True Gov't Spending Topped $11 Trillion Last Year, Treasury Says

Jeffrey: True Government Spending Topped $11 Trillion Last Year, Treasury Says | CNSnews.com.

Wednesday, April 06, 2011

If you look at the historical tables attached to President Barack Obama’s latest budget proposal, they say the federal government took in $2.165 trillion in revenues in fiscal 2010 and spent $3.720 trillion, leaving a federal deficit of approximately $1.555 trillion. This looks like a horror story, of course. Yet the true story is more horrible. To find that story, you have to look at the financial statements quietly posted by the U.S. Treasury on the website of the Financial Management Service.

These documents show the actual accounting for the federal government in much the same way your bank statements show the actual accounting for your household. The Daily Treasury Statement [3] published on Sept. 30, 2010–the last day of fiscal year 2010–itemized all the revenue the government received in that fiscal year and all the money it spent. True federal spending for fiscal 2010, the Treasury statement said, was $11.5 trillion ($11,537,305,000,000.00).

Now, how can the White House budget claim federal spending was only $3.720 trillion in fiscal 2010, when the Treasury says it was $11.5 trillion? The biggest reason is because the spending tables produced by the Office of Management and Budget to accompany the White House budget do not count the money the Treasury is obligated to disburse in any given fiscal year to pay off old Treasury securities–that is, old loans–that come due in that year. In fiscal year 2010, according to the Treasury statement, $7.207 trillion ($7,206,965,000,000.00) in loans came due. Paying off old loans is by far the greatest annual expense the federal government faces. After the $7.207 trillion the Treasury spent paying off old loans in fiscal 2010, the next two greatest expenses were federal entitlement programs. Treasury spent $571.5 billion paying Social Security benefits, and $513.7 billion paying Medicare benefits. The fourth greatest federal expense was paying defense contractors, who earned $399.1 billion for the year. So, where did the government find $11.5 trillion to pay its bills?

The vast majority of it did not come from taxes. During fiscal 2010, the government brought in $2.038 trillion ($2,037,686,000,000.00) in tax revenue, including all individual and corporate income taxes, all payroll taxes, all excise taxes, and all estate and gift taxes. At the same time, according to the Treasury, the government paid out about $467.9 billion in tax refunds, leaving net federal tax revenues at about $1.5697 trillion. If you also subtract that $467.9 billion in tax refunds from the government’s disbursements, that leaves a little over $11 trillion in spending. That means the federal government’s expenditures of a little more than $11 trillion in fiscal 2010–not counting tax refunds–were about seven times the federal government’s net tax receipts of $1.5697 trillion. Where did the Treasury get the additional money it needed? It borrowed even more than the $7.207 trillion in loans it paid off. In fact, according to the Treasury, the government took out $8.6492 trillion ($8,649,171,000,000.00) in new loans in fiscal 2010, by selling new Treasury securities in that amount. Now, if you think that is the end of this horror story, you are wrong. It is only the beginning.

Just as important as the dollar amount of these loans are the dates on which they will come due. Of the 7.207 trillion in loans the government paid off in fiscal 2010, $6.220 trillion were short-term Treasury bills that had matured in one year or less. Another $795 billion were Treasury notes that had carried terms ranging from two years to 10 years. Of the $8.6 trillion in new loans the government took out in fiscal 2010, about $6 trillion were in Treasury bills that will come due in fiscal 2011–that is, before September 30 of this year–and another $2.2 trillion were in Treasury notes that will come due in the next two to 10 years.

Our federal government is an exhausted man desperately treading water in a deep sea of debt. Erskine Bowles, a Democrat who served as chief of staff to President Bill Clinton and as co-chair of President Barack Obama’s National Commission Fiscal Responsibility, stated the plain truth to the Senate Budget Committee last month. “I think we face the most predictable economic crisis in history,” he said. “It may be two years, you know, maybe a little less, maybe a little more,” said Bowles. “But if our bankers over there in Asia begin to believe that we’re not going to be solid on our debt, that we’re not going to be able to meet our obligations, just stop and think for a minute what happens if they just stop buying our debt.” Maybe then they will shut down our government whether we like it or not.

United States of… Asia?

A few months ago, he who shall not be named (so called because the mere mention of his name drives otherwise rational people off a cliff) posited that the only way we could ever pay off our insane debts would be to sell… America itself.  A rather simplistic summation, but essentially accurate.

And now comes this secret White House memo taking 10 million acres of land against the states’ will and just as a bonus, killing free market growth.

How many times do Obama’s actions have to follow his predictions before more Americans wake up?

