Is this responsible; saddling future generations with mountains of debt so that we don’t have to suffer ourselves?  Is this moral?

The federal government faces exploding deficits and mounting debt over the next decade, White House officials predicted Tuesday in a fiscal assessment far bleaker than what the Obama administration had estimated just a few months ago.

Figures released by the White House budget office foresee a cumulative $9 trillion deficit from 2010-2019, $2 trillion more than the administration estimated in May. Moreover, the figures show the public debt doubling by 2019 and reaching three-quarters the size of the entire national economy.

Obama economic adviser Christina Romer predicted unemployment could reach 10 percent this year and begin a slow decline next year. Still, she said, the average unemployment will be 9.3 in 2009 and 9.8 percent in 2010.

“This recession was simply worse than the information that we and other forecasters had back in last fall and early this winter,” Romer said.

Fine, the recession may have been worse than your experts predicted, but you can’t possibly escape the fact that the “exploding deficits” and “mounting debt” are directly attributable to the administrations own programs, Ms. Romer.  And it’s not entirely clear whether or not all this indebtedness has been a remedy.

Our current indebtedness is making foreign investors skittish, even if we do come out of the recession fairly early.  We have to pay this money back at some point, but Obama is going to foist it off on whoever’s President after him.

If this was a private citizen doing this, Dave Ramsey would be having an intervention.  Millions of (otherwise) fiscally responsible Christians would, too, but this crisis has turn some of them on their heads.

Here’s an article from March by Tony Campolo, where he says that he is repenting from being the “older brother” in the story of the Prodigal Son by complaining how irresponsible others were with (in this case) the money taken from him in taxes.

That, I am sad to say, is much the same attitude that I, along with most of my conservative evangelical brothers and sisters, have had in reaction to President Obama’s announcement that taxpayers’ dollars, earned by hard-working, responsible citizens, would be given to help those irresponsible Americans who bought houses that they couldn’t afford, while embracing a lifestyle that was beyond their means. With resentment, I, along with most of my rugged individualistic Christian friends, now sound like that older brother in Jesus’ story, and call for those irresponsible spenders to get what they deserve. With an air of self-righteous indignation, we declare, “They didn’t do what’s right and now we’re being asked to rescue them from the financial mess they’ve created for themselves!”

The gospel is about grace and we all know that grace is about us receiving from God blessings that we don’t deserve. But now, I, having received grace, find that my voice is blending in with a host of other older brother types who are reluctant to grant grace to those desperate home-buyers who were seduced into lavish living they could ill afford.

I’ve got some repenting to do. I doubt, however, that those who have wedded Christianity with laissez-faire capitalism will see things this way. I can just hear them saying, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”

I have no idea what conservative Christians you’ve been talking to, or perhaps imagining, Tony.  I am my brother’s keeper.  I am, not my government.  And my neighbor is not my brother’s keeper either, so forcing them via taxes to pay for my brother is wrong.  When God is separating the sheep from the goats, the Bible does not say He’ll ask me if I voted to make sure others paid to help the poor, He’ll ask if I fed the hungry, clothed the naked and visited the prisoner.

Charity money I give directly, or through the organization of my choice, is grace.  Forcing me, with threat of incarceration, to pay for anything, no matter how well-intentioned, is most decidedly not charity or grace.  Campolo seems to suggest that God’s grace consists of always letting us keep the fruits of our foolishness and bad decisions.

But in the story that he references, the younger son, while welcomed back into the family, does not get a windfall or a bailout.  He’s forgetting one of the last lines of the story, where the father says to the older brother, “‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours.'”  Yes, the younger brother came back and, instead of being a servant, was restored to his place as a member of the family.  Yes, he had a party thrown in his honor.  But, as Jesus points out through the words of the father, he no longer is entitled to half of the inheritance anymore.  That ship has sailed.  If he did have even that restored to him — if there were no consequence for his actions — the temptation later on to repeat the same mistake would be very great.

As in that story, rewarding poor choices is not something we should have our government in the business of doing.  The father did take the younger son back into the family, which means he gets his 3 square meals a day and other benefits, and we, with our charity dollars (as opposed to forcibly taxed dollars), should be helping out those who made poor choices, or who find themselves in circumstances not of their own making.  Absolutely true, and I’d wonder where Mr. Campolo is finding Christians saying otherwise.  Certainly not in the disagreeing comments to his post.  They’re worth reading as much as the article itself.

