Spending

Having avoided the "fiscal cliff," we will now be in jeopardy of breaking our necks when we collide with the "debt ceiling." The responsible thing to do, we are already being told by the New York Times is ... to raise the ceiling:

Bill Kristol, with Kirsten Powers and Charles Krauthammer, last night on Fox News:

After Congress agreed temporarily to avert the "fiscal cliff" last night, President Barack Obama hailed the deal in brief remarks delivered from the White House, and then headed to Air Force One to take a midnight flight to Hawaii. Obama had left his family days earlier to return to Washington to deal with the "fiscal cliff."

A Democratic member of Congress is moving to block President Barack Obama's congressional pay increase. The move, led by John Barrow of Georgia, is to prevent the pay increase that Obama issued through an executive order from going into effect.

Spending will increase 55 percent over the next decade, if President Barack Obama's budget plan goes into effect. The finding comes from the Republican-side of the Senate Budget Committee, which notes that Obama's "Proposal Would Spend $880 Billion Over Already Projected Increases."

Since Washington and the mainstream press corps are pretending that our deficit woes are the result of a roughly equal blend of excessive federal spending and insufficient federal taxation, let’s review the evidence.  According to official government figures published by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), in fiscal year 2008, the federal government took in $2.524 trillion and spent $2.983 trillion.  So the

Senator Mark Begich, a Democrat from Alaska, is "pleased" to include more than $200 million in pork spending in the Sandy legislation, a bill meant to help those affected by Hurricane Sandy.

The senator's office explains the request in a press release:

The fiscal cliff is a diversion, designed by politicians to conceal their inability to come to grips with the fact that they continue to spend too much, and refuse to reform a tax structure that reduces the competitiveness of American companies in world markets. No matter what deal is cut, whether before or after the new year, it will at best nibble at the edges of the trillion-dollar annual deficits that are being piled up.

The federal government is now spending $110 billion on "all food assistance" per year, according to new analysis by the minority side of the Senate Budget Committee. The federal dollars spent on these programs has risen by nearly $70 billion in just ten years. 

Here's a chart from the Republicans on the Senate Budget Committee, showing how spending has increased over the last dozen years:

"President Obama's 'Plan' Adds $8.6 Trillion to the Debt," the minority side of the Senate Budget Committee contends. Here's a chart put together by the Republicans on the committee to explain how Obama's plan adds to the debt:

Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, the top Republican in the Senate, blasted President Barack Obama for not leaving anything on the "fiscal cliff" negotiating table this morning in remarks on the Senate floor.

Senator Jeff Sessions continues to argue against the secrecy of the ongoing "fiscal cliff" negotiations with an op-ed this morning in today's Wall Street Journal. Sessions argues that the secrecy is inherently anti-Democratic, and similar to the "Russian Duma, where officials meet behind closed doors, put out the word, and the overwhelming votes materialize."