$1,172,000,000,000.00

Mark Noonan

That is the real cost of the Obama-Pelosi-Reid Bankruptcy Now! “Stimulus” Plan:

We’re talking about the interest charges that will be required to finance the $825 billion cost of the debt bill. We learned this today in a letter that Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas W. Elmendorf sent to the senior Republican on the House Budget Committee, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin.

Here is the relevant part:

Under CBO’s current economic assumptions and assuming that none of the direct budgetary effects of H.R. 1 are offset by future legislation, CBO estimates that the government’s interest costs would increase by $0.7 billion in fiscal year 2009 and by a total of $347 billion over the 2009-2019 period.

So when you hear politicians talk about the $825 billion ten-year cost of this legislation, keep in mind that it masks these unavoidable interest costs, bringing the total ten-year cost to at least $1,172,000,000,000.00.

The debt that gives rise to $53.6 billion in interest costs in 2019 alone, moreover, will not magically disappear in 2020 or beyond. Thus, the real cost of the debt bill will grow and compound over the years so long as that debt remains unpaid.

And do keep in mind that this is in addition to the debt we’ll pile up in the regular budget, year after year, under Obama’s plan to spend, spend, spend us into prosperity ’cause everyone knows that the way to wealth is through profligacy.

Yes, liberals, I know; we GOPers failed in this test, too…but because we failed after you failed previously that doesn’t mean we have to fail again. It is time to retrench – figure out what we can do without (Department of Energy, Environmental Protection Agency, Commerce Department and Agriculture Department immediately spring to mind…at least for me) and the axe the budget of all these un-necessary expenditures. If, after we’ve taken the butcher’s knife to spending and really, really, cut it down to bare bones (“bare bones” means we’re paying to protect ourselves and make certain no one starves/freezes to death – outside of that, its a luxury we might not be able to afford) we find that we’re still in deficit, then we’ll just have to raise taxes to cover it. Long and painful would such a process be – but we’d emerge at the end of it out of debt and with our nation founded upon fiscal sanity, once again. And, also, wiser for being chastised for our idiocy 1933-2009.