 million for the National Endowment for the Arts, a $5 million increase over last year.
Isn't it nice when the nation is closing prisons and public parks, delaying necessary road projects, and eliminating the manned space program all for budgetary reasons we can spend more money on art that no one wants to see or buy?
INTEREST RATES ARE HEADED INTO DOUBLE DIGITS OVER THE NEXT FEW YEARS.
There is no check on runaway Federal spending. NONE. The only choice for the Fed is to monetize the debt even if Congress radically raises taxes. Interest rates are going to skyrocket.
If I had to guess by 2012 or 2013 we are looking at 10%+ mortgage interest rates, if you can get one under Mr. Obama's new financial reform rules, that is.
Robert J. Abalos, Esq.