Read and watch below if you dare 😉

Collapsing the System

October 28, 2009 – 23:43 ET

Watch
 Glenn Beck weekdays at 5p & 2a ET on Fox News Channel
I’ve told you a lot of spooky things on this show and I’m hoping a lot of those things are wrong.
On Tuesday, I asked you the question: Does it matter if these people are Marxists?
Does it matter that the guy rebuilding our automotive industry has no experience and believes that the free market system doesn’t work? Or that the manufacturing “czar” said that the free market is “nonsense?” Or that we have communists and radicals serving in the administration and advising the president?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)
RON BLOOM, WHITE HOUSE MANUFACTURING ‘CZAR’: Generally speaking, we get the joke. We know that the free market is nonsense…
MARK LLOYD, FCC DIVERSITY ‘CZAR’: In Venezuela, with Chavez, a really incredible revolution, a democratic revolution…
THEN-PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE BARACK OBAMA: I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.
VAN JONES, FORMER WHITE HOUSE GREEN JOBS ‘CZAR’: Give them the wealth! Give them the wealth!
ANITA DUNN, WHITE HOUSE COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR: Mao Tse-Tung and Mother Teresa, not often coupled with each another, but the two people that I turn to most…
(END VIDEO CLIPS)
Does it matter?
The answer is yes, if you believe that what makes America, America are the individual dreamers, builders and doers. Not the collective, but the individuals, the dreamers and the inventors.
From the people that brought us moving pictures the assembly line, the light bulb, the elevator, the Chia Pet, those are the individuals that made us great. And that is what is being stifled.
Now, government will tell you what to create, how to create it and what to do with it after you’ve created it. They’ll control your financing, control your education, control your health. They’ll control what you watch on television, they’ll control absolutely everything — because now, they’ll own a lot of the banks and many of the companies.
So now, not only does an inventor have to invent the thing the government says it is looking for, they’ll also make sure that you can’t go out on your own and try to create something better.
It is total control. And it is also, total insanity.
I’ve told you before about Cloward and Piven, a 1960s strategy that identified the best way to stop the Republic — the best way to subvert the Constitution and replace it with communism, Marxim or socialism — is to first financially collapse it.
Just a year ago, this stuff sounded absolutely crazy.
We’ve all worried about the debt. I want to not only show you how bad the debt is, but I also want to arm you with information, you will not accept their answer when they present a solution for what’s coming. And what’s coming is a system that is unsustainable. A system that is going to collapse. A system that quite honestly, looks a lot like what happened in Iceland.
In Iceland, all three of their McDonalds have been forced to close. Now, that may not sound like a national emergency, but neither does the swine flu. The reason they shut down is that Iceland’s currency, the krona, has devalued to the point where the McDonalds’ franchise owner could no longer afford to even import the packaging, meat and cheese to run the business.
Remember, four years ago, Iceland was a stable economy. But now, after being in a position where they were importing workers from Poland, they’ve gone to a 10 percent unemployment rate in one year. Massive debt, coupled with the currency and banking crisis, has caused Iceland’s once thriving economy to hit the skids.
Iceland’s GDP is around $20 billion; their foreign debt alone is $120 billion — six times their GDP. Would you like a hot apple pie with that debt, Reykjavik? If only their biggest problem was where to find their next Big Mac. If
only that was ourbiggest problem.
Our GDP is $15 trillion. Our actual debt, as you’ve seen many times on the debt clock, is $105 trillion. Hmm, seven times our GDP.
I want to make this clear: Ours is actual debt; theirs is foreign debt. But do you know the games our government plays with the accounting books? Do you realize we have four separate books? According to David Walker, former U.S. comptroller, everybody involved would be in jail — if we didn’t own the jails.
Liberal blogs are having fun with me saying there’s more truth from Pravda. Well, let me give you a quote from Pravda last week: “It can be safely said, that the last time a great nation destroyed itself through its own hubris and economic folly was the early Soviet Union (though in the end the late Soviet Union still died by the economic hand). Now we get the opportunity to watch the Americans do the exact same thing to themselves. The most amazing thing of course, is that they are just repeating the failed mistakes of the past.”
How is it happening? Well, let me explain how the system works:
A year ago we had a problem with the banks: People took out too many bad loans and the government pressured banks to make those loans, by the way, to people who couldn’t afford them and the whole thing melted down.
So the banks didn’t have enough money to cover bad loans and we were faced with a choice: Let them fail or bail them out. Well, you know what happened: We passed the Troubled Asset Recovery Program (TARP) to help the banks cover the bad loans and fund new ones.
Now we’re hearing that the banks aren’t making loans. How is that possible? After all, we gave them all of that money.
