Scary!

Congresswoman Cathy McMorris posted a link on her Facebook page today of a posting on The Atlantic entitled The Scariest Unemployment Graph I've Seen Yet. The post contained this chart and note.

The median duration of unemployment is higher today than any time in the last 50 years. That's an understatement. It is more than twice as high today than any time in the last 50 years.

It's scary all right for those who are unemployed, which she isn't and that can be scary, too, for some. Lately McMorris Rodgers has been beating the drums of doom about the International Monetary Fund and its efforts to help out Greece, Portugal, and other European countries.

She even posted an idea on the House Republican web site, America Speaking Out, in which she states, "President Obama is committing between $50-100 billion of your tax money to help bailout European governments whose failed socialist policies have become too exorbitant to pay. All of this is being done behind closed doors."

Behind closed doors! Scary, huh? As the head of the Executive Branch the President is in charge of a lot and he appoints people to make decisions on his and the country's behalf. He doesn't have to check in with Congress on everything. But it's behind closed doors!

Congresswoman McMorris Rodgers acts like she's very concerned with what happens to our tax dollars, but is she really? Let's look at some more scary stuff--with charts!

From an article in 2005, the year McMorris Rodgers began her first term, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities uses data, including this chart, from the Congressional Budget Office showing the effects of the Bush tax cuts from 2001.

In 2005, the cost of tax cuts enacted over the past four years will be over three times the cost of all domestic program increases enacted over this period.

The new CBO data show that changes in law enacted since January 2001 increased the deficit by $539 billion in 2005. In the absence of such legislation, the nation would have a surplus this year.

Scary!

Three years later, another article on CBO data states "Congressional Budget Office data show that the tax cuts have been the single largest contributor to the reemergence of substantial budget deficits in recent years. Legislation enacted since 2001 added about $3.0 trillion to deficits between 2001 and 2007, with nearly half of this deterioration in the budget due to the tax cuts (about a third was due to increases in security spending, and about a sixth to increases in domestic spending)."

Pretty scary.

And last month another article about the effects of tax cuts for the rich and the costs of the wars. Together with the economic downturn, the Bush tax cuts and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq explain virtually the entire deficit over the next ten years.

If McMorris Rodgers were really concerned about our tax dollars, instead of chairing an earmark reform commission that did nothing or posted her own idea on America Speaking Out or declining earmarks during non-election years, you'd think she would have addressed that which affected the deficit the most.

You'd think. Scary, huh?