With more Dems showing concern over the Administration's propensity to spend without concern, now Secretary of State Clinton is speaking out in regards to the national security implications.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the U.S. military joint command are now both on record that rising levels of U.S. national debt pose a national security threat.
The message to the commander-in-chief now from both the secretary of state and the U.S. joint military command appears to have been delivered loud and clear – continuing U.S. federal budget deficits measured in the trillions of dollars makes Americans less safe to threats posed by foreign enemies.
Responding to a question from CFR President Richard Haas, Clinton said rising U.S. debt levels pose a national security threat in two ways: "It undermines our capacity to act in our own interest, and it does constrain us where constraint may be undesirable."
Clinton continued, "I mean, it is very troubling to me that we are losing the ability not only to chart our own destiny but to, you know, have the leverage that comes from this enormously effective economic engine that has powered American values and interests over so many years."
I thought this comparison was very interesting. For all the griping about the cost of the war, it pales in comparison (when you factor in the timeline in which it was spent) to the stimulus numbers. And it's not just the amount of money that was spent, but what it was spent on that adds insult to injury.
For years -years!- under George W. Bush, the Democrats and their Leftist allies cried rivers of crocodile tears over the money being spent to first liberate, then stabilize that land. They claimed so often and so loudly to be worried about the debts incurred and the deficits run, that they convinced the electorate that they would actually be better stewards of the public’s money, and partly for that were given control of Congress in 2006.
Well, have a look at this:
In less than two years, the Democrats have made spending on the war in Iraq look like pocket change:
As President Obama prepares to tie a bow on U.S. combat operations in Iraq, Congressional Budget Office numbers show that the total cost of the eight-year war was less than the stimulus bill passed by the Democratic-led Congress in 2009.
"A nation of well informed men who have been taught to know and prize the rights which God has given them cannot be enslaved. It is in the region of ignorance that tyranny begins."
"I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I traveled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer."
Congressman Paul Ryan (R, Wis) and former Congressional Budget Office Director Doug Holtz-Eakin came together early this week to lambaste Obama's failed economic policies.
In a conference call to supporters and the press, CBO Director Holtz-Eakin said that there is "no evidence" that "the stimulus has really worked" and that Obama's Keynesian fixes simply won't work.
There is nothing about Keynesian stimulus that is going to fix those problems. The spending by the government has gotten worse, has not solved the housing problem, and has also not been successful. Instead, the key to more rapid economic growth is going to have to be the business sector and international trade.
Representative Ryan echoed that assessment, saying:
Take a look at what our government has done in the last two years trying to get this economy out of the recession. The 1.1 trillion dollar stimulus, which is what it is when you add the interest spending, has not worked. It has exacerbated our debt problems. The Keynesian experiment, which was more spending, has failed to produce … jobs, it didn’t bring our unemployment down below 8% as it is promised. We’re still hovering close to ten percent. We’re not producing the private sector jobs that we need to be if we want to get back to our pre-recession unemployment rate. We’d have to create 250,000 jobs a month for five years running and we’re not anywhere close to that. So why is that happening?
Ryan proclaimed the Obama Administration and Congress have failed miserably to shore up confidence in the U.S. economy. ryan said that the current direction that government is headed is in "the exact opposite direction it ought to be going."
Two articles I read today saying essentially the same thing: the economy is in serious trouble. At CNBC, Jochen Wermuth, the CIO of Wermuth Asset Management is quoted as saying
America today looks like Russia in 1998. Consumers, companies and the government are all highly indebted. America as a result is a bankrupt Mickey Mouse economy.
The big evil for the IMF in Russia in 1998 was the prospect of the central bank funding government debt. The Fed is now even buying mortgage-backed securities.
Even before the [Troubled Asset Relief Program] and the expansion of the Fed's balance sheet, the ratio of total US public and private debt was 290 percent, that figure is now far higher.
US credit risk is huge and America has two options, either default or let the currency depreciate substantially against currencies such as the yuan and the rouble.
Let’s get real. The U.S. is bankrupt. Neither spending more nor taxing less will help the country pay its bills.
What it can and must do is radically simplify its tax, health-care, retirement and financial systems, each of which is a complete mess. But this is the good news. It means they can each be redesigned to achieve their legitimate purposes at much lower cost and, in the process, revitalize the economy.
Last month, the International Monetary Fund released its annual review of U.S. economic policy. Its summary contained these bland words about U.S. fiscal policy: “Directors welcomed the authorities’ commitment to fiscal stabilization, but noted that a larger than budgeted adjustment would be required to stabilize debt-to-GDP.”
But delve deeper, and you will find that the IMF has effectively pronounced the U.S. bankrupt. Section 6 of the July 2010 Selected Issues Paper says: “The U.S. fiscal gap associated with today’s federal fiscal policy is huge for plausible discount rates.” It adds that “closing the fiscal gap requires a permanent annual fiscal adjustment equal to about 14 percent of U.S. GDP.”
