$544.3 billion for extending the Bush tax cuts for another two years, including $81.5 billion for the top 2 percent of earners;
$117.7 billion for a one-year Social Security tax break that would reduce payroll taxes from a rate of 6.2 percent to 4.2 percent on the first $106,800 of wages;
$69 billion in business tax breaks;
$68 billion for raising the estate-tax exemption from $3.5 million to $5 million for individuals and from $5 million to $10 million for families, with the remainder taxed at 35 percent;
$56.5 billion for extending federal unemployment benefits for an additional 13 weeks.
Obama and members of Congress took those actions knowing that debt - and the interest that must be paid on that debt - has being growing out of control.
"At the end of fiscal year 2008, debt held by the public [federal debt] amounted to $5.8 trillion - equal to 40 percent of the nation's annual economic output (gross domestic product, or GDP), a little above the 40-year average of 35 percent," noted the Congressional Budget Office. "Since then, the debt held by the public has shot upward, surpassing $9 trillion by the end of fiscal 2020 - equal to 62 percent of GDP, the highest percentage since shortly after World War II."
Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, favors repealing the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts.
In an interview on 60 Minutes, former Reagan budget director David Stockman agreed: "We have now got both parties essentially telling the big lie with a capital 'B' and a capital 'L' to the public: and that is we have all this government, 24 percent of GDP, this huge entitlement program, all the bailouts. And yet, we don't have to tax ourselves and pay our bills. That is delusional."
It's even more delusional when compared to other industrialized nations.
