President Obama has explained that, “We cannot, and will not, sustain deficits like these without end,” and that we cannot, “simply spend as we please and defer the consequences to the next budget, the next administration, or the next generation.” But his strong and urgent verbiage seem lost on the stubborn budgetary numbers. In fact, spending has gotten so out of control that Congress will soon have to raise the total national debt limit just to not default on its bills.

The White House's mid-session budget review recently forecast that President Barack Obama's budget would create $9 trillion in new budget deficits over the next decade. This is on top of our existing debt, and more debt than America accumulated from 1789 through 2008 combined!

But it gets worse. The White House conveniently did not include the costs of a cap-and-trade system, the costly health care reform bill, extending “expiring” entitlements, as well as expenses incurred on the interest of the debt and more realistic interest rates. A more realistic budget deficit number would be $13 trillion over the next decade – making for a grand total of $20 trillion in national debt by 2019, which is nearly 100 percent of our gross domestic product (GDP). To put it into perspective, that’s more than $37,000 spent per household in 2019, compared with $25,000 per household in 2008.

The President has shirked his professed duty to clean up the budget and eliminate wasteful spending, and there is perhaps no more troubling amount of spending than what he has in store for welfare programs. Over the next decade (2009-2018) Obama will spend a staggering $10.3 trillion on welfare programs, including cash, food, housing, medical care and targeted social services for poor and low income Americans. President Obama will spend twice as much on welfare as President Clinton did, after adjusting for inflation.

Here are the pertinent facts on welfare spending:

• Over the next decade welfare spending will amount to around $300,000 for each person currently living in poverty, and $1.5 trillion for low skill immigrants.
• Obama will spend more on welfare in a single year (FY2010) than Bush spent on the Iraq war during his entire presidency.
• In 2010, welfare spending will cost each U.S. household $638 per month or $7,600 per year.
• The Census Bureau (which measures poverty) counts only four percent of total welfare spending as income when it calculates poverty and inequality in the U.S. Thus, statistics on the inequality of the rich and poor in America are grossly skewed.

Welfare spending at such a level embodies a gradual shift leftwards for America and it is the most apt example of a government premised on encouraging dependency while curbing initiative and freedom. Coupled with the overall budget picture – $13 trillion in deficit spending over the next ten years – more welfare spending is a poorly conceived remedy to the often overstated problem of poverty in America. Make sure to go here, to learn more about the pitfalls of welfare spending, and to read more about the projected budget deficits and what the President and his team missed go here.