THE ELECTORATE vs. OBAMA'S AGENDA

Webster's New World Dictionary: ideologue

n.

[[Fr idéologue, back-form. idéologie: see fol.]]

1 a zealous exponent or advocate of a specified ideology

If the shoe fits........ Since Obama's State of the Union address is almost identical to his Joint Session of Congress speech a year ago, after astounding defeats in Virginia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts, of course he's not an ideologue. Wonder why he felt compelled to profess this in another speech before the recent Republican Conference. Straw man! Jeeze, when does this man 'preside'?

All signs point to his continuing with his unpopular agenda, talking down to us as though he knows better, and counseling us to turn off our TVs and stop reading unfavorable blogs. They are going to make the decision for us, because 'Father knows best'.

But there is hope, as shown in Virginia, New Jersey, and, miraculously, Massachusetts. Common sense will level the playing field -- better than Obama and his ilk.
The magnificent Charles Krauthammer writes a brilliant piece on this in Real Clear Politics:


The Electorate vs. Obama's Agenda

by Charles Krauthammer, February 5, 2010

WASHINGTON -- "I am not an ideologue," protested President Obama at a gathering with Republican House members last week. Perhaps, but he does have a tenacious commitment to a set of political convictions.

Compare his 2010 State of the Union to his first address to Congress a year earlier. The consistency is remarkable. In 2009, after passing a $787 billion (now $862 billion) stimulus package, the largest spending bill in galactic history, he unveiled a manifesto for fundamentally restructuring the commanding heights of American society -- health care, education and energy.

A year later, after stunning Democratic setbacks in Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts, Obama gave a stay-the-course State of the Union address (a) pledging not to walk away from health care reform, (b) seeking to turn college education increasingly into a federal entitlement, and (c) asking again for cap-and-trade energy legislation. Plus, of course, another stimulus package, this time renamed a "jobs bill."

This being a democracy, don't the Democrats see that clinging to this agenda will march them over a cliff? Don't they understand Massachusetts?

Well, they understand it through a prism of two cherished axioms: (1) The people are stupid and (2) Republicans are bad. Result? The dim, led by the malicious, vote incorrectly.

Liberal expressions of disdain for the intelligence and emotional maturity of the electorate have been, post-Massachusetts, remarkably unguarded. New York Times columnist Charles Blow chided Obama for not understanding the necessity of speaking "in the plain words of plain folks," because the people are "suspicious of complexity." Counseled Blow: "The next time he gives a speech, someone should tap him on the ankle and say, 'Mr. President, we're down here.'"

A Time magazine blogger was even more blunt about the ankle-dwelling mob, explaining that we are "a nation of dodos" that is "too dumb to thrive."

Obama joined the parade in the State of the Union address when, with supercilious modesty, he chided himself "for not explaining it (health care) more clearly to the American people." The subject, he noted, was "complex." The subject, it might also be noted, was one to which the master of complexity had devoted 29 speeches. Perhaps he did not speak slowly enough.

Then there are the emotional deficiencies of the masses. Nearly every Democratic apologist lamented the people's anger and anxiety, a free-floating agitation that prevented them from appreciating the beneficence of the social agenda the Democrats are so determined to foist upon them.

That brings us to Part 2 of the liberal conceit: Liberals act in the public interest, while conservatives think only of power, elections, self-aggrandizement and self-interest.

It is an old liberal theme that conservative ideas, being red in tooth and claw, cannot possibly emerge from any notion of the public good. A 2002 New York Times obituary for philosopher Robert Nozick explained that the strongly libertarian implications of Nozick's masterwork, "Anarchy, State, and Utopia," "proved comforting to the right, which was grateful for what it embraced as philosophical justification." The right, you see, is grateful when a bright intellectual can graft some philosophical rationalization onto its thoroughly base and self-regarding politics.

This belief in the moral hollowness of conservatism animates the current liberal mantra that Republican opposition to Obama's social democratic agenda -- which couldn't get through even a Democratic Congress and powered major Democratic losses in New Jersey, Virginia and Massachusetts -- is nothing but blind and cynical obstructionism.