Part of the issue with toxic mortgages is something Campolo alludes to; the government contributed to this problem by relaxing the rules on who could qualify for a mortgage.  This action was urged by liberals likely with the same mindset as now, who thought that encouraging home ownership, regardless of the ability to pay the debt, was also gracious.  Never mind the hindsight we now have, just the idea that doing anything and everything for the poor without thought for the potential consequences is irresponsible.  What we wound up with was a program to allegedly help the poor, that encouraged irresponsibility, funded by taxpayers, which, when it foundered, was then bailed out by taxpayers.  This, I believe, is the source of the frustration that Mr. Campolo is hearing; the same mindset that helped cause the problem claims that it can now solve the problem.

So the question from a Christian perspective is not whether we are our brother’s keeper, as Mr. Campolo’s straw man insists.  That’s a cheap shot at best.  I think the question is; what is the proper role of government in dispensing grace?  Jesus didn’t speak to the Roman government, nor did he speak to the local civic leaders (though He did have some strong words for the local religious leader).  He spoke to individuals.  To those outside the church, He said to repent.  That’s it.  To those inside the church, however, He had many things to say, including how to treat the poor.  Our civil government does not speak or act for the church, so it is not the job of the government to carry out the instructions to the church.  And given that churches and church-goers are, generally, the most giving and charitable people, I don’t see a rebuke of Mr. Campolo’s type is in order; simply an admonishment to continue to do more.

(This is not to say that we shouldn’t want the government to act morally in its proper spheres.  This is a question of what those spheres should be or how extensively it should penetrate those spheres that it is in.)

I grew up in the Salvation Army, and when giving out food to the poor, there was sometimes a concern that such giveaways might be scammed.  Perhaps a father comes in and gets groceries for a family of 3, and then later the mother comes in to do the same.  Is it moral to question whether or not the food program is being properly administered to avoid this?  Is it fair to the family in need who comes to our door only to be turned away because their bag of groceries went to a family that double-dipped, or didn’t really need it?  And so, wouldn’t it valid for those who give money to the Salvation Army, in hopes of helping the needy, to be frustrated if they find that the program needs more money because it was improperly handled in the first place?  And if it’s OK for the Salvation Army, how much more so for a government dealing out billions and trillions of dollars!

Don’t we expect good stewardship?  Or if the intent is good, should we ignore all the problems with a program and instead force our neighbors and future generations to pay for it?  How in the world is that moral or responsible or, if you will, sustainable?

No, you read that right.  It’s not Fox News reporting this; it’s CNN.  Even if you believe Fox News Channel is the broadcast arm of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, you don’t have that excuse to hand-wave this away.

The article is here, but here’s just the main list of items:

1. Freedom to choose what’s in your plan
2. Freedom to be rewarded for healthy living, or pay your real costs
3. Freedom to choose high-deductible coverage
4. Freedom to keep your existing plan
5. Freedom to choose your doctors

CNN details how these freedoms will be lost, in spite of protestations from Obama and his backers.  These freedoms would be lost in either of the two main bills; one in the House and one in the Senate. 

This is not just about covering folks who don’t have insurance, and millions of whom indeed don’t want insurance.  It’s about government control of the industry.

(There’s a word for that.  Can’t recall it just now.)

For those that continue to say, "Well, Bush spent a lot during his presidency!", a little perspective from Greg Mankiw:

Before you read this story, here is one number you need to know: the U.S. federal government’s debt is now about $7.4 trillion. That is the accumulation from past budget deficits.

With that number firmly in mind, here is a story from the Washington Post about the path of future fiscal policy:

The nation would be forced to borrow more than $9 trillion over the next decade under President Obama’s policies, the White House acknowledged late Friday, bringing their long-term budget forecast in line with independent estimates.

The projection is that in 10 years we’ll more than double the debt our country has accumulated up to this point.  Dubya and the Republicans continues to look more and more like coupon-clipping penny-pinchers compared to Obama and the Democrats. 

Or, if you prefer automobile analogies:

Y’know, maybe that whole profit motive thing and competition wasn’t so bad after all.

SASKATOON — The incoming president of the Canadian Medical Association says this country’s health-care system is sick and doctors need to develop a plan to cure it.

