The Congressional Budget Office (not Fox News, not Rush Limbaugh, not Glenn Beck, not some other source considered by those on the left to be on the right wing fringe) published Updated Estimates for the Insurance Coverage Provisions of the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a., Obamacare) on March 13, 2012.

Obamacare is now estimated to cost $1.76 trillion for eleven years through 2022, rather than the $940 billion forecast for ten years ending 2020 as represented at the time it was enacted. That’s $1,760,000,000,000 instead of $940,000,000,000. Get it? See this article in The Washington Examiner. I am still searching for a mention of this report in The New York Times (let me know if you spot one).

Is the $1.76 trillion number comparable to the $940 billion number? Not exactly as the updated numbers include estimates for 11 years through 2022 while the initial estimates were based on ten years starting in 2010. But this was a known scam to begin with and the current CBO numbers reveal the back end cost loading (see Table 2). Anyone hear anyone questioning Mr. Obama on how we are going to pay for an additional $820,000,000.000 over the next ten years, and the estimated $265,000,000,000 each year beyond 2022? Is this updated estimate reflected in Mr. Obama’s budget? Where are the questioners?

Here is the White House spin. It never compares Obamacare’s updated estimated cost with the cost when it was enacted. Does the word “dishonest” come to mind? Ever wonder about the history of actual spending on government health care programs compared to estimates at the time of enactment? And here are some known details of actual costs and taxes imposed by Obamacare.

Mr. Obama and the people in his administration don’t care what it costs. They are happy to put your children and grandchildren in hock for their lifetimes to move us to nationalized health care, to make government the supreme decider. Mr. Obama and his supporters are confident they know what is best for you and believe they have a right to impose the cost of their certainty on you. That alone is reason they all need to go. The obvious financial problems just increase the odds they will soon depart leaving a disastrous legacy.

Treasury Secretary Geithner and I agree that Federal regulation of the banking and financial industry is warranted where it serves the general interest of all citizens in the stable functioning of a free economy. However, we should find Mr. Geithner’s defense of Dodd-Frank concerning (Wall Street Journal, Financial Crisis Amnesia, March 1, 2012).

The primary impact of Dodd-Frank is to give the Federal government leverage over the financial industry through its arbitrary and expansive language. An initial poster child for the impact of this leverage is the recently announced $25 billion settlement with five large banks over alleged processing abuses on mortgage foreclosures. Why are five major US banks agreeing to fork over $25 billion without defending themselves?

As reported by Bloomberg, it turns out the banks and the Obama administration stuck a deal whereby these banks that service about half the nation’s mortgages on behalf of investors will be able to share losses on their junior loans with bondholders and get credit toward the cash they pledged to spend in the settlement. This proportionate write-down of the first and second mortgages represents a reversal of lien priority.

So, the banks are compelled to negotiate with the administration, and then agree to a settlement that diminishes the rights of first mortgage holders by fiat. So, would you now want to own first mortgages on real estate? How would you value them given that the government can renegotiate your contract rights at will?

That Mr. Geithner defends Dodd-Frank in the Wall Street Journal with the enthusiasm and naivety of a Boy Scout seems disingenuous in the context of political reality. The lesson here is that over regulation can, has, and will corrupt the healthy and normal functioning of markets and the private economy to our detriment. Somebody please inform Mr. Geithner.

AARP advocates on national policy issues.

AARP has demonstrated its influence as an instrumental supporter and beneficiary of Obamacare.

Surprisingly absent from AARP’s current policy advocacy is any mention of the Federal Reserve’s intentional devaluation of the savings their members rely upon. Seniors quite sensibly put their savings into US Treasury securities or Federally guaranteed bank Certificates of Deposit to realize a return while minimizing risk of loss.

The Consumer Price index increased by 3% in 2011. Within that total food increased 4.7% and gasoline increased 9.9%.

Currently, one year US Treasury Bills are yielding less then one quarter of one percent and one year bank CDs are yielding about one percent, putting seniors in a giant hole.

In a March 5, 2012 article in the Wall Street Journal Andy Laperriere writes, “During the past three years, the Federal Reserve has tripled the size of its balance sheet—in effect printing $2 trillion—something it had never done in its nearly 100-year history. The Fed has lowered short-term interest rates to zero and signaled that it will keep them at that level for years. Inflation-adjusted short-term rates, or real rates, have been in the minus 2% range during the past couple of years for the first time since the 1970s.”

One would think the demonstrated errosion of buying power caused by Federal Reserve policies devaluing the dollar and fixing interest rates would prompt the AARP to speak up in protest on behalf of their members.

A strange silence indeed.

Learn more about AARP.

Back in October 2009 some people in Detroit and other cities lined up outside government offices because of a rumor that free money was being given out as a result of the Federal stimulus funding approved by Mr. Obama. A now infamous interview with one person in line referred to the money as “Obama money.”

Well, no money was being given away but now, several years later, it is constructive to explore exactly what “Obama money” actually is.

“Obama money” is debt employed to bribe politicians and voters to support Mr. Obama’s statist agenda. Statism is defined as concentration of economic controls and planning in the hands of a highly centralized government.

The reality of legislation, regulations, and mandates supported by Mr. Obama is clear. Regardless of policy focus (health care, banking, industrial, environmental, whatever) Mr. Obama believes in the power of a centralized Federal apparatus over policy driven and funded at the State level, and over policy based on individuals assuming responsibility for their own behavior.

Money Mr. Obama has sought and approved for “economic stimulus” projects, extended unemployment benefits, subsidies for teachers, police and fire workers, student loan reorganizations, mortgage assistance, cash for clunkers, auto manufacturer bailouts, reductions in employee social security taxes, support for the new Federal bureaucracies supporting Obama Care, new bank oversight, and a new “consumer” agency, and on, and on is all funded by debt.

Federal debt will total over $16,400,000,000,000 by the end of September 2012, $4,000,000,000,000+ more than it was when Mr. Obama took office. While he likes to talk about his spending in the context of “fairness” and “empathy,” Mr. Obama’s only real achievement is a dramatic increase in debt you, your children, and your grand children will have to find a way to pay back long after he is gone.

At the same time he has spent over $1,000,000,000,000 in the name of “fairness” Mr. Obama has failed to address the automatic increases in entitlement programs that have also driven up the debt during his tenure. Total unfunded liabilities related to these entitlement programs is projected to range between $60,000,000,000,000 and $100,000,000,000,000 according to government data, in addition to our $16,400,000,000 in existing debt.

Failure to significantly reduce current government spending and entitlement program liabilities will have extreme fiscal and social consequences, with or without tax increases. While railing on about increasing taxes on the “rich” in the name of “fairness” Mr. Obama has intentionally avoided addressing the realities and consequences of our debt and future unfunded liabilities.

Mr. Obama continues to spend and to ignore our fiscal realities in pursuit of re-election. Is this the behavior of a leader with moral purpose, or of a politician with allegiance to power over principle?

Mr. Obama is solely responsible for this failure of leadership.