Jobs 

Small Business Optimism Drops:  On September 13, 2011, Reuters reported, “The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) said its Small Business Optimism Index fell 1.8 points to 88.1.  The decline was largely due to weaker expectations for real sales gains and reduced hope for an improvement in business conditions in the next six months. ‘With such a dim outlook, owners are not going to do a lot of hiring or expanding,’” said William Dunkelberg, chief economist at the NFIB. 

Spending

 2011 to Set Spending Record: In FY 2011, CBO estimates that federal spending will total $3.6 trillion or 23.8 percent of GDP.  This would be the highest amount of federal spending in history, barely eclipsing the spending levels in 2009 and 2010.  Runaway spending has resulted in the three straight $1 trillion annual deficits under President Obama.  Prior to 2009, the highest budget deficit in history was $459 billion. 

 Medicare

 CBO’s latest Medicare estimates:  In an August update to its Budget and Economic Outlook report, CBO estimates that “outlays for Medicare…will total $555 billion (3.5 percent of GDP) in 2012… Between 2013 and 2021, outlays are projected to grow at an average annual rate of 6.3 percent, reaching $966 billion (4.1 percent of GDP) in 2021 [a cumulative 2012-2021 total of $7.4 trillion].  Spending will be pushed up over the decade by increases in the number of beneficiaries and in health care costs per beneficiary.” And these scary numbers are based upon CBO’s baseline (current law) projections which themselves assume several supposed cost-restraining factors in the President’s takeover of healthcare law, factors not likely to materialize.