Obama Has Added $6 Trillion in Debt in One Term

Hi, I’m Senator John Thune from the great state of South Dakota.

With the recently passed fiscal cliff legislation, Congress enacted tax relief for 99 percent of Americans.

Now that the tax part of the fiscal cliff issue has been dealt with, it’s time to address the real cause of Washington’s fiscal mess— out-of-control spending.

Washington is addicted to spending your money.

Over the past four years, our country has added nearly $6 trillion to the national debt. At $16.4 trillion, our nation’s total debt is now larger than our entire economy.

This means that every man, woman, and child owes a $53,000 share of this debt. That level of spending is unsustainable. We cannot afford to keep adding over a trillion dollars to the debt every year, as we have for the past four years.

A major credit rating agency has already downgraded our nation’s credit once, and, if we don’t start making some real progress on spending reforms, more downgrades are likely in the near future.

What does that mean, practically speaking?

Well if you or I as citizens had a bad credit rating, banks would charge a higher interest rate when we approached them to borrow money.

It works the same way with nations. If the United States’ credit rating is further downgraded, our country will pay higher interest rates. This will mean trillions of borrowing in order for America to pay its bills.

Needless to say, we can’t go on like this forever. Eventually, we are simply going to run out of money. And no tax increase, no matter how high, will be enough to save us.

The only way—the only way—to dig ourselves out of this hole and put our country on a sound financial footing is to get spending under control.

Reducing our spending and debt will jump-start our economy and create jobs and opportunities for American families and workers.

And the way to start is by passing a budget.

I think most American families would agree that having a budget is essential to keeping their spending under control.

And if a budget is essential when you’re running a family, it’s even more essential when you’re running an entity the size of the federal government.

Congress’ first priority every year should be coming up with a spending plan. In fact, the law requires Congress to do just that. Yet, it’s been almost four years since the Democrat-led Senate passed a formal budget.

Owner: Loitering teens taking over Detroit gas station

Fox 2 News Headlines By Alexis Wiley, myFOXDetroit.com

DETROIT (WJBK) -
A Detroit man says his business is being held hostage by a group of teenagers who continually loiter inside and out of his gas station.

"There's a lot of good people around here," said the station owner, who wished to remain anonymous. But now, those good people aren't coming as often to the Marathon station along W. 7 Mile Road on the city's west side.

"This is a Bad Crew gas station," said one teen loitering out front on Tuesday. When asked what that meant, he said, "If you don't know, I can't even tell you."

Surveillance video obtained by FOX 2 shows as many as a dozen teens hanging out inside the store, smoking cigarettes, sitting on countertops and even spitting into sinks.

The owner says as many as 40 teens can be hanging out in front of the station at any time. "Destroying my store. Destroying my business," said the owner.

He says his clerks are too frightened to take action against the teens and he's worried that the loitering could lead to violence.

Detroit police have been called numerous times to the store, but the owner says right after officers disperse the crowd and leave the scene, the teens returns to their normal posts.

Leslie Cunningham, who lives nearby the station, says members from Marvin Winans' Perfecting Church have recently been to the station to talk to the young people. "It's out of hand," said Cunningham. "We try to raise young people around here that they would be concerned and care about their area and this is what we have to contend with."

The owner, and father of four, says he would walk away from his business if he didn't owe so much on it.

Meanwhile, he keeps working and keeps hoping that the teens decide to leave.

Detroit police tell FOX 2 they'll continue to respond to calls from the station. The owner says he may hire an off-duty officer to help keep his business secure during peak hours.

OBAMA SPENDS MORE TIME ON GOLF THAN ECONOMY

An eye-opening new report by the Government Accountability Institute reveals that President Barack Obama averages just eight minutes more a week on economic meetings than the average dog owner spends walking their dog.

When it was recently reported that Mr. Obama had played his 100^th round of golf, the president said that playing golf was "the only time that for six hours, I'm outside."  Therefore, by his own estimate, the president has spent 600 hours playing golf, as compared to just 412 hours in economic meetings of any kind throughout his presidency. 

“You should know that keeping the economy growing and making sure jobs are available is the first thing I think about when I wake up every morning,” Mr. Obama said in 2011 to an audience of UPS workers.  “It's the last thing I think about when I go to bed each night."

