“Congress is ready to give the American people an early Christmas present: slavish indebtedness for perpetuity,” Wilson said, adding, “In the meantime, Moody’s has issued a stark warning against the deteriorating public finances of the U.S., which if not corrected, will likely result in the loss of the nation’s Aaa bond rating.”

Last week, Moody’s Investor Services stated that U.S. “public finances are deteriorating considerably and may therefore test the Aaa boundaries…”

According to the Washington Post, “The House may vote this week to raise the federal debt ceiling by at least $1.8 trillion, as the current limit is set to be breached by New Year’s Eve.” The legislation would be included in the House “stimulus” bill, which will be attached to the annual defense appropriations bill.

Wilson said that attaching the national debt increase to troops funding was “a cynical admission that on its own, the measure would face certain rejection by the American people. Washington’s big spenders are hiding behind the troops.”

Congressional leaders say that the increase in the national debt has been as a result defense spending. Wilson said that while defense spending as a percent of the overall budget has actually decreased, “the uncontrolled growth of the debt has occurred via entitlements spending, which has far outpaced any other part of the budget.”

According to an Americans for Limited Government analysis of Office of Management and Budget (OMB) data, annual entitlement spending has grown from $386.4 billion in 1992 (27.98 percent of budget outlays totaling $1.381 trillion) to $1.36 trillion in 2009 (38.17 percent of budget outlays totaling $3.653 trillion). (Sources: www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy10/pdf/hist.pdf, and http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/asset.aspx?AssetId=1702.)

Annual defense spending, on the other hand, has shrunk as a percent of total outlays from 21.6 percent to 18.12 percent.

“That is remarkable,” Wilson said, “when one considers the fact that defense spending has more than doubled since 1992.” Defense spending stood at $298.35 billion in 1992, and has grown to $662 billion in 2009.

“Entitlement spending over the same period has more than tripled during the same period,” Wilson added.

According to OMB data, entitlement spending as a percent of budget outlays will continue to increase, and defense spending will continue to decrease. In 2019, OMB projects that entitlements spending will stand at $2.482 trillion (45.93 percent of outlays totaling $5.403 trillion).

“Soon,” Wilson said, “entitlement spending will break the federal treasury and saddle the American people with an insurmountable bill that can never possibly be paid. In fact, we will not even be able to keep up with our interest payments.”

According to the New York Times, “the White House estimates that the government’s tab for servicing the debt will exceed $700 billion a year in 2019, up from $202 billion this year, even if annual budget deficits shrink drastically.”

In a recent column, Wilson wrote that “even as interest repayments grow exponentially, the debt will not shrink. In fact, the national debt has grown every single year since 1958. And the government projects that trend will continue unabated for the next decade.”

Wilson said that the growth of the debt could be directly correlated and shown to be caused by the growth of entitlements. The national debt has grown by over 295 percent since 1992, and will have grown by over 492 percent by 2020. Entitlement spending has grown by over 351 percent since 1992, and will have grown by over 642 percent by 2020.

“Entitlement spending is the greatest contributor to the growth of the national debt because it is growing at an even faster pace than the budget as a whole. That means it is, without a doubt, the most uncontrolled, profligate, unaffordable and unsustainable portion of the budget,” Wilson explained.

Currently, the national debt stands at over $12 trillion and is projected to top the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2011 at over $14 trillion. By 2020, it will top $20 trillion.

“This is a problem that, if not addressed by Congress now, will destroy the solvency and prosperity of the nation. The only solution is to rein in entitlement spending and figure out a way to actually reduce debt,” Wilson said, concluding, “For, if we do not, this generation and future generations of Americans will be enslaved to a debt that cannot be paid.”

###

According to TalkingPointsMemo.com, under the plan “Insurance companies will have the option of creating nationally-based non-profit insurance plans that would offered on the exchanges in every state. However, according to the aide, if insurance companies don’t step up to the plate to offer such plans, that will trigger a national public option.”