Dr. Anne Doig says patients are getting less than optimal care and she adds that physicians from across the country – who will gather in Saskatoon on Sunday for their annual meeting – recognize that changes must be made.

"We all agree that the system is imploding, we all agree that things are more precarious than perhaps Canadians realize," Doing said in an interview with The Canadian Press.

"We know that there must be change," she said. "We’re all running flat out, we’re all just trying to stay ahead of the immediate day-to-day demands."

The pitch for change at the conference is to start with a presentation from Dr. Robert Ouellet, the current president of the CMA, who has said there’s a critical need to make Canada’s health-care system patient-centred. He will present details from his fact-finding trip to Europe in January, where he met with health groups in England, Denmark, Belgium, Netherlands and France.

His thoughts on the issue are already clear. Ouellet has been saying since his return that "a health-care revolution has passed us by," that it’s possible to make wait lists disappear while maintaining universal coverage and "that competition should be welcomed, not feared."

In other words, Ouellet believes there could be a role for private health-care delivery within the public system.

We already know that American private health-care delivery already has a role. 

And this is hilarious.

He has also said the Canadian system could be restructured to focus on patients if hospitals and other health-care institutions received funding based on the patients they treat, instead of an annual, lump-sum budget. This "activity-based funding" would be an incentive to provide more efficient care, he has said.

Heh.  That "activity-based funding" is something like what we capitalists call "pricing".  We’ve found out that it’s a more efficient way to deal with supply and demand than government dictate. 

Over at "Stop the ACLU", a bullet list of times that Sarah Palin won the debate on the end-of-life care issue she brought up.  Biggest win; the provision was removed from a Senate bill.  (A provision that her critics insisted was pure fantasy.)

Y’all just go on underestimating her.

Making promises that pander to a particular voting bloc is one thing.  Sitting in the Oval Office is, apparently, quite another.

After early pledges by President Obama that he would moderate the Bush administration’s tough policy on immigration enforcement, his administration is pursuing an aggressive strategy for an illegal-immigration crackdown that relies significantly on programs started by his predecessor.

A recent blitz of measures has antagonized immigrant groups and many of Mr. Obama’s Hispanic supporters, who have opened a national campaign against them, including small street protests in New York and Los Angeles last week.

The administration recently undertook audits of employee paperwork at hundreds of businesses, expanded a program to verify worker immigration status that has been widely criticized as flawed, bolstered a program of cooperation between federal and local law enforcement agencies, and rejected proposals for legally binding rules governing conditions in immigration detention centers.

“We are expanding enforcement, but I think in the right way,” Janet Napolitano, the homeland security secretary, said in an interview.

Translation: It’s the same policy but we’ve tweaked it just enough to give enough cover to still talk about the eeeevil Bush regime.  But even this has an ulterior motive.

Ms. Napolitano and other administration officials argue that no-nonsense immigration enforcement is necessary to persuade American voters to accept legislation that would give legal status to millions of illegal immigrants, a measure they say Mr. Obama still hopes to advance late this year or early next.

That approach brings Mr. Obama around to the position that his Republican rival, Senator John McCain of Arizona, espoused during last year’s presidential campaign, a stance Mr. Obama rejected then as too hard on Latino and immigrant communities. (Mr. McCain did not respond to requests for comment.) Now the enforcement strategy has opened a political rift with some immigrant advocacy and Hispanic groups whose voters were crucial to the Obama victory.

“Trust me, I’m on your side” is a mantra many have heard from Obama, only to be disappointed.  Ask anyone hoping for fiscal responsibility.

Shire Network News #167 has been released. The feature interview is with Charles Winecoff, a contributor to the Big Hollywood blog for conservatives working in the creative arts. He says coming out as a conservative was harder than telling people he was gay. Click here for the show notes, links, and ways to listen to the show; directly from the web site, by downloading the mp3 file, or by subscribing with your podcatcher of choice.

Below is the text of my commentary.

Hi, this is Doug Payton for Shire Network News asking you to "Consider This!".

Candidate Barack Obama said that we needed health care reform in the US, but blasted fellow Democrat Hillary Clinton for proposing a mandatory insurance requirement.  President Obama now thinks this is a feature, not a bug; a benefit that we just need to get on board with.  But there’s more, much more!  If you act now…  (Oh, sorry, I was channeling Billy Mays for a second there.) 

