A Chart From the Obama Budget That Is So Horrifying It Must Have Been Left In Accidentally

There are many historic "firsts" associated with the Obama administration, but none more curious than the appointment of the first known tax cheat as Treasury Secretary. Tim "TurboTax" Geithner is a partisan hack of the first order and his recent testimony before the House Budget Committee should be required reading for all Americans.

Testifying before the House Budget Committee today, U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner told Chairman Paul Ryan the following: “We’re not coming before you to say we have a definitive solution to that long-term problem. What we do know is we don’t like yours.”

Actually, President Obama sort of did have a definitive solution. He created a debt commission, which devised a long-term debt reduction plan. Which the president rejected. And instead, we get this new budget proposal, which makes no effort to deal with Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security — the long-term drivers of U.S. federal debt. The debt curve never gets bent, as [this] White House (!) chart shows.

Yes, this chart came right out of the Obama administration's budget.

It says: follow us! We're headed for collapse!

At one point during the hearing, Ryan brought out this chart illustrating the impact of the Ryan debt plan, the one Geithner said “we don’t like”:

And here was the exchange between Geithner and Ryan, after Ryan pointed the terrifying baseline (in red):

GEITHNER: You could have taken [the chart] out [to the year] 3000 or to 4000. [Laughs]

RYAN: Yeah, right. We cut it off at the end of the century because the economy, according to the CBO, shuts down in 2027 on this path.

And that’s no joke, Mr. Geithner.

Actually, the topmost chart is a joke. A sick, tragic joke, the butt of which is us.

Our country cannot survive another four years of Barack Obama.