The Obama administration has been trying to persuade us for more than a year that the economy is coming back. It isn’t. Unemployment remains high and the increasing federal debt remains a serious threat.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says the longterm budget outlook is poor. CBO says the ratio of debt to gross domestic product this year will be 69 percent, 7 percent higher than last year’s so-called “summer of recovery.” By 2021, the CBO predicts debt will reach 76 percent of GDP. If nothing is done to reduce spending by reforming Social Security and Medicare, the CBO says public debt is more likely to rise to 101 percent of GDP in just 10 years.
We cannot afford to keep spending like this. That’s a fact. There have been solid proposals by Republican and conservative think tanks for fixing the problem, but Democrats won’t propose, much less pass, a budget. It’s all about politics, not about the people who earn the money. Changing the politicians who stand in the way of reform will help. Let’s start at the top.
This article published on June 27, 2011. Cal Thomas is a nationally syndicated columnist based in Washington, D.C.
