Federal Spending Is Out Of Control

This is from a column in the De Moines Register by Tom Quimer. Our government is spending money like a drunken sailor. The national debt is now 98% of the GDP. We cannot sustain spending like this even for a few years.

* In 1980, the federal government spent an average of $2,498 per citizen.
* In 1990, the federal government spent an average of $4,943 per citizen.
* In 2000, the federal government spent an average of $6,138 per citizen.
* In 2010, the federal government will spend an average of $11,640 per citizen (estimated).

If we adjust for inflation using 1980 dollars, federal spending has climbed 79 percent, from $2,498 per person in 1980 to $4,470 today.

Democrats and Republicans have collaborated in this dramatic expansion of spending. In fact, the most frugal period was the decade of gridlock when Clinton, a Democrat, and Speaker Newt Gingrich, a Republican, helped keep the other party's spending habits in check.

And yet, even with the modest restraint of the 1990s, federal spending has increased more than twice the rate of inflation since 1992.

We have a spending problem, not a tax problem.

The national debt is $14 trillion, about 98 percent of gross domestic product (GDP).

We must as a country, regain control of our spending. Its bad enough that mandatory spending now takes up a substantial majority of the federal budget. But now, with the initiatives that Mr. Obama and his handlers in the Democratically controlled Congress has decided that in a time of economic recession, that they must enact record spending programs that will literally destroy the economy in under 20 years. If they are intent on wiping out America economically, they're doing it in a grand fashion.