Debt On Arrival

Jim Hoft, linking to Matt Drudge, spots “ANOTHER OBAMA RECORD… US Debt Equals Size of US Economy:”

The US federal debt this year will top $15 trillion, officially equaling the size of the entire US economy.
The Washington Times reported:

President Obama projects that the gross federal debt will top $15 trillion this year, officially equalling the size of the entire U.S. economy, and will jump to nearly than $21 trillion in five years’ time.

Amid the other staggering numbers in the budget Mr. Obama sent to Congress on Monday, the debt stands out — both because Congress will need to vote to raise the debt limit later this year, and because the numbers are so large.

Mr. Obama‘s budget said 2011 will see the biggest one-year jump in debt in history, or nearly $2 trillion in a single year. And the administration says it will reach $15.476 trillion by Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year, to reach 102.6 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) — the first time since World War II that dubious figure has been reached.

In one often-cited study, two economists have argued that when gross debt passes 90 percent it hinders overall economic growth.

The president’s budget said debt as a percentage of GDP will top out at 106 percent in 2013, but only if the economy booms.

“I still don’t see a sense of urgency from the president about the massive federal debt,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander, Tennessee Republican. “His budget calls for too much government borrowing – even though the debt is already at a level that makes it harder to create private-sector jobs.”

The FCC’s budget is rising via the cost of  “new staffers, hybrid Chevy Tahoes,” The Hill notes:

President Obama’s FY 2012 budget proposal includes $354.2 million for the Federal Communications, up from $335.8 million in FY 2010, the last time Congress OK’ed the agency’s spending levels.

The reasons for the increase, according to FCC managing director Steve VanRoeckel: about 75 new staffers, funding for an emergency response center created in 2010, and a request to replace four or five of the FCC’s Hybrid Chevy Tahoes each year, which the FCC uses for field work.

VanRoeckel said the additional staffers were added after personnel levels have waned since the mid nineties.

And finally, at Hot Air, Ed Morrissey writes, “Energy Dept to ‘reinvest’ money saved through pay freezes?”

The people who saw their wages frozen by this new policy are not happy — to say the least.  Indeed, they wrote in response to Brookhaven’s Monday Morning Memo (apparently private) that they were being used as “political pawns,” according to Government Executive’s report.

They’re government workers. Of course they’re political pawns. But then the ultimate goal of “progressivism” is to make us all that way. Or as James Pethokoukis writes, “Obama budget reveals Obama’s core.”

(Headline via Paul Ryan.)