“A vote for a triggered ‘public option’ is the same as a vote for the ‘public option,’” Wilson said. “Everyone knows the game will be rigged so that the trigger will automatically be pulled later. The fact is, the Reid proposal authorizes the establishment of the ‘public option,’ and that is reason enough to vote no.”

“Only Senators Snowe and Collins can stop this madness,” Wilson declared. “Now is a time for choosing for Senators Snowe and Collins, with the ‘public option’ aimed at the American people.”

“They must decide whether they will be the ones who pull the ‘trigger’ and help the government take over the nation’s entire health system. Or, whether they will stand with the American people and stop the trigger from being pulled,” Wilson explained.

In the latest Rasmussen Reports poll, 51 percent of voters surveyed say they oppose the proposed legislation. Only 41 percent support it.

“This plan will only result in the establishment of the government-run ‘public option’ that will lose trillions of dollars, ration of health care away from seniors, raise the cost of premiums, drive the American people off of private health options, and bankrupt the Treasury,” Wilson said.

A recent Congressional Budget Office study states, “Average premiums per policy in the non-group market would in 2016 would be roughly $5,800 for single policies and $15,200 for family policies under the proposal, compared with roughly $5,500 for single policies and $13,100 for family policies under current law.”

The Senate version of the “public option” will start operating at massive deficits starting in 2015, according to an Americans for Limited Government analysis of Congressional Budget Office data. By 2019, the “public option” will have spent some $361 billion more than it took in via new taxes.

“Senators Snowe and Collins can be heroes if they stop this highly unpopular, budget-busting government power grab. They are in an historic position to save health care for millions of Americans,” Wilson concluded.

###

“Instead of using repaid TARP funds to bail out the public sector unions in bankrupt states like California and New York, it should be used to pay down the $12 trillion national debt,” Wilson said.

“Congress must reject the $200 billion states bailout, before TARP is allowed to become a political slush fund — a revolving line of credit for the big spenders in Washington to waste on whatever they want in state capitals across the country,” Wilson said.

While Obama, in his Allentown visit, made it a point to stage events at privately owned factories, top Administration revealed that in a speech scheduled for Tuesday, he intends to introduce a new federal “stimulus” package, which, according to AP will call for “sending the biggest chunk of fresh money to cash-strapped state and local governments.”

“One of the primary reasons state and local governments are ‘cash strapped,’” said Wilson, “is that they have allowed rapid increases in the number of government workers. The last thing the American people need is for bloated state and local governments to get a federal infusion of tax dollars to take on more overpaid, underworked government employees.”

Speaking on December 3rd in Washington, Obama announced the plan: “Next year we’re going to still have some of those challenges because usually state and local government revenues lag the recovery as a whole. They may need some more help from the federal government.”

Obama said it was up to the federal government to pay state bills. “Frankly, because state and local governments generally don’t have the capacity to engage in deficit spending, some of that obligation falls on the federal government.”

Wilson said that “balancing state budgets and bailing out public sector unions is becoming a permanent line on the federal budget,” reminding American news media that the $789 billion “stimulus” bill contained $53.6 billion to bail out state and local governments.

Wilson noted that “a lot of that spending has not even gone into effect yet, and the states are already lined up to bail out their 2010 deficit-spending needs. States like California and New York cannot sell enough bonds to keep up with the excesses of the boom years. If Congress bails them out, it will mean they will not have to make painful, necessary cuts in spending.”

“The worst medicine for profligate spenders in state governments nationwide is for the federal government to issue them blank checks to bail out their public union political constituencies,” Wilson said. “It is obscene for a bankrupt federal government to shell out hardworking taxpayers’ dollars to bail out wasteful state and local governments so that they can in turn hire a whole new army of overpaid, make-work bureaucrats.”

“The way to stimulate the economy and create new jobs, “Wilson added, “is to cut taxes, cut regulations, stop the government takeover of private industry, and allow the private sector to get back in its feet with real, product-producing jobs.

“More government bureaucrats — at any and every level — just means more waste, larger governments, and higher taxes on those few private sector employees left who are already bearing the burden of out-of-control government spending.”