By contrast, Democratic opposition to George W. Bush -- from Iraq to Social Security reform -- constituted dissent. And dissent, we were told at the time, including by candidate Obama, is "one of the truest expressions of patriotism."

No more. Today, dissent from the governing orthodoxy is nihilistic malice. "They made a decision," explained David Axelrod, "they were going to sit it out and hope that we failed, that the country failed" -- a perfect expression of liberals' conviction that their aspirations are necessarily the country's, that their idea of the public good is the public's, that their failure is therefore the nation's.

Then comes Massachusetts, an election Obama himself helped nationalize, to shatter this most self-congratulatory of illusions.

For liberals, the observation that "the peasants are revolting" is a pun. For conservatives, it is cause for uncharacteristic optimism. No matter how far the ideological pendulum swings in the short term, in the end the bedrock common sense of the American people will prevail.

The ankle-dwelling populace pushes back. It re-centers. It renormalizes. Even in Massachusetts.

Copyright 2010, Washington Post Writers Group

BEHIND OBAMA'S PHONY DEFICIT NUMBERS

Over and over again, Obama spouts "I inherited this deficit, I inherited this recession, I inherited this financial crisis, I saved America from the brink, I gave tax cuts (REBATES) to of America". I -- I -- I, and still it's not about him. Uh-huh. Of course, the numbers are a lie in order to show off his magnificence, but the true numbers are far more interesting.

Dick Morris outlines the difference between truth and fiction in his interesting new piece:


BEHIND OBAMA'S PHONY DEFICIT NUMBERS
by Dick Morris, February 1, 2010

President Obama is being disingenuous when he says that the budget deficit he faced "when I walked in the door" of the White House was $1.3 trillion. He went on to say that he only increased it to $1.4 trillion in 2009 and was raising it to $1.6 trillion in 2010.

Congressman Joe Wilson might have said "you lie," but we'll settle for "you distort."

(As Mark Twain once said, there are three kinds of lies: "lies, damn lies, and statistics.")

Here are the facts:

In 2008, Bush ran a deficit of $485 billion. By the time the fiscal year started on October 1, 2008, it had gone up by another $100 billion due to increased recession-related spending and depressed revenues. So it was about $600 billion at the start of the fiscal crisis. That was the real Bush deficit.

But when the fiscal crisis hit, Bush had to pass TARP in the final months of his presidency which cost $700 billion. Under the federal budget rules, a loan and a grant are treated the same. So the $700 billion pushed the deficit -- officially -- up to $1.3 trillion. But not really. The $700 billion was a short term loan. $500 billion of it has already been repaid.

So what was the real deficit Obama inherited? The $600 billion deficit Bush was running plus the $200 billion of TARP money that probably won't be repaid (mainly AIG and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac). That totals $800 billion. That was the real deficit Obama inherited.

Then...he added $300 billion in his stimulus package, bringing the deficit to $1.1 trillion. This $300 billion was, of course, totally qualitatively different from the TARP money in that it was spending not lending. It would never be paid back. Once it was out the door, it was gone. Other spending and falling revenues due to the recession pushed the final numbers for Obama's 2009 deficit up to $1.4 trillion.

So, effectively, Obama came close to doubling the deficit.

Obama seems not to understand that the deficit is the jobs problem. To add to the deficit in the hope of creating more jobs is an oxymoron. Additional deficit spending just crowds out small businesses trying to borrow money to create jobs and consumers seeking credit to buy cars and homes.

Soon, when the Fed stops printing money and we have to borrow real funds from real lenders, the high deficit will send interest rates soaring, further retarding growth and creating a cost-push inflation.

The interest rate we are now paying for the debt -- about 3.5% -- is totally artificial and based on the massive injection of money supply created by the purchase of mortgage backed securities by an obliging Federal Reserve. Once these injections of currency/heroin stop, the rate will more than double, sending our debt service spending into the stratosphere. Once we had to choose between guns and butter. Now we will have to choose between guns and butter on the one hand and paying our debt service on the other.