But just how little time Mr. Obama has spent working on the economy can be seen in the data contained in the Government Accountability Institute’s analysis:

• Throughout the first 1,257 days of his presidency, Mr. Obama has spent just 412 hours in economic meetings or briefings of any kind
• In 2012, so far Obama has spent just 24 total hours in economic meetings of any kind
• Assuming a six day, 10-hour workweek, Obama has spent less than 4 percent of his total time in economic meetings or briefings of any kind
• There were 773 days (72 percent), excluding Sundays, in which he had no economic meetings
• Mr. Obama has spent an average of 138 minutes a week in economic meetings.  According to a study published in the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, new dog owners spent an average of 130 minutes a week walking their dogs

The study, which was based off of the president’s official schedule, practically bent over backwards to include anything even remotely akin to an economic meeting. For example, “Obama meets with Consumer Product Safety Commission Chairwoman Inez Tenenbaum” was tallied as an economic meeting. Also included was, “Obama meets with Cabinet secretaries,” which may or may not have dealt with economic issues, counted as well.

Still, with Americans suffering in the worst economy since the Great Depression, Mr. Obama’s time spent in economic meetings came in shockingly low.

HAT TIP: BREITBART

Subculture of Americans prepares for civilization's collapse

By Jim Forsyth (Reuters) When Patty Tegeler looks out the window of her home overlooking the Appalachian Mountains in southwestern Virginia, she sees trouble on the horizon. "In an instant, anything can happen," she told Reuters. "And I firmly believe that you have to be prepared." Tegeler is among a growing subculture of Americans who refer to themselves informally as "preppers." Some are driven by a fear of imminent societal collapse, others are worried about terrorism, and many have a vague concern that an escalating series of natural disasters is leading to some type of environmental cataclysm. They are following in the footsteps of hippies in the 1960s who set up communes to separate themselves from what they saw as a materialistic society, and the survivalists in the 1990s who were hoping to escape the dictates of what they perceived as an increasingly secular and oppressive government. Preppers, though are, worried about no government.

Tegeler, 57, has turned her home in rural Virginia into a "survival center," complete with a large generator, portable heaters, water tanks, and a two-year supply of freeze-dried food that her sister recently gave her as a birthday present. She says that in case of emergency, she could survive indefinitely in her home. And she thinks that emergency could come soon. "I think this economy is about to fall apart," she said. A wide range of vendors market products to preppers, mainly online. They sell everything from water tanks to guns to survival skills. Conservative talk radio host Glenn Beck seems to preach preppers' message when he tells listeners: "It's never too late to prepare for the end of the world as we know it." "Unfortunately, given the increasing complexity and fragility of our modern technological society, the chances of a societal collapse are increasing year after year," said author James Wesley Rawles, whose Survival Blog is considered the guiding light of the prepper movement. A former Army intelligence officer, Rawles has written fiction and non-fiction books on end-of-civilization topics, including "How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It," which is also known as the preppers' Bible. "We could see a cascade of higher interest rates, margin calls, stock market collapses, bank runs, currency revaluations, mass street protests, and riots," he told Reuters. "The worst-case end result would be a Third World War, mass inflation, currency collapses, and long term power grid failures." A sense of "suffering and being afraid" is usually at the root of this kind of thinking, according to Cathy Gutierrez, an expert on end-times beliefs at Sweet Briar College in Virginia. Such feelings are not unnatural in a time of economic recession and concerns about a growing national debt, she said. "With our current dependence on things from the electric grid to the Internet, things that people have absolutely no control over, there is a feeling that a collapse scenario can easily emerge, with a belief that the end is coming, and it is all out of the individual's control," she told Reuters. She compared the major technological developments of the past decade to the Industrial Revolution of the 1830s and 1840s, which led to the growth of the Millerites, the 19th-Century equivalent of the preppers. Followers of charismatic preacher Joseph Miller, many sold everything and gathered in 1844 for what they believed would be the second coming of Jesus Christ. Many of today's preppers receive inspiration from the Internet, devouring information posted on websites like that run by attorney Michael T. Snider, who writes The Economic Collapse blog out of his home in northern Idaho. "Modern preppers are much different from the survivalists of the old days," he said. "You could be living next door to a prepper and never even know it. Many suburbanites are turning spare rooms into food pantries and are going for survival training on the weekends." Like other preppers, Snider is worried about the end of a functioning U.S. economy. He points out that tens of millions of Americans are on food stamps and that many U.S. children are living in poverty. "Most people have a gut feeling that something has gone terribly wrong, but that doesn't mean that they understand what is happening," he said. "A lot of Americans sense that a massive economic storm is coming and they want to be prepared for it." So, assuming there is no collapse of society -- which the preppers call "uncivilization" -- what is the future of the preppers? Gutierrez said that unlike the Millerites -- or followers of radio preacher Harold Camping, who predicted the world would end last year -- preppers are not setting a date for the coming destruction. The Mayan Calendar predicts doom this December. "The minute you set a date, you are courting disconfirmation," she said. Tegeler, who recalls being hit by tornadoes and floods in her southwestern Virginia home, said that none of her "survival center" products will go to waste. "I think it's silly not to be prepared," she said. "After all, anything can happen."