Wilson pledged that his organization’s 400,000 members nationwide would “work at every level” to stop the new Obama spending program.

“Congress needs to stop wasteful government spending,” Wilson concluded, “and not allow the politicians to just shift its focus and disguise its intent. Bailing states out of their own irresponsible decisions is an irresponsible use of federal taxpayer resources.”

###

Dubbed The WIRE (Washington Insider’s REport), the news portal updates itself via RSS and Twitter feeds from Washington’s top news sites, leading national bloggers, and newsmakers. It also features a classic news wire service: publishing traditional, Congressional and organization news releases, opeds, and “other news of vital importance to the nation’s press,” said Wilson.

“The WIRE is for political reporters, opinion leaders, bloggers, and editors in and around Washington, to keep them up to date with the headlines and what the capital’s leading newsmakers are saying, up-to-the-minute,” Wilson said.

Wilson also reached out to elected officials, news outlets, bloggers, activists and organizations nationwide to send breaking news tips and headlines to press@washingtonwire.org. Newsmaker Tweeters should contact Adam Bitely at adam@netrightnation.com about adding their Twitter feed to the system.

NetRightNation.com Director and WIRE News Editor Adam Bitely touted the RSS and Twitter feeds, which are run through a program called Yahoo! Pipes. “Today’s new media technologies allow websites to communicate through ‘feeds’ all across the Internet. So, for example, when the New York Times updates their political section, it automatically communicates with the WIRE, and is published automatically,” Bitely explained.

Wilson noted that in the Breaking News & Commentary section, “The WIRE is constantly being fed with releases, commentary, statements, speeches, and multimedia. We publish media from both Democrats and Republicans on the Hill.”

“We’re non-partisan,” WIRE News Editor Robert Romano explained. “My staff’s job is to sift through hundreds of releases we receive a day and feature those most vital to the top headlines, or the stories behind those headlines. Whether the stories are left or right, the WIRE is right down the middle.”

According to Bitely, the National News section includes top national, DC news outlets Politico, Washington Examiner, Congressional Quarterly, and others.

The WIRE contains four prominent features:

• the WIRE Twitter feed of top DC tweeters;
• the National News feed of the latest headlines from the Washington Post, Washington Examiner, Politico, Congressional Quarterly, and other DC news outlets;
• the blog feed from top political bloggers; and
• the Breaking News & Commentary feed, which will include Congressional and not-for-profit releases, statements, opeds, etc. as well as “breaking news that ALG-NRN News identifies throughout the day, and up-to-the-minute,” said Romano.

Wilson concluded, “The WIRE promises to be a single source, turn-to site for the nation’s media to get their hands on political news from the all parts of the political spectrum—directly from the newsmakers, without any filters.”

###

“We ask you to find one factual error on StopJarrett.com,” Wilson wrote in a letter to Bergthold. “Unlike the People for the American Way, whose website is riddled with inaccuracies, StopJarrett.com is meticulously researched. Perhaps the reason you don’t like it is because Ms. Jarrett is a radical who should have never achieved her position of power.”

People for the American Way’s charges against Americans for Limited Government and other outlets were published in its document dated December 2009, “Rise of the New McCarthyism: How Right Wing Extremists Try to Paralyze Government Through Ideological Smears and Baseless Attacks”.

Wilson wrote to Bergthold that the accusations were “pathetic,” stating that concerned citizens had every right to object to the policies of Barack Obama’s nominees, and to question the vetting process for choosing what Wilson termed were “radicals.”

“Valerie Jarrett, in her role as Barack Obama’s trusted advisor, has advocated for these appointments, and thus is responsible for the agenda that is taken into the office by these officials, just as Barack Obama is for making the appointments,” Wilson wrote. “The fact is, as we have carefully documented, these appointments represent a highly objectionable, radical agenda totally at odds with the ways and wishes of the vast majority of the American people.”