Obama's program of fiscal austerity in this new budget is a joke. He freezes very selected budget items while he shovels out new spending in his stimulus packages. If he wanted to lower the deficit, here's what he could do:

1. Cancel the remaining $500 billion of stimulus spending and

2. Cancel the $300 billion of spending in stimulus II.

Those are the real numbers. Or, as Al Gore would have it, "the inconvenient truth."


Go to DickMorris.com to read all of Dick's columns!

SPEAKER PELOSI'S SPENDAPALOOZA

Is this any way to run a household budget? Common sense tells you, when your expenses exceed your income, something has to give. Responsible adults review the cash flow and make adjustments by cutting back their expenses. If not, they are looking bankruptcy square in the face. If this administration keeps going along their chosen path, America will clearly go bankrupt, and one has to wonder if this in their intended outcome.

Recently, we have learned some new alarming lessons such as the Cloward-Piven Strategy and Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals, none of which Americans want to believe, but as each day passes, it is becoming more and more apparent.

If we are to save this country, we must stay engaged, we must continue to educate ourselves, and we must band together to speak out in protest of this 'transformation' of the United States of America. Just add up the new bills recapped in this piece. Unbelievable!

More proof is written in the Heritage Foundation, as Miss Nancy (clearly addicted to power) presses for more money, and raising the debt ceiling to roughly $14 TRILLION dollars. Again, our individual household budget would drive us to bankruptcy if our credit card companies did not cut us off, but rather increase our credit line. Complete and total suicide.


Speaker Pelosi’s Spendapalooza
December 11, 2009

Next week Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is expected to attach a provision to the Department of Defense appropriations bill that would increase our national debt limit by $1.925 trillion. This debt limit raise would authorize the U.S. Treasury to borrow as much as $14 trillion, which is 30% higher than the $10.8 trillion limit that was in place when President Barack Obama took office.

Defending the unprecedented size of the debt limit, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) told The Examiner: “There is no doubt the debt ceiling will have to be at that level in order to meet our financial obligations at this time next year. This is not creating new debt.” Not creating new debt? Hoyer speaks as though he and his Speaker are completely powerless to control all the federal spending that is driving up “our financial obligations.” In fact, Hoyer’s statement comes on the same day that he and Speaker Pelosi forced through a $447 billion “minibus” spending bill that every single Republican and 28 Democrats voted against.

Filled with 5,224 earmarks, this merged appropriations bill provides an 8% hike in discretionary spending for the third consecutive year since Pelosi took over Congress in 2007. Altogether, discretionary spending has jumped 25% since Speaker Pelosi took the gavel, and Congressional Democrats have spent $561 billion more in discretionary spending than if they had limited federal spending growth to the baseline inflation rate. Despite a $1.4 trillion deficit, appropriations bills passed this year have included:

• A 67% increase for the Environmental Protection Agency’s State and Tribal Assistance Grants;
• A 30% increase for the Corporation for National and Community Service;
• A 9% increase for Amtrak;
• An 8.4% increase for Lawmakers’ Office Allowances; and
• An 8.1% increase for the National Endowment for the Arts.

This is not the budgeting of a Congress even minimally serious about the budget deficit. And each large annual discretionary spending increase becomes part of the permanent discretionary spending baseline. In fact, the steep increases over the past three years have added $1.7 trillion to the 2011-2020 discretionary spending baseline – nearly $1,500 per household annually. In the past year, Pelosi’s House has passed a $700 billion financial bailout and a trillion dollar stimulus, a $1.5 trillion health care expansion, a $200 billion Medicare “doc fix,” and an $800 billion cap-and-trade bill. There is no increase to domestic federal spending that Speaker Pelosi can say “no” to.

