Which is which? Answer after the jump.

Answers:

Obama: top
Boehner: bottom

(One of the “Snowflake” memos written by Donald Rumsfeld during his tenure as U.S. Secretary of defense, from Harper’s Magazine, May 2011).

Via TYWKIWDBI.

Philip takes those huge numbers, divides by 100 million, then compares the government to a family.  I’ve posted before about how numbers without context can be confusing.

We have a family that is spending $38,200 per year. The family’s income is $21,700 per year. The family adds $16,500 in credit card debt every year in order to pay its bills. After a long and difficult debate among family members, keeping in mind that it was not going to be possible to borrow $16,500 every year forever, the parents and children agreed that a $380/year premium cable subscription could be terminated. So now the family will have to borrow only $16,120 per year.

Read the rest of his post.

And understand this: If American workers are being denied their right to organize and collectively bargain when I’m in the White House, I will put on a comfortable pair of shoes myself, I’ll will walk on that picket line with you as President of the United States of America. Because workers deserve to know that somebody is standing in their corner.
- Barack Obama in Spartanburg, SC. Nov. 3rd, 2007.

Will Obama actually put on those shoes? Probably not. This quote does show one thing though… he likes to talk.

Raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure.

Sen. Barack Obama, March 16, 2006

Read Obama’s Plan for America – Fiscal for more background on Obama’s position on fiscal discipline… or at least former position.

The PDF, hosted on www.barackobama.com, includes these broken plans:

Restore Fiscal Discipline in Congress
Obama will reinstate pay-as-you-go (PAYGO) budget rules, so that new spending or tax cuts are paid for by spending cuts or new revenue elsewhere.

Cut Pork Barrel Spending
Obama will cut skyrocketing pork barrel spending projects by forcing more transparency about who is requesting projects and what the projects would accomplish before Congress votes to approve them.

Cut Down on Tax Haven and Tax Shelter Abuse
Obama will build on his bipartisan work to penalize companies that abuse the tax code and stop the use of tax havens.

Repeal Bush Tax Cuts for the Wealthy
Obama is committed to repealing the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.

To repeat…

Raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure.

In Obama’s first two years as president, the debt ceiling has been increased three times (with a fourth one likely coming soon). One of these three was for $1,900,000,000,000, twice the previous record for change in debt ceiling.

When Obama took office the debt ceiling was $11,315,000,000,000. Now it’s $14,294,000,000,000. A 26% change. And thats before the upcoming increase.

I’d come up with a conclusion here, but I think Barack Obama said it best. Raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure.

Here are some of my favorite excerpts.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent

At its start in 1966, Medicare cost $3 billion. The House Ways and Means Committee, along with President Johnson, estimated that Medicare would cost an inflation-adjusted $12 billion by 1990; however, by 1990 Medicare costs topped $107 billion. That’s nearly nine times greater than Congress’s prediction. Today’s Medicare tab comes to $420 billion with no signs of leveling off.

During the legislative debate before ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment, President Howard Taft and congressional supporters said that only the rich would ever pay federal income taxes. In 1916 only one half of 1 percent of income earners were affected. Those earning $250,000 a year in today’s dollars paid 1 percent, and those earning $6 million in today’s dollars paid 7 percent. The promise that only the rich would pay was simply a lie to exploit the politics of envy and dupe Americans into ratifying the Sixteenth Amendment.

Read the article for some more facts and figures.

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In 1794, when Congress appropriated $15,000 to assist some French refugees, James Madison, the acknowledged father of our Constitution, stood on the floor of the House to object, saying, “I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.” He later added, “(T)he government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like the state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.” Two hundred years later, at least two-thirds of a multi-trillion-dollar federal budget is spent on charity or “objects of benevolence.”

Don’t get me wrong; I enjoy getting a good gift. To me, a good gift (assuming it’s tangible), like a good purchase, is something that I value more than the cost of the gift itself. A good gift is something that I would have purchased myself had I known about it. If the gift is something I wouldn’t have bought on my own, then it’s likely that I value the money spent on the gift more than the gift itself. Accordingly, I would have been happier with the money.

As anybody familiar with the holiday tradition knows, in most cases, exchanged gifts between two people should have approximately the same value. It’s this rule that’s put me in an awkward situation. Somebody who I didn’t plan on exchanging gifts with got me something. This something was expensive. Just how expensive? $42,105. A $42,105 gift is very expensive, especially coming from somebody who I didn’t plan on exchanging gifts with in the first place.

Just who spent $42,105 on a gift for me this year? Well it was the generous federal government. The government has “spent, lent or committed $12.8 trillion… The money works out to $42,105 for every man, woman and child in the U.S.” This gift was so generous, that Bloomberg decided to write an article about it!

Like most holiday gifts, it wasn’t something I wanted. In fact, I wish I’d never received it.

So now I’m in an awkward situation. The government spent $42,105 on a gift for me, and I got it nothing in return… and the year is almost over. I did what any prospective gift-buyer does. I snooped around. Trying to find out what the government really wanted, I started searching. On the FAQ’s for the Treasury, down at the very bottom of the page, I finally found it. The government wants more money! Even with the ability to make an infinite amount of worthless green paper, the government still wants more of it. Why? So it can go waste it on something else that we didn’t want in the first place.

The final Frequently Asked Question about the Public Debt:

Q. How do you make a contribution to reduce the debt?

A. Make your check payable to the Bureau of the Public Debt, and in the memo section, notate that it is a Gift to reduce the Debt Held by the Public. Mail your check to:

Attn Dept G
Bureau of the Public Debt
P. O. Box 2188
Parkersburg, WV 26106-2188

So that’s what it wanted all along. As I write a check for $42,105, I wonder how this can possibly be a Frequently Asked Question. I wonder how many people would actually mail the Treasury more money than it already steals.  I wonder if anybody has ever used P.O. Box 2188 in Parkersburg, West Virginia. I get my head back together and focus in on the task.  I make sure to write a cheery holiday letter. I even throw in some holiday cookies. As I get ready to mail $42,105 to a P.O. Box in West Virginia, I try not to think about how shady a P.O. Box in West Virginia really is. Or even worse, how the government who thinks it can solve problems by throwing money at it, somehow thought it knew what I wanted for the holidays.

And many more!