OBAMA'S RED INK IN BLACK AND WHITE

Only in the halls of Washington, D.C. and the Obama administration, does the current fiscal policy of unprecedented borrowing and printing of money make sense. To most Americans, it's a difficult to wrap your brain around trillion dollar deficits, but they understand that spending money you don't have will eventually come back to bite you. When attempting to grasp the size and scope of the red ink flowing from our brilliant leaders, it might be helpful to add perspective. Consider:

• The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) currently projects the U.S. government will run a deficit of $1.4 trillion for FY09. This means 43 cents out of every dollar spent by the federal government was borrowed and that the government spent 75 percent more than it earned. To put that into perspective, it would be the equivalent of a family household earning $62,000, but spending over $108,000!

• Total outstanding debt has increased $1.1 trillion since the beginning of the year – that equals almost $10,000 per household in additional debt in just nine months. Debt has increased $1.8 trillion in the last 12 months; more debt has been added in the last year than was added in the three years prior to that, combined.

• Foreign governments and private entities currently hold $3.4 trillion of the $7.5 trillion total debt held by the public (45 percent); China alone owns $801 billion (11 percent).

• According to the White House’s projections of the President’s budget, by 2019 total outstanding debt per household will be $188,500. Compared to 2008 that is more than $100,000 of additional debt per household. As a share of the economy, the President’s budget will increase debt held by the public from 41 percent of GDP in 2008 to 77 percent of GDP in 2019.

• By 2018, the federal government will spend more on interest than it does on discretionary defense spending, and more on interest than it spends on all non-defense discretionary spending combined, including education, energy, transportation, housing, and environmental protection.

• The U.S. government is projected to reach the current statutory limit on the debt, $12.104 trillion, before the end of this calendar year. If Congress acts to increase the limit, this will be the second increase of the public debt during the Obama Administration. The limit has already been raised five times in the preceding eight years.

• Democrats in Nancy Pelosi's House, Harry Reid's Congress and the Obama Administration have proven they are not committed to controlling the growth of government spending. Quite to the contrary: Between May and August, President Obama has signed legislation that increases deficits $128 billion over 10 years – $1,100 per household in just three months.