It is far past time for responsible leaders in Congress to rein in Pelosi’s profligacy. At a bare minimum, lawmakers should demand that any debt-limit increase also statutorily cap discretionary spending growth at the inflation rate (approximately 2.5 percent annually) for the next decade. Even better, a return to federal spending levels of just a decade ago could go a long way towards solving our debt problem. Heritage’s Brian Riedl explains:

In the 1980s and 1990s, Washington consistently spent $21,000 per household (adjusted for inflation). Simply returning to that level would balance the budget by 2012 without any tax hikes. Alternatively, returning to the $25,000 per household level (adjusted for inflation) that Washington spent before the current recession would likely balance the budget by 2019 without any tax hikes.

QUICK HITS

Speaker Pelosi said yesterday she “would do almost anything” to get Obamacare passed before Christmas.

According to a USA TODAY analysis, while the private sector has shed 7.3 million jobs, the number of federal government workers earning six-figure salaries has exploded during the recession.

According to The New York Times, Americans who buy the same health benefits as members of Congress, or buy coverage through Medicare, will have to fork over a large chunk of cash under the latest Senate Democrat health plan.

The Washington Examiner reports that only one fourth of AARP revenues come from membership dues, while the rest come from selling AARP’s name to businesses, including businesses that would benefit from Obamacare, which the AARP has endorsed.

According to a new report, climate change criminals have pocketed almost 5 billion Euros by manipulating Europe’s carbon trading “market.”

THE DEFINITION OF ECONOMIC INSANITY

Back in January 2008, America was sitting comfortably with an unemployment rate in the fours. But Speaker Nancy Pelosi pushed through the first Stimulus bill, injecting coverage for Fannie-Mae and Freddie-Mac. We have been in a free fall since then, losing over 3 million jobs and nearly doubling unemployment within a year.

Enter Obama, with another Stimulus, making the first look like chump change, and doubling the loss of jobs in 10 months. Does this look like tax and spend works? We have lost over 7 million jobs in less than 2 years, with the threat of another Stimulus on the horizon (euphemistically camouflaged so the fools don't see we're doing it again, wink-wink).

The Heritage Foundation writes further on the "jobs" situation:


The Definition of Economic Insanity
December 4, 2009

In January 2008, the United States economy employed 138.1 million people and the unemployment rate stood at 4.9%. But the powers in Washington thought deficit spending could boost a slowing economy, so Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) passed and President George Bush signed a $168 billion economic stimulus bill made up of temporary tax cuts and increased mortgage grantees for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. By January 2009 that economic stimulus worked so well that the U.S. economy had lost 3.5 million jobs and the unemployment rate stood at 7.6%. Again the powers in Washington thought deficit spending was the answer, so Speaker Nancy Pelosi and newly minted President Barack Obama dialed up $787 billion in temporary tax cuts and permanent spending increases. Ten months later, the U.S. economy has now shed another 3.59 million jobs and the unemployment rate stand at 10%.

Undeterred by the complete failure of their past job creation efforts, leading leftist luminaries are again calling on the liberal majorities in Congress and President Obama to approve billions more in government spending for a third stimulus. Yesterday, President Obama hosted a “jobs summit” where academics, union leaders, and select big business leaders made their pitch for government largess. Among the ideas reported: Teamsters leader James Hoffa called for higher barriers to trade, President Obama insisted that all future aid to states go to preserving government jobs and not tax cuts, and others pushed to bring the “success” of Cash for Clunkers to a new Cash for Caulkers program.

These “new” ideas will fail for the same reason the past two government stimulus plans failed: governments do not create jobs. Only the private sector in pursuit of opportunity can create jobs on net. The best we can hope from government is that it keeps to a minimum the jobs it prevents and the income and wealth it destroys. President Obama does not understand this. At yesterday’s summit, Obama lamented the lack of job creation: “There’s a lot of money on the sidelines in the private sector. They are still nervous about whether they want to go ahead and take the risks that are inherent in a free market system.”

Wrong. Businesses aren’t nervous about “the risks that are inherent in a free market system,” they are nervous about the risks inherent in a government regulation dominated economy. Fred P. Lampropoulos, founder and chief of Merit Medical Systems Inc., told the President that businesses were uncertain about investment because “there’s such an aggressive legislative agenda that businesspeople don’t really know what they ought to do.” That uncertainty, he added, “is really what’s holding back the jobs.”

