Ruling Class idiocy: in January, debt will exceed entire US economic output

Sometime early next month, the United States’ national debt will exceed $15.18 trillion. According to the Commerce Department, the nation’s gross domestic product (the market value of all goods and services produced) is only $15.17 trillion. In other words, not soon after the ball drops in Times Square, the U.S. will join Greece and Italy in the ranks of countries whose total debt obligations are larger than their entire economies.

The main driver of the nation’s burgeoning debt problem is out-of-control federal spending. But while Italy and Greece have cut government outlays, federal officials in the White House and Congress have been doing the opposite. According to the Congressional Budget Office, federal spending rose from $3.45 trillion in 2010 to an estimated $3.59 trillion in 2011. So much for the age of austerity.

And just where is all the federal money going? According to the “Wastebook 2011” report by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., tax dollars were frittered away on, among many other things, video games, Christmas trees, snow cone machines, chocolate, and robot dragons. Robot dragons? Yes, the National Science Foundation recently approved a $923,000 grant for researchers to study how dragon-shaped robots can help preschoolers learn language skills.

The Coburn report also documents how our federal government blew $10 million on a remake of “Sesame Street” for Pakistani children, $15.3 million on one of the infamous bridges to nowhere in Alaska, and $765,828 to subsidize “pancakes for yuppies” in the nation’s capital. In total, Coburn identified $6.9 billion worth of what can only be charitably described as government waste.

Would a $6.9 billion cut in government spending solve our debt problem? No. But the Oklahoma senator released another report the previous month titled “Subsidies of the Rich and Famous.” That report found that the approximately 3 million U.S. households reporting more than $1 million in income receive in excess of $30 billion in welfare payments and special tax breaks every year. That’s $10,000 each, but why should such households get tax breaks like $7,500 to buy a government-approved electric hybrid car?

Follow Joe Miller at Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Read more at the Washington Examiner HERE.