Anyway, while there are many positives to the proposal, here are the Top 9 Benefits of ObamaCare(tm):

9 – No more pesky Canadians crossing the border to avoid their long waiting lines.  Ours will be just as long.

8 – We’ll be the envy of the third world.

7 – Health insurance will be just like car insurance; you have to have it, it’ll cover less as you get older, and your children can trade you in during our Cash for Clunkers program.

6 – Getting rid of of Grandma & Grandpa sooner means cost savings to you, not including the Christmas & birthday presents you don’t have to buy anymore.

5 – Electronic records means that your medical history will soon have its own Facebook page.

4- Medicine will no longer be prescribed subject to, as Scott Ott has called it, "diagnosis discrimination"; simply based on a doctor’s opinion.  Government bureaucrats will now be on a level playing field.

3 – It’ll make David Letterman forget all about Sarah Palin.

2 – Cost-cutting measure: close rural hospitals.  It’s OK that farmers will be travelling farther for health care, because we’ll mandate they buy an electric car.

And the #1 benefit of ObamaCare(tm):

If we had already had it, Michael Jackson would still be alive.

Yes, and Christopher Reeve, too, I imagine.  Consider this.

If good intentions were dollars, TennCare would be turning a profit instead of failing in its financial and moral responsibilities to the people of Tennessee.

And so begins an article dealing with the financial problems of a universal health care insurance program that has failed, and of a government that hid the fact that it was failing.

Now I’m sure that there are plenty of folks who would come forth and say that this time, with ObamaCare, it would be done right. 

The article lists a number of people and groups to blame for the failure, but I find this to be the foundation of it all, and why a little government intervention inevitably leads to a lot.

Then blame the entitlement industry that has grown up around TennCare like weeds choking a garden. These strident advocates believe they have the right to reach into our pockets and take as much money as they need to turn TennCare into what they want it to be — universal insurance — instead of what it is supposed to be — a safety net.

That is precisely what happens when a new entitlement comes into play, and why Ronald Reagan said that the closest thing to eternal life this side of heaven was a government program.  Promoting this entitlement to the federal government will, make no mistake about it, get larger than even its proponents dare to believe.  And ultimately it won’t be as good as what we have now.

Just ask all the Canadians that come over the border.

Those campaign promises are reaching their expiration dates quite quickly.  Back during the campaign, Obama ran hard against Hillary Clinton’s mandatory health insurance.  PoliFact.com has the quotes.

"Hillary Clinton’s attacking, but what’s she not telling you about her health care plan? It forces everyone to buy insurance, even if you can’t afford it, and you pay a penalty if you don’t," said one of his television ads .

His mailings made similar claims, which we rated Half True . At one campaign stop, Clinton waived the mailers and declared, "Shame on you, Barack Obama!"

"Meet me in Ohio," she added. "Let’s have a debate about your tactics and your behavior in this campaign."

Obama was vigorous in his attacks on Clinton for including an indvidual [sic] mandate in her plan. Now that the Democrats in the House have included a mandate in health reform legislation, he’s fine with it. He admitted he changed position in the interview with CBS. Full Flop!

All that talk of Hope and Change is really just subject to political expediency.  If you believed what he said, what you need to hope for is that he doesn’t change.  (If you didn’t, well then, this is not a real surprise.)

Y’know, that whole "signing statement" thing wasn’t apparently so bad after all.  So says one man who used to decry the use of it.

Congressional Democrats warned President Barack Obama on Tuesday that he sounded too much like George W. Bush when he declared this summer that the White House can ignore legislation he thinks oversteps the Constitution.

In a letter to the president, four senior House members said they were "surprised" and "chagrined" by Obama’s statement in June accompanying a war spending bill that he would ignore restrictions placed on aid provided to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

Obama said he wouldn’t allow the provisions to interfere with his authority as president to conduct foreign policy and negotiate with other governments.

The rebuff was reminiscent of Bush, who issued a record number of "signing statements" while in office. The statements put Congress on notice that the administration didn’t feel compelled to comply with provisions of legislation that it felt challenged the president’s authority as commander in chief.

See, it’s not that it’s a bad thing in and of itself.  It’s just that it sounds so much like…well, you know.

"During the previous administration, all of us were critical of the president’s assertion that he could pick and choose which aspects of congressional statutes he was required to enforce," the lawmakers wrote. "We were therefore chagrined to see you appear to express a similar attitude."

Let’s see if this matters to him.