Wilson said that he objected to Obama’s nominees’ plans to “create a ‘green’ economy based on faulty, manipulated science, as Mr. Jones was tasked to do; extend legal rights to animals and to create constitutional mandates on education, health care, and other entitlements, as Sunstein has advocated; and utilize the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) as a means of enforcing ‘diversity’ in media ownership and on the airwaves through the creation of a Chief Diversity Officer … now filled by Mark Lloyd.”

Citing the American Spectator as a source, Wilson wrote, “Jarrett interviewed Jones for his position as the ‘green’ jobs czar in a position Jarrett’s Office for Intergovernmental Affairs and Public Engagement (OIAPE) helped to create. Her office also helped to create Lloyd’s current position at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), ‘Chief Diversity Officer.’ And she also had a direct hand in hiring Sunstein.”

The letter concluded, “Barack Obama, with the explicit collusion of Valerie Jarrett, nominated a line-up of radicals to be in pivotal government positions. Their policy positions are a matter of record.”

ALG Editor’s Note: Every day next week, Americans for Limited Government will be publishing a five-part series, “The Jarrett Chronicles: Corruption — The Chicago Way.”

###

“The dollar is sinking like the Titanic, gold is now over $1,200 an ounce, and foreign creditors are increasingly wary of buying U.S. treasuries,” Wilson said, “the principal cause of which has been the loose monetary policy of the Federal Reserve.”

“The monetary base has more than doubled since the financial crisis began in 2007,” Wilson explained, “and the predictable inflation is already taking root, as the nominal value of gold warns us.”

Today at 10AM, the Senate Banking Committee began confirmation hearings on Bernanke who Barack Obama has nominated for a second term as Fed Chair. Yesterday, Senator Bernie Sanders announced that he had placed a legislative hold on the nomination, meaning it will take 60 votes to bring the nomination to the floor if it comes out of committee.

The hearing came as new questions are emerging over the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF) by Senators David Vitter and Jim Bunning. They are asking New Fed Chair Dennis Hughes to explain in further detail how the program works.

According to an Americans for Limited Government analysis of the TALF program that was authorized by the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, “The program applies to credit card debt, student loans, Small Business Administration loans, car loans, commercial real estate mortgage-backed securities, and more.”

“Under TALF, investors put up a small fraction (5%-16%) of the value of a loan portfolio that they wish to purchase; the rest is borrowed from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Yields on these portfolios are expected to be around 11% to 15%,” states the backgrounder.

As a result, the analysis states the Fed will have trouble “reducing the money supply when inflation increases because of the Fed’s commitments under the TALF program.”

Wilson said that the Fed will unable to stop another bubble from forming. “Every vote to put Ben Bernanke back in charge of the Fed will rightly be viewed as a vote in favor of the outright devaluation of the dollar,” Wilson added, “for which the American people will rightly hold their Senators accountable. You don’t give a vote of confidence in the economy by rehiring one of the principal architects of our misery.”

According to Rasmussen Reports, only 21 percent of voters support a second term for the Fed Chair.

Wilson laid responsibility for the financial crisis at the feet of the Federal Reserve, saying that loose lending and artificially low interest rates beginning in the 1990’s, and exploding in the 2000’s, fueled the housing bubble. “This terrible policy began under former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan, and has continued under Bernanke’s watch.

Outstanding mortgage debt rose from $3.805 trillion in 1990 to $14.568 trillion in 2007—a 383 percent increase. The national debt itself rose from $3.23 trillion to $9 trillion, a 278 percent jump.

Wilson said the money supply behaved predictably as a result, rising from $1.787 trillion to $5.268 trillion over the same period, according to the Ludwig Von Mises Institute. And prices followed: gold rose from $386.20 an ounce to $695.39, a 180 percent increase, and oil rose from $23.19 a barrel to $64.20, a 277 percent increase.

“This unsustainable debt binge flooded world markets with liquidity, resulting in bubble after bubble: tech, housing, oil and commodities, and then treasuries,” Wilson said, “and it would have been impossible without the Fed’s easy money policies. We cannot print our way to prosperity.”

