BY FRANK HILL
Reprinted from TelemachusLeaps.com

Or should trump them, at least.

Despite all the consternation about the Obama Administration and Benghazi, the IRS harassment of Tea Party groups and the AP phone records being monitored, we still have a country to run.

Somebody better be paying attention to our spending and deficit/debt problems or else it really won’t matter if the Obama White House is lying about any of the above 3 scandals now a-brewing.

They are all important issues of governance or malfeasance, however you want to call it.

But none of them can do the damage to our future that out-of-control spending can cause because our debt gets too high and then, when interest rates return to ‘normal’? It either crowds out other essential functions of government or inflation rears its ugly, ugly head and everyone suffers. Especially the elderly, poor and infirm.

Despite the brief rosy scenario put out by the evening news broadcasts today, there is not a whole lot of good news to be popping champagne bottles over or preparing for a ticker tape parade to hail President Obama for delivering us from the dangers that lie ahead.

The second paragraph of the CBO summary, which apparently every newscast chose to ignore, reads: ‘But even with revenues above their 40-year average as a share of the economy, deficits will increase later in the decade, mostly because of the pressures of an aging population, rising healthcare costs, and increasing interest payments’

Here’s two salient points to remember when some partisans start bleating about how ‘President Obama’s policies have cut the deficit in half!’ as some are wont to say: An increase of $105 billion in tax revenues occurred mostly because of the Obama tax hike…that is for sure. But it was because so many rich people opted to sell assets before the end of 2012 to take advantage of the lower rates before the Obama tax hikes hit. These tax payments became due and were paid on April 15.

A one-time dividend payment of $95 billion was received from mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as a result of the TARP deal and is unlikely to ever re-occur again.

That is $200 billion in extra tax revenues this year that will not be repeated. No wonder the deficits dropped by over $200 billion this year!

The Obama tax hikes have not taken full root yet this year so they can be scarcely credited with ‘reducing the budget deficits’. And the budget sequester! You could squeeze a turnip with your own bare hands and get more deficit-reduction out of it than the budget sequester has so far.

Read the CBO report and see for yourself.  We have a long way to go…and that is not just talking about getting to the bottom of the Benghazi, IRS and AP scandals.

Editor’s Note: Frank Hill is the Director of the Institute for the Public Trust in Charlotte, NC. He is former chief of staff to Congressman Alex McMillan of NC and also served on the staffs of former U.S. Senator Elizabeth Dole and the House Budget Committee.