So one of my friends posted this article that was mailed in by Paul Krugman to his NYT editor. Basically Krugman is frantic that people are complaining about Captain Kool-Aid’s plan to SPEND, SPEND, SPEND! With unemployment at 10% (and really I hear it’s more like 17%), well, geewilikers color me shocked that people aren’t on the spending-spree band wagon!

On one hand Krugman has a point – what does fear mongering really do to address an issue AND does it really just make a mountain out of a mole hill. But I love how he also didn’t have this attitude toward fear mongering on the 2008 campaign trail when Democrats, Captain Kool-aid in particular, were fear mongering about how we were headed toward the Great Depression-style recession. OR when Dems were shouting about how we had to pass the “stimulus” bill because if we didn’t take more than a week to review the darn bill we’d see unemployment go up past 8%…(as it now is at 10% – ummm OOPS!).

I agree with Chris Edwards at National Review that “the best lesson is that an administration’s promised spending beyond the first year is meaningless.” (via Trying To Grok)

To paraphrase his brilliant article, the federal govt. spent nearly $1 trillion more than Bush projected for FY2009 AND that’s after you remove the stimulus out of the equation. Plus the two wars only account for 1/5 of that over-spending – what was the remaining 4/5 spent on that was justified??? Nine years ago, spending for FY2011 was projected at $2.7 trillion. Obama and Orszag’s plan now calls for $3.8 trillion in FY2011, a 41% projection increase.

Plus I’m more concerned about govt spending-to-GDP ratio which is encroaching up to 50%. When the govt. takes more from the economy than what the economy produces that is a major cause of economic concern – this is what Mankiw (Krugman’s nemesis) argues. Also economic studies put holes in economic theories supporting increase govt. spending. For instance, they show in application every $1 spent in govt. equates $1.40 in GDP (Ramey study), while every $1 in a tax cut or break equates $3.00 in GDP (Romer study). Now that doesn’t mean make our taxes zero, but under this real-world logic how is record-level spending justified. To me, it’s not.

Our govt. cannot continue on this path. It’s not time to burn our money like firewood but it’s certainly time to pull the plug on the federal govt’s imaginary lines of credit.

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