Grasping the Obvious

As I've said more than once before, sometimes I wake up and it seems like only Pat Buchanan is asking the obvious questions--Diana West, too, I guess. Someone once quipped that Mr. Buchanan's tombstone should read, "I told you so, you ------- fools!"

...the behavior of senators suggests thatneither party appreciates the depth of the crisis we are in or the pain that will be required to get us out.

[snip]

Consider. Congress this year will spend $1.6 trillion more than it collects in revenue, with the largest outlays in that FY 2010 budget for defense at $719 billion and Social Security at $721 billion.

Thus, if the U.S. Government on Oct. 1, 2008, had shut down the Pentagon and furloughed every soldier and civilian here and around the world, and announced that it would not send out a Social Security check for a full year to any of the 50 million retired and elderly, we would still be $160 billion short of balancing the budget. If you zeroed out federal benefits to veterans for a full year, that, added in, would bring us close.

Such is the magnitude of the fiscal crisis facing the country.

[snip]

This city does not seem to grasp that the days of wine and roses are over. We are not in the 1950s or 1960s anymore. Then, we could throw open our markets to imports from the world. Then, we could dish out foreign aid and fight wars in Vietnam with 500,000 men, while maintaining 50,000 troops in Korea and 300,000 in Europe.

America is headed for a time when, like the British Empire, she is going to have to make painful choices, or have them forced upon us.