Wrong From the Start: Top Ten Outrageous Claims About the Stimulus

Joe Wilson deserves a big apology and a medal of honor for calling a spade a spade. He had the courage and the anger to stand up to Obama and call him out. Everything this man touches turns to crap, and one has to wonder if it isn't intentional. The Stimulus bill is the most abhorrent, and there had better not be any talk of another.

This is like the "10 Biggest Lies Ever Told". The best and most diabolical lie of all of these is No. 3 - the private sector? 90%? Really? Who are you trying to kid? These (our) funds need to be audited.

Erick Erickson of RedState lays it out beautifully:


Wrong From the Start: Top Ten Outrageous Claims About the Stimulus
by Erick Erickson, December 2, 2009

The House GOP Conference sent this along to me.

The White House will convene a “jobs summit” tomorrow against a backdrop of rising unemployment, soaring debt, and declining public confidence in the Obama Administration’s economic program. Washington Democrats staked their credibility on a nearly trillion-dollar ‘stimulus’ that was supposed to be about putting people back to work, but has instead produced countless examples of wasteful government spending while more than three million more Americans have lost their jobs. Even the accounting methods designed to keep track of the ‘stimulus’ have been widely discredited. Given the last 11 months of outrageous ‘stimulus’ claims, the American people are right to wonder whether Washington Democrats can be trusted to create jobs and cut the deficit:

1. CLAIM: “Just 10 days before taking office, Obama’s top economic advisers [Christina Romer & Jared Bernstein] released a report predicting unemployment would remain at eight percent or below through this year if an economic stimulus plan won congressional approval.” (Associated Press, 6/14/09)

FACT: The nation’s unemployment rate now stands at 10.2%. The President and several members of his economic team explicitly stated that the ‘stimulus’ was needed to avert double-digit unemployment.

2. CLAIM: “Q: If the president gets his way and gets this package approved, he signs it into law, how soon before — the American public starts to feel results, the creation of jobs? NATIONAL ECONOMIC COUNCIL DIRECTOR LAWRENCE SUMMERS: You’ll see the effects begin almost immediately.” (CNN, 2/9/09)

FACT: The U.S. economy has lost more than three million jobs since the trillion-dollar ‘stimulus’ became law. One House Democrat this week referred to the ‘stimulus’ as the “jobless American Recovery Act.” A recent survey found that fewer than one in ten Americans believe the ‘stimulus’ has helped create jobs.

3. CLAIM: “More than 90 percent of the jobs created by this plan will be in the private sector.” – President Obama (News conference, 2/9/09)

FACT: “Although President Obama initially said that 90 percent of the jobs created by the stimulus program would be in the private sector, the data suggests that well over half of the jobs claimed so far have been in the public sector.” (The New York Times, 11/4/09)

4. CLAIM: “There will be no earmarks or pet projects in this bill.” – Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (Floor statement, 2/13/09)

FACT: The trillion-dollar ‘stimulus’ has produced countless examples of wasteful government spending, including repairs to a bridge that reportedly carries about 260 cars per day, many to a place called Rusty’s Backwater Saloon in Wisconsin, and in North Carolina, where ‘stimulus’ funds were reportedly used by one town to hire a new worker whose job is to apply for more ‘stimulus’ funds from Washington.

5. CLAIM: “We must make sure the public understands this is a very fiscally sound package.” – Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Talk Radio News Service, 3/10/09)

FACT: With the help of the trillion-dollar ‘stimulus,’ the Obama Administration spent more in its first 100 days than all previous presidents have combined. The national debt has topped $12 trillion for the first time in U.S. history. The federal government is now operating on a budget that doubles the national debt in five years and triples it in ten.

6. CLAIM: “The second hundred days you’re going to see a lot more jobs created.” – Vice President Joe Biden (ABC’s This Week, 7/5/09)

FACT: The U.S. economy lost roughly 930,000 jobs in June, July, and August. It was during this period that the President proclaimed he could “see a light at the end of the tunnel.”