“Under those circumstances, the Senate must not re-confirm Ben Bernanke to another term of Fed Chair. America needs a new monetary policy, not more dollar devaluation,” Wilson concluded.

###

In a letter dated November 23rd to Senate Majority Harry Reid, Senator Voinovich announced his intention to place a legislative hold on the nomination. Voinovich wrote that it was his “sincere hope” that the nomination be withdrawn altogether. Senator Collins also opposes Borras.

According to the letter, “After a careful review of Mr. Borras’ background, resume, and stated qualifications, I am not confident that he has the leadership and management experience necessary to manage an organization of 220,000 employees or oversee an approximately $50 billion operating budget.”

Said Wilson, “Senators Voinovich and Collins are acting responsibly to oppose Borras. The DHS Under Secretary for Management is too important a position vital to the security of the homeland to be filled with one who lacks the experience to manage hundreds of thousands of employees.”

Voinovich cited his lack of experience in the private and public sectors to qualify Borras to the position, where he would be responsible for “serving as the Chief Management Officer at DHS and principal advisor to the Secretary of Homeland Security on the management of DHS; overseeing budget, appropriations, expenditures of funds, accounting, and finance; managing procurement, personnel, and other resources; ensuring the security of personnel and resources; developing strategic management and annual performance plans; and identifying and tracking performance measures.”

According to the letter, Congress “required that the Under Secretary for Management have extensive level leadership and management experience, a demonstrated ability to manage large and complex organizations, and a proven record in achieving positive operational results.” Which, Voinovich writes, he lacks.

Wilson concluded, “This goes to the heart of the vetting process that the White House ought to be undertaking but is failing. Senators Voinovich and Collins are picking up the ball that is being dropped by Barack Obama, in opposing Borras to a post critical to the nation’s security—a post he does not even meet the basic, statutory qualifications for.”

###

“Members of the Senate should hold things up until after the holidays,” said Wilson, adding, “because the Majority obviously has not yet gotten enough of an earful of public outrage over the loss of trillions of dollars, rationing of health care away from seniors, raising the cost of premiums, driving the American people off of private health options, and bankrupting the Treasury.”

In the latest Rasmussen Reports poll, 53 percent of voters surveyed say they oppose the plan. Only 41 percent support it.

“Based on poll after poll conducted, the American people have very strong reservations about this legislation. In its current form, they do not support it. Under the circumstances, it is perfectly legitimate for Senators to slow things down and gauge whether the public really supports nationalizing the U.S. health system—the best in the world,” Wilson explained.

“The U.S. spends more on health care than any other nation, and more than 280 million Americans already have access to health care. There is no health care ‘crisis,’ and therefore no urgency to act on this legislation before the end of the year,” Wilson added.

As of 2006, the Census Bureau estimates that some 201.7 million, or 71.5 percent of Americans with health insurance, get their insurance privately. 28.5 percent of those with insurance, or 80.3 million, get it from the government. All together, the U.S. spent $2.4 trillion in total health care spending in 2007.

“Making matters worse, the so-called ‘public option’ proposed will do nothing to contain the growing health costs, and instead will put upward pressure on the price of insurance premiums,” said Wilson, citing a recent Congressional Budget Office study.

According to the study, “Average premiums per policy in the non-group market would in 2016 would be roughly $5,800 for single policies and $15,200 for family policies under the proposal, compared with roughly $5,500 for single policies and $13,100 for family policies under current law.”

The Senate version of the “public option” will start operating at massive budget-busting deficits starting in 2015, according to an Americans for Limited Government analysis of Congressional Budget Office data. By 2019, the “public option” will have spent some $361 billion more than it took in via new taxes.

“There really is no harm in waiting,” Wilson said, concluding, “More than anything, the American people do not understand the bum’s rush to pass this abomination in accordance with a political timetable. They want Senators to listen to them, not to their party leadership.”

Interview Availability: Please contact Robert Romano at (703)383-0880 or at Robert@getliberty.org to arrange an interview with ALG President Bill Wilson.

###