Obama, 1.42 trillion!, Fraud & Waste

After a spell of writer's block and a short vacation, Duffy is back at again. Let's listen in as he opines on Obama, the federal deficit and fraud and waste in government spending......

Duffy is of the opinion at President Obama should now acknowledge that he "owns" all the problems he inherited when he came into office. To continue to blame Bush and the Republicans for all his problems 10 months after he was inaugurated is to put it mildly, annoying and repetitious. The American people elected Mr. Obama to fix the problems, which by the way, had been building over the past 20 years since even before the Clinton administration. Enough already! Bush's war, Iraq, is going a lot better than Obama's war, Afghanistan. The bailout funds are creating their own problems by getting out too slowly and the American people are starting to realize that 787 billion of "stimulus" funds and certainly not improving the lives of most Americans as The Great Recession continues to grind on. This economy is yours Mr. Obama, along with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and Duffy, for one, sure as hell doesn't want to hear anymore about "the problems we have to deal with from Bush" talk. Dude, we elected you to fix the problems!

Two weeks ago it was announced that the 2008 fiscal year Federal deficit was 1.42 trillion dollars. That's "trillion" folks, as in 1,000 billions. This was 2 1/2 times greater than 2007 which also set a new record and as a percentage of GDP was the second highest on record since 1943 when the U.S. was in a little thing called WWII. For the average person, these numbers are meaningless. A $1,000 bill would get Duffy's attention but a trillion dollars? Duffy can't even comprehend that number. But what it does mean for all you 30 somethings that I hope are reading this, is that two things are almost guaranteed to happen sooner rather than later. One, your taxes are going up. Way up. (and we're not even counting universal health care) and two, your standard of living will probably stay the same or even decline in the years ahead as the cost of money, for everything, is going to increase substantially as interest rates rise to pay for all the new bonds the federal government will have to issue to pay for all this debt. Duffy is very leery with the Democrats in charge that serious efforts will be made to reduce the deficit in the years ahead, even though, in one of the few good things that Clinton did as president, was work with Republican to cut spending, raise taxes and reduce the yearly deficit to the extent that this country had surpluses for 3 years in the late 90's. 1.42 trillion. That's a HUGE number that will have serious consequences for this country in the years ahead. Liberal Democrats seem to care less.

Duffy recently read some articles about all the fraud and waste being discovered in various federal stimulus programs. You think? Who would have guessed? When "free" money (i.e. tax payer's money) is being thrown out in such programs as "Cash for Clunkers" and the $8,000 tax credit for new home buyers, you can bet that lots and lots of people are scheming to get at those dollars. The rule of thumb is that about 10% of funds are lost to fraud and waste in any government program. So that's 78.7 billion of taxpayer money obtained through fraudulent means if the stimulus funds are all spent. I'm sure that 78 billion will be spent on something to aid the economy it's just the wrong people will be spending it. Like flies around honey, any federal program that dispenses money to "help the citizens", a portion will be siphoned off to fraudsters and crooks. Count on it. The arrests and trials will start soon.

The World Series starts soon. Yankees and Phillies. Will the rest of the world care? Until next time.....