7. CLAIM: “There is a lot more ammunition left in the stimulus package.” – Jared Bernstein, chief economist to the Vice President (MSNBC, 10/30/09)

FACT: “The government’s economic stimulus spending has already had its biggest impact and probably won’t contribute to significant growth next year, a top White House adviser said Thursday.” (Associated Press, 10/22/09) “An interesting tidbit from Dr. Christina Romer’s testimony before the Joint Economic Committee. Citing economic analysts she says the fiscal stimulus will have its greatest impact on growth in the second and third quarters of 2009. (Editor’s note – those quarters are now behind us).” (ABC News, 10/22/09)

8. CLAIM: “I think we got the Recovery Act right. … It may be desirable to have a given amount of work shared among more people. But that’s not as desirable as expanding the total amount of work.” – National Economic Council Director Lawrence Summers (The Washington Post, 11/8/09)

FACT: The Obama Administration’s attempt to suddenly make job creation seem like a lesser goal of the trillion-dollar ‘stimulus’ flies in the face of numerous public statements made in the days before the bill was passed, including the President’s statement that creating jobs was his “bottom line number one.”

9. CLAIM: “If I give you a raise, it is going to save a portion of your job.” – Department of Health and Human Services spokesman (Associated Press, 11/4/09)

FACT: This is one of several attempts by the Obama Administration to define a job “saved or created” by the ‘stimulus.’ In this particular case, the AP found “more than 9,300 existing employees in more than 9,300 existing employees in hundreds of local agencies who received pay raises and benefits and whose jobs weren’t saved.” In a newly released report, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office states that “it is impossible to determine how many of the reported jobs would have existed in the absence of the stimulus package.”

10. CLAIM: “We’ve been in business seven, eight months. You haven’t seen wasteful spending. No one has said we spent $2 million on things that didn’t exist.” – Vice President Joe Biden (The Daily Show, 11/17/09)

FACT: “Stimulus jobs reported in non-existent congressional districts. … Of all the problems found in the latest round of stimulus reporting, add another one: congressional districts that don’t exist. ABC News reported yesterday that White House officials have found 700 mistakenly credited congressional districts out of more than 130,000 stimulus grants.” (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 11/18/09) “The reports on jobs created or saved by the $787 billion economic stimulus package are ‘riddled with inaccuracies and contradictions,’ the federal watchdog overseeing the spending acknowledged Thursday.” (USA TODAY, 11/19/09)

BONUS CLAIM: “Vice President Biden offered an impassioned defense of the Obama administration’s policies on the economy, health care, and energy this morning… He chastised administration opponents for not offering alternatives to solve the problems of the nation.” (Philadelphia Inquirer, 11/23/09)

FACT: “House Republicans Press Obama on Job Creation. House Republicans sent a letter to President Barack Obama today, pushing the administration to seek more business tax breaks as a way to boost the number of new jobs. … Republicans say in their letter that they’re hoping to work with the White House toward a bipartisan jobs plan.” (WSJ Washington Wire, 10/7/09) The proposals contained in House Republicans’ October letter, some of which were presented to President Obama as early as his first week in office, were developed by House Republicans’ Economic Recovery and Health Care solutions groups. Republican Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA), who heads up the Economic Recovery Solutions Group, will discuss additional proposals to spur job creation in a speech today at the Heritage Foundation.

THE IMPENDING OBAMA BORROW AND SPEND DISASTER

Now Obama decides to address deficit spending. Now he decides to address unemployment with another 'summit'. The last 10 months have clearly displayed how good Obama is at keeping his word, and these recent displays of concern are no different.

This borrow and spend is no way to run a household, much less a country, especially when you are stealing other people's hard earned money. Look at what he just gave Sen. Mary Landreiu of Louisiana to bribe her healthcare vote. Redistribution of wealth is nothing more than highway robbery, and against the 8th Commandment.

