The Underground Conservative

Hey, it’s only money, right?

The Congressional Budget office is projecting a $1.2 trillion deficit for FY2009, and that’s before the newly minted-in-power Democrats start spending even more of your money in the upcoming stimulus package, currently at $775 billion but expected to exceed $1 trillion once all the pork and earmarks are loaded into it.

And The Anointed One is projecting trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see. That’s right. Trillion dollar deficits while the Democrats spend money on useless public works projects that won’t do Thing One to stimulate the economy. But it sure will put lots of our money in the pockets of those union workers that will be repairing our allegedly crumbling infrastructure and building such nonsense as “green” schools. By the way, more sops to what William F. Buckley once termed the National Extortion Association. Building Taj Mahals won’t teach one student how to read, write, spell, add, subtract, multiply, divide, etc.

And this doesn’t even count the socialized medicine the Democrats will be ramming down our throats in the next two years.

Michelle Malin’s latest column calls it The Generational Theft Act of 2009. She’s right on target.

Here’s an example of the type of wasteful spending that will be in this bill: the $30 billion high speed rail line from Los Angeles to San Francisco.

$30 billion for a high speed choo-choo.

Why is it wasteful? There might be 30 billion reasons why, but we will start with Malkin’s observation:

It currently costs $49 one-way to fly Southwest from Oakland to Los Angeles. That flight takes about an hour and fifteen minutes. How much ya think it’ll cost to ride the high-speed line from O-town to L.A.? For comparison’s sake, government-funded Amtrak trips from Washington to New York’s Penn Station cost about $133 one-way on the Joe Biden-endorsed Acela (if they’re running). That trip takes about two hours and 45 minutes.

More data for you: It’ll take you about six-seven hours to drive from Oakland to Los Angeles on the I-5– and at current gas prices, it’ll cost you a mere $25 (with a few more bucks if you stop by In-N-Out!)

Bottom line: Who in their right mind would take this high-speed rail line? And why should people in Des Moines and Miami and Chicago pay for California commuters to ride it?

Answer: they shouldn’t. Period.

Rermember: this starts out at $30 billion. Add in another $12 billion for each extension, and the advocates always overestimate the ridership while lowballing the cost.

It will be a black hole. It always is. And the big unions who contributed so heavily to install one-party government are the beneficiaries.

Taxpayers can now assume the position: bend over and grab your ankles.