Indentured Grandchildren

08-26-2009 • The American Spectator

If you are blessed, as I am, to have grandchildren, you may not realize that they are more than just treasured children of your children, a gift beyond measure. They are also indentured servants who will be paying off your cumulative national debt for a good part of their lives on earth. According to the Congressional Budget Office's (CBO) annual summer budget update, our national debt "which was as low as 33 percent of GDP in 2001, would reach an estimated 54 percent of GDP this year and grow to 68 percent of GDP by 2019." Writing on his blog yesterday, CBO director Douglas Elmendorf, the same fellow who blew the whistle on the Obama administration's faulty estimates of the cost of its health care plans and was rewarded with a friendly visit with the President at the White House, says "the federal budget deficit for 2009 will total $1.6 trillion, which, at 11.2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), will be the highest since World War II [emphasis added].