I was just saying in the prior post that taxes are going to rise so much, we’ll be thinking back to now as “the good old days.” Here’s one reason why:
CBO says ObamaCare will cost $115 billion more than thought
Of all the slime dripping from ObamaCare, from the de facto bribes to the procedural shenanigans to the Democrats’ insane demagoguery of townhall protesters, the gaming of the CBO numbers is what bothers me most. Which, in a way, is silly. When you’re talking about sums as fantastically astronomical as $940 billion, who cares what the actual pricetag is? But that’s just it: Obama pretended to care, touting the bending o’ the cost curve and demanding that the Democrats bring in a bill below the arbitrary yet politically toxic threshold of $1 trillion. And in order to make that happen, they were willing to tell any lie and pull any accounting trick that they had to, from rigging the cost window to obscure the actual $2.5 trillion pricetag to pouring the enormous costs of “doctor fix” into a separate bill so that it wouldn’t show up in the CBO data on O-Care to pushing the bill through the House before CBO was finished running the numbers. At a moment when Americans desperately need leaders to be frank with them about the cost of entitlements and what it’ll take to restore fiscal stability, Obama gave them a new entitlement built on lie after lie after lie. That’s the legacy of his signature domestic “achievement.”
If that doesn’t fill your heart with joy, Cap-and-Trade is back.
You really have to laugh to keep from crying.
I am more and more certain that this government is doomed.
So, recall the concept, and remember this for the Next Government:
GAAP
“Generally Accepted Accounting Practices” (or “Principles”)
It’s what you and I have to do if we run a business. It’s what every business operating under the legal aegis of the government alphabet soup has to comply with. It’s what you have to do to be on any major stock exchange. It’s what Enron’s executives were guilty of violating, and what Arthur Anderson’s organization was destroyed by its failure to detect abuses of.
Now what else it is?
It’s a thing that not one single solitary $#@^$@%&$@& GOVERNMENT on the planet feels any need to apply to its operating model.
And it’s at the heart of all this folderol, all these problems, and pretty much every similar event in the history of government financial collapses.
So put it in the next Constitution, ladies and gentlemen:
“The Government By the People, For the People, shall be absolutely required to apply GAAP to all its operations, and to make fully public its books for all but intelligence and military operations, and for all non-restricted-access operations of the latter.”
You might also consider a detailed codicil about requiring that once every ‘x’ number of years (say, ten) all credit be paid off in full, too.
Odd.
GAAP
I’d also suggest one that says that all government agencies and individuals are bound by the same laws and rules as the plebes, with exceptions only allowed by a vote from the people, and said exceptions only to apply for a certain number of years before a re-enabling vote is required on them.