Monday, February 14, 2011

Dear President Barack Obama, an open letter.....

Dear President Obama,

First, let me be clear, you and you only are certainly not to blame for the deep deficits in our country.

This however is no excuse for the continued excessive and disastrous spending in our country.

I watched your speech this morning at the school outside of Baltimore as you introduced the next budget.  You have promised to lower the federal deficit by $1 trillion dollars over the next ten years.  This will sound impressive to many americans who have no idea that we currently have debt of $14 trillion dollars.  Cutting the deficit by $1 trillion is a 7% decrease.  Are you serious, Mr. President?  You spoke of this being fiscal responsibility, are you serious Mr. President?  This is the equivalent of a household that earns $100,000 having already rung up $700,000 in debt but still spending a $152,000 every year and then telling creditors they will cut their deficit by $49,000 over the next ten years.  Does that sound like serious fiscal discipline?  I am offended that you gave such a disgusting speech at a school.  Running yearly deficits of a trillion dollars in no way resembles fiscal responsbility.  Plain and simple.

Let's be honest, you will not even be around in ten years even if you are reelected.  You are assuming continued and historic low interest rates, however, you can already see the 10 yr. rate rising which means people around the world are no longer interested in loaning us money for long periods of time at a low rate.  They see the writing on the wall which is a likely US default on the debt.  Should we EVER default on our debt we will never again be able to issue treasuries at low rates. Plain and simple.  You are also not taking into account a likely new recession in the next two-three years.  You are also assuming the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan wind down.  You are also assuming no major weather related disasters in this country or major terrorist attacks.  Your pipe dream of lowering the deficit by a trillion dollars in the next ten years may not be a bold faced lie as you may actually believe it but I can tell you with a 100% confidence it will not happen by cutting 75 billion dollars on a budget of 3.8 trillion dollars and with an expected deficit of 1.2 trillion dollars.

The Republicans sir are quite frankly as naive as you as they would strut around if they got $200 to $300 billion dollars in cuts which would make the upcoming years deficit only $900 billion dollars.  Now thats real fiscal responsibility. Please do not insult my intelligence.

In 2009, we brought in 2.1 trillion dollars in tax revenue and on medicare, social security and defense we spent nearly 2.2 trillion dollars.  We ended up spending near $4 trillion dollars.  This says first that social security and medicare are not in any way, shape, or form viable.  Yet, no one with any power in your office or the senate or house has any plans to deal with these programs.  Is this fiscal responsibility?  Of course not.

You have proposed a budget of 3.8 trillion and expect revenues of 2.6 trillion and an expected additional deficit of  -1.2 trillion dollars.  This is insanity.

The reality is we need to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan now because we simply can not afford them and we continue to have no end game because no one honestly knows what victory would look like.  We would be better off taking half the money we are fighting on these wars and creating a real border with Mexico and on defense of the country in general.  We need to immediately cut all social security checks by 10% and create a plan to end social security now.  Medicare needs to become a supplemental policy that covers catastrophic care.  Americans would need to purchase, on their own, a high deductible policy and pay for the small things on their own.  This would significantly reduce the cost of medicare.  Defense needs to return to the 300-400 billion dollar level. Unemployment payments need to end now, these are able bodied people, who are sitting at home on my dollar not working.  They need to be forced to find a job even its much less than were previously making.  This will save 400 billion dollars this year alone.  By cutting social security 10% we would save 70 billion.  If we then did cut 300 billion in the rest of the government we would have cut nearly a trillion dollars this year alone and may well by pulling out of Afganistan and Iraq and eliminating tax credits, we may well actually run a surplus in the coming year.

We should committ to any tax reciepts in excess of 2.5 trillion dollars to be used to pay down the federal deficit. 

Social Security needs to end, medicare needs to become a supplement and government across the board needs to be cut 25%.  Taking these measure, though drastic, will get us in the neighborhood of 1.5 trillion in spending and save this country.  I believe people will help their family members in need and if Haiti and and Katrina are any indications, americans will give to a fund to help the elderly in need.  As we reduce the interest payments we will free up more money for infrastructure and other neccesities.

Simply, this country will, in general, take in 2.5 trillion dollars in taxes which to me means for the next ten years we need to run with a budget of around 1.5 trillion dollars.  We already use up near 300 billion on interest alone which means we have about 1.2 trillion dollars left over which covers most of the currently budgeted government but does not include social security or medicare.  We simply can not afford them.  This would get our deficit down to a more manageble 4 to 5 trillion dollars.

Elderly may well have to move in with familes, we need to cherish our elderly more anyway and bring back the american family.  We will likely need to create a sponsorship program to help the elderly without families or money while we wind down social security and change, reform medicare and healthcare.  It will take a generation to teach healthy eating and promote excercise and reduce this countrys obesity rate from over 60%.

Items like the child tax credit and home interest deduction will need to be eliminated to increase the revenues coming in and yes, I do understand that will likely mean less population and possibly less home ownership.

If we do not act, Mr. President, we will experience something likely far worse than the great depression.  We have 13.5 trillion dollars of debt that will need buyers in the next ten years.  If we do not have our financial house in order, we will not find buyers for our treasuries.  Either we will default, which I have already discussed or we will print new money and have massive inflation that will destroy most american families.  This is reality.  We are out of time.

I hope you can be a leader and bring this change, the real change we need, I fear this coming disaster is what you want, you want the government to control everything and everyone to become government dependent.  I hope I am wrong.  The numbers do not lie. 

Regards.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Good points.