If we stay informed, we can beat back these 60s radicals, but it will take every bit of energy we can muster. The Heritage Foundation has an excellent piece on this:


The Impending Obama Borrow and Spend Disaster
November 23, 2009

Speaking at Georgetown University on April 14th, President Barack Obama promised: “We cannot rebuild this economy on the same pile of sand. We must build our house upon a rock. We must lay a new foundation for growth and prosperity — a foundation that will move us from an era of borrow and spend to one where we save and invest.” Nice words. But the Obama administration actions have produced all sand and no rock. From the Wall Street Bailout, to Cash for Clunkers, to Obama’s failed stimulus, this administration has been all about borrowing and spending. And as the New York Times reports today, it will not be long before we begin paying a real price for these policies:

With the national debt now topping $12 trillion, the White House estimates that the government’s tab for servicing the debt will exceed $700 billion a year in 2019, up from $202 billion this year, even if annual budget deficits shrink drastically. Other forecasters say the figure could be much higher.

In concrete terms, an additional $500 billion a year in interest expense would total more than the combined federal budgets this year for education, energy, homeland security and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

$700 billion a year in interest payments alone. That is more money than our entire defense budget for next year including the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan. And that is a low end estimate. As Heritage fellow J.D. Foster has previously noted, governments around the world are also furiously borrowing, feeding a global debt bubble that will eventually force the U.S. Treasury to pay much higher interest rates. And much of the debt we took on this past year is coming due soon. The NYT reports that to take advantage of low rates today, the Treasury issued a huge amount of short-term debt. Treasury officials estimate that about 36 percent of the government’s marketable debt — about $1.6 trillion — is coming due in the months ahead. The Concord Coalition’s Robert Bixby comments: “The government is on teaser rates. We’re taking out a huge mortgage right now, but we won’t feel the pain until later.”

The American people are rightly concerned about this impending disaster. According to Rasmussen Reports, deficit reduction has remained the number one issue for voters ever since President Obama listed his four top budget priorities in a speech to Congress in February. Forty-two percent (42%) say cutting the deficit in half by the end of the president’s first term is most important, while only 24% say health care reform should be the top priority. Despite the clear wishes of the American people, the Senate voted Saturday night to move forward on a $4.9 trillion in new health care spending. The leftist majorities in Congress say that they will follow with the promised spending cuts and tax hikes to make their bill deficit neutral, but nobody believes them. According to the latest Quinnipiac University poll only 19% of Americans believe President Obama’s promise that health insurance reform will not add to our federal budget deficit over the next decade. 72% of Americans tell Quinnipiac they right understand that Obamacare will only add to our nation’s record breaking $12 trillion national debt.

There are a number of highly credible conservative plans for reducing our national debt. But Congress should take a tip from the medical profession on health reform and “first do no harm.”

QUICK HITS

According to the Associated Press, rising unemployment taxes are killing small business job creation.

Unemployment rose in 29 U.S. states last month including Michigan’s nationwide highest 15.1%.

President Obama supporter and MSNBC host Chris Matthews said Obama is making ‘Carteresque’ mistakes.

10% UNEMPLOYMENT SHOWS OBJECTIVE FAILURE OF OBAMA STIMULUS

It is pure folly to claim 640,329 have been created or saved by the overbloated Stimulus bill, much less "saved us from the brink". It's pure fuzzy math, and sounds 'fishy'. This administration also claims we are in a 'jobless' recovery. You can't have a recovery without recovering jobs. Sheesh.

The Heritage Foundation writes:


10% Unemployment Shows Objective Failure of Obama Stimulus
November 6, 2009

Last week the Obama administration issued a report purporting to show that the President’s $787 billion economic stimulus plan had saved or created exactly 640,329 jobs. Such a precise number for such a fuzzy concept as jobs “saved or created” immediately raised doubts about the veracity of the report in any honest American’s mind.

And since that report was issued, a once compliant press has filed story after story tearing the credibility of the Obama administration’s job creation claims to shreds. Just enter the words “stimulus”, “jobs”, and “report” in a Google News search and these are just some of the headlines you will receive:

• Stimulus Job Report Filled With Errors
• Stimulus Watch: Salary raises counted as saved jobs
• White House Tally Appears to Overstate Stimulus Jobs
• