From Investors Business Daily: If ‘Unsustainable’ Is New Normal, Collapse Is Closer Than We Think .

The other day, Douglas Elmendorf, director of the Congressional Budget Office, described current deficits as “unsustainable.” So let’s make them even more so.

The president tells us, with a straight face, that his grossly irresponsible profligate wastrel of a predecessor took the federal budget on an eight-year joyride, so the only way his sober, fiscally prudent successor can get things under control is to grab the throttle and crank it up to what Mel Brooks in “Spaceballs” (which seems the appropriate comparison) called “Ludicrous Speed.”

Obama’s spending proposes to take the average Bush deficit for the years 2001-08 and double it, all the way to 2020. To get out of the Bush hole, we need to dig a hole twice as deep for one-and-a-half times as long. And that’s according to the official projections of his economics czar, Ms. Rose-Colored Glasses.

By 2015, the actual hole may be so deep that even if you toss every Obama speech down it on double-spaced paper you still won’t be able to fill it up. In the spendthrift Bush days, federal spending as a proportion of GDP averaged 19.6%. Obama proposes to crank it up to 25% as a permanent feature of life.

But if they’re “unsustainable,” what happens when they can no longer be sustained? A failure of bond auctions? A downgraded government debt rating? Reduced GDP growth? Total societal collapse? Mad Max on the New Jersey Turnpike?

Testifying to the House Budget Committee, Director Elmendorf attempted to pull back from the wilder shores of “unsustainable”:

“I think most observers expect that the government will act, that the unsustainability will be resolved through action, not through witnessing some collapse down the road,” he said. “If literally nothing is done, then eventually something very, very bad happens. But I think the widespread view is that you and your colleagues will take action.”

Dream on, you kinky fantasist. The one thing that can be guaranteed is that a political class led by Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, a handful of reach-across-the-aisle Republican accommodationists and an economically illiterate narcissist in the Oval Office is never going to rein in unsustainable spending in any meaningful sense.

That leaves Elmendorf’s alternative scenario. What was it again? Oh, yeah:

“Some collapse down the road.”

Speaking of roads: I see that, according to USA Today, when the economic downturn began, the Department of Transportation had just one employee making over $170,000. A year and a half later, it has 1,690.

Happy days are here again!

Did you get your pay raise this year? What’s that, you don’t work for the government? Yes you do, one way or another. Good luck relying on Obama, Pelosi, Frank and the other Emirs of Kleptocristan “taking action” to “resolve” that.

In the last month, the cost of insuring Greece’s sovereign debt against default has doubled. Spain and Portugal are headed the same way. When you binge-spend at the Greek level in a democratic state, there aren’t many easy roads back. The government has introduced an austerity package to rein in spending. In response, Greek tax collectors have walked off the job.

Read that again slowly: To protest government cuts, striking tax collectors are refusing to collect taxes. In a sane world, this would be a hilarious TV comedy sketch. But most of the Western world is no longer sane. It’s tough enough to persuade the town drunk to sober up, but when everyone’s face down in the moonshine, maybe it’s best to just head for the hills.

Well this is just great.

Read the whole thing.

More from Hot Air’s Greenroom.

Roll Call via Real Clear Politics: Pelosi Pushes to Bypass GOP If It Continues to Oppose Heath Bill’s Passage:

Roll Call reports:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is pinning the blame on Republicans for a lack of bipartisanship in Congress and plans to bypass them if they continue to oppose efforts to enact near-universal health care.

This the clearest indication yet that Democrats are gearing up to jam the Senate version of the bill through the House on a party line vote and use the reconciliation process in the Senate to make modifications. Pelosi’s comment also suggests that President Obama’s bipartisan health care summit scheduled for February 25th is going to be nothing more than a public relations exercise.

As if any more clarity is needed, Pelosi went on in her interview with Roll Call to state that the use of the filibuster in the Senate to prevent the passage of health care “isn’t legitimate:”

A constitutional majority is 51 votes,” Pelosi said in an interview Tuesday with Roll Call. “If in fact the Republicans are going to say nothing can be done except by 60 percent, then maybe we all should be elected with 60 percent. It isn’t legitimate in terms of passing legislation.

Try it Nancy – I dare you. Heck, I double dog dare you. If you could do it, you would have done it by now, and if you are stupid enough to do it, remember the day will come when we are in power. Go ahead and get Reid to be your lapdog and pull the trigger; I’m getting some popcorn.

In the meantime, this is proof positive the GOP should skip the so-called healthcare “summit”. Nanny state Nancy appears to be admitting herself it’s a ruse.

From The Hill:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has agreed the House should vote next week on scolding Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) for his outburst during President Barack Obama’s speech unless he apologies on the floor of the House.

“There was a violation of the rules of the House,” said Pelosi spokesman Brendan Daly. “It needs to be resolved by an apology or a resolution.”

A Democrat, likely House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), will introduce a “resolution of disapproval” Monday or Tuesday unless Wilson formally apologizes on the House floor. The House returns Monday.

Good. Bring. It. On.

Wilson should go to the floor with a television set, and play the video of the Dem caucus booing Bush during the State Of The Union address in 2005. This should be followed by his reading the Associated Press fact check of Obama’s speech to the Joint Session. The story is evidence that Obama is fact challenged. Pelosi has all but called the Tea Party liars, and Reid, Pelosi, and Obama have consistently talked about stopping the spread of lies about the healthcare bill. In order for their to be lies, there must be liars, so with their accusations, the three stooges just called a majority of Americans liars.

Wilson should bring the bill to the floor and begin to read it, challenging Nancy, Reid, and Pelosi to expose the lies they keep harping about. Every Senate and House member who participated in this slandering of the American public should be named. The public should be reminded that Senator Harry Reid called Bush a loser. Wilson should then state that he will apologize when Obama, Reid, Pelosi, every Democrat still seated today who booed Bush in 2005, and every member of the Senate and House who basically called us liars apologizes. Let’s go on the record here. Stand up Rep. Wilson and give us a show. We want to see Nanny State Nancy go slinking back into her corner and shut her pie hole.

Let’s see who steps up and who looks stupid.

In other news and opinion:

The “Section 246 Proves Joe Wilson Is A Liar” Lie. Oh yeah Joe, bring this one up to. Even Nancy’s botox treatments won’t hold up after this onslaught.

Your BlackBerry Is Un-American!

Damn These Weak-Kneed Republicans

Senate to close ObamaCare loophole for illegal immigrants that media claims doesn’t exist. You don’t say! So Obama is a liar and the spineless Republican twits in the House won’t even back him up. Excuse my French, but screw the bunch of you.