It’s actually a good thing right now that the banks aren’t making those loans. Too much money would be flooding the system. They are not making those loans because they’re afraid that the worst is not yet behind us and they need to have that money on hand so they can keep their doors open.
But if things start to get better again, then all of that money will flood out into the system. It’s called velocity — the speed of the money coming out of banks into the economy. And for inflation to happen, you need a lot of money in the system.
We don’t really have an inflation problem right now, but back in the ’70s under Jimmy Carter, for two years we printed too much money. We added 13 percent more money to our money supply for two years. Remember how bad the inflation was? And we started down a socialist utopia with Jimmy Carter.
To stop it, what did we have to do? Fed Chairman Paul Volcker came in and, in an effort to suck all the money back to the Fed and out of the system, he had to raise interest rates.
Remember, the banks have all of this money on the sidelines right now. As soon as they release it into the system, from that time, it usually takes about two years for the money glut to cause inflation.
After printing 13 percent more money for two years, we had runaway inflation of 12 percent. So Volcker raised the interest rate to 20 percent, because whenever you borrow, let’s say, $100, you’ll then owe $20 — the Fed then takes that $20 and destroys it to get it out of the system and bring inflation back down.
So we had to have a 20 percent interest rate for a 13 percent increase in the money supply for two years. In the last year or so since Lehman Brothers failed, we have increased our money supply by 120 percent.
How high will our interest rate have to be to pull all of that money back out of the system?
The reason I bring this up is that our real debt, as I pointed out, is $105 trillion. You and I both know we can’t pay that back, so how do you pull this money back in without completely shutting down the entire economy? Can you afford a house with a 30-year interest of 35 or 40 percent? How about a car payment? How many business loans will be taken out with 25 percent interest rates?
You can’t. Everything stops. So how do you keep an economy, based on buying — not building — going when you can’t borrow money? You don’t. It’s the real reason that Chris Dodd wants a cap on credit cards today. They must have your credit cards working. They must have you spending.
Here’s what I think they’re doing: They will pay off the debt by printing enough money to pay off $105 trillion. It’ll be worthless, but we’ll give the Chinese and the rest of our debtors, their money. And those people that we’ve sold stuff to will come and take their assets.
But then what’s left to restart the country? We have to have something to back our currency. Well, what about gold? There are $200 trillion in investible assets in the world and just $800 billion in gold to back it. So you can’t go back to the gold standard; you need something to buy stuff with — we can’t barter forever.
So, we have to have money and we have to base it on something. Let’s go back to the people who taught us in the last century what we do when there’s an out-of-control money supply: the Weimar Republic in Germany. What did they do? After their currency had become so worthless that they had printed 2 trillion-mark bank notes and their economy collapsed, they dumped the mark, switched to the rentenmark and backed it with real estate — land.
Well, there’s certainly enough land and resources in America that we could back ourcurrency that way as well, but the government would have to own all the land.
Hey, good news! Between Fannie and Freddie, the federal government already owns 55 percent of the mortgages in this country. And coupled with all the federal land grabs for parks, polar bears who are crowded but endangered and all the oil we’re not drilling for or coal we’re not mining, you might be able to base a currency on all that. And what a deal for China when they come in to “help.”
I hope I’m absolutely wrong about this, I honestly do. But think about this: Who would the new “regime” responsible for this “new America” have on their side? Who would the federal government, after they’ve destroyed your future and that of your children, who would they have on their side?
You’ll say: Let us fix it; let the free market fix it. But we’ve already seen those in the government don’t believe in you or the free market. The government is going to say
: Let the world fix it. They’re already saying that — and when you watch Friday’s show on global warming, you’ll see how they’re laying the groundwork for this.
Don’t fool yourself. Read history. During the American Revolution and the Civil War, we needed allies: People who would fight and supply money. Our government is making those allies: Russia, China, Venezuela. But don’t you think China would be willing to come over here to protect this government, from its people under those circumstances? For a piece of our oil, coal, mineral reserves and land? And to be part of one, big, happy global family?
You bet.
So it boils down to this: What if the dollar collapses in the next three, five, eight years? What if, this is the plan? Does it matter?
And let me ask specifically to all those who support Gitmo being closed, the Amnesty International goofballs, the protect-the-endangered-crowded-polar-bear crowd: Do you really think Russia and China will be better protectors of the planet than we have been? Will Russians cordon off 200,000 square miles of extra space for polar bear roaming or will they shoot them in the head to get a barrel of oil that used to belong to you?
I know I would. Surely, Ivan will.