Obama Seeks $1.2 Trillion Increase in National Debt Ceiling; Wasteful Spending Has Skyrocketed

President Obama formally notified Congress last week of his intent to raise the nation’s debt ceiling by $1.2 trillion. Congress will have 15 days to say no before the nation’s debt ceiling automatically is raised from $15.2 trillion to $16.4 trillion.

The debt ceiling would not have to be increased by this much if Obama had simply lived up to his 2008 pledge that he would cut spending if elected. Obama campaigned in 2008 on a promise of a “net spending cut,” but soon after taking office, he proposed budgets that would add $4.8 trillion to the national debt. Federal spending is at record levels, and the Obama administration has run up the biggest budget deficits in history. “President Obama’s policies would add more than $9.7 trillion to the national debt,” the Congressional Budget Office said in 2010. That’s many times the cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars combined.

The Congressional Budget Office reported last year that Obama understated budget deficits “by more than $2.3 trillion over the upcoming decade.” Obama objected to even a tiny two percent cut in the federal budget sought by Republicans, submitting a self-indulgent, smoke-and-mirrors budget that would actually increase spending even faster than previously proposed for 2012.

If you are unhappy with the Obama administration’s record spending, and being deceived by Obama, that is apparently a sign that you are dumb, according to liberal “mainstream” media organs like Newsweek, a money-losing magazine that continues to be found in office waiting rooms everywhere despite the fact that it now contains almost no news, instead featuring non-factual, out-of-date, condescending liberal opinion. Newsweek this week features a lengthy article by Obama supporter Andrew Sullivan entitled, “Why Are Obama’s Critics So Dumb.” (Law professor Ann Althouse, who voted for Obama but has been critical of Obama’s broken promises and record in office, responds to Newsweek's gratuitiously insulting article here.)

Andrew Sullivan has been a big booster of Obama’s $800 billion stimulus package, even though the stimulus package will actually shrink the size of the economy “in the long run,” according to the Congressional Budget Office. The stimulus package contained green-energy subsidies that were used to shift American jobs to countries like China, since 79 percent of those subsidies went to foreign firms. The Obama administration has also destroyed thousands of jobs through the burdensome red tape, restrictions, and costs imposed by Obamacare and the Dodd-Frank financial “reform” law, and by using federal agencies to attack merit-based hiring by private employers.