Fat City

"It`s time to
stop worrying about the deficit—and start panicking
about the debt," the Washington Post editorial
began. "The
fiscal situation was serious before the recession. It is
now dire."

The editorial continued:

"In the space of a single fiscal year, 2009, the debt soared from 41
percent of the gross domestic product to 53 percent.
This sum, which does not include what the government has
borrowed from its own trust funds, is on track to rise
to a crushing 85 percent of the economy by 2018." [The
coming debt panic, December 14, 2009]

What are the risks of an exploding
U.S. public debt?

The Chinese, Japanese and Arabs
still buying that debt will begin to suspect they are
holding onto paper on which the United States will
default, or will cheapen by inflating its currency—as
the Germans did in 1923 to avoid paying
war reparations.

When they do, they will stop buying
U.S. debt and start dumping. The Fed will then have to
raise interest rates to attract borrowers, throwing the
economy into a tailspin.

Is Congress even aware of what is
happening?

Harry Reid is talking about
doubling Medicare rolls to include folks 55 to 64.
Facing a second straight $1.4 trillion deficit, Congress
is moving to raise the debt ceiling by another $1.8
trillion.

And the lead story in the
Post Monday began:

"The Senate cleared for President Obama`s signature on Sunday a $447
billion omnibus spending bill that contains thousands of
earmarks and double-digit increases for several Cabinet
agencies." [Democrats
clear spending bill in Senate, December 14, 2009
]

Total cost of the Senate bill
passed Sunday was
"$1.1 trillion, including average spending increases of
10 percent for dozens of federal agencies."

Ten percent hikes for federal
agencies? What is going on?

Democrats say the money is needed
to make up for the neglect of the George W. Bush years.
But the Bush years were the

fattest years for federal social spending since the

Great Society.

Sen. Dick Durbin says the spending
is necessary "to
keep cops on the street … so that families feel
secure. … Money spent to help

our first responders,

firefighters and

policemen is a critical
investment."

But aren`t cops and firemen a state
and local responsibility?

"It is business
as usual, spending money like a drunken sailor, "
said Sen. John McCain.
"And the bar is
still open."

But when sailors get drunk and
spend crazily, they are on shore leave and spending
their own money. When they get back aboard ship, they
sober up and shape up, and do the vital work they
enlisted to do.

These congressmen never stop
bingeing. They are addicts. They are alcoholics. And
they are spending our money. According to Taxpayers for
Common Sense, there are 5,200 earmarks in that one
Senate bill, which averages out to 12 pork projects for
every House member—and 52 for every senator.

What is going on in Washington?

Democrats are following the Rahm
Rule of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel.

"Don`t allow a
crisis to go to waste.
… There are opportunities to do big things."

The Party of Government is
exploiting the economic crisis to grow the government.
And from the standpoint of self interest, this makes
sense. Most government employees are Democratic voters,
as are most beneficiaries of government programs.

Moreover, Democrats have to get the
money out the door before the midterms, where the party
is going to take a bath and lose power.

How else to explain this

lead story last week in
USA Today:

"The number of federal workers earning six-figure salaries has exploded
during the recession. …

"Federal employees making salaries of $100,000 or more jumped from 14
percent to 19 percent of civil servants during the
recession`s first 18 months—and that is before overtime
pay and bonuses are counted.

"Federal workers are enjoying an extraordinary boom time—in pay and
hiring—during a recession that has cost 7.3 million jobs
in the private sector."

When the recession started, the
Defense Department had 1,868 civilian employees earning
$150,000. Defense now has 10,100. The Transportation
Department had one person earning $170,000 when the
recession began. Transportation now has 1,690 employees
earning above $170,000. Recession in America means boom
times in D.C.

The financial crisis that almost
sank the capitalist system was the work of Washington
and Wall Street. The Fed created the bubble. The White
House and Congress goaded banks into making all those
subprime mortgages. Fannie and Freddie bought up the
lousy paper and turned it into securities. Wall Street
banks bought them up and put them on their books as
Triple A assets. Federal regulators looked the other
way.

Yet happy days are here again on
Wall Street. And Washington never saw better times, with
federal workers now earning, on average, $31,000 a year
more than workers in the gutted private sector.

Is this the government the Founding
Fathers dreamed of—or is this the kind of arrogant
government they took up arms against?

COPYRIGHT

CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

Patrick J. Buchanan
needs

no introduction to
VDARE.COM readers; his book State
of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and
Conquest of America, can
be ordered from Amazon.com. His latest book
is Churchill,
Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How
Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost
the World,
reviewed

here by

Paul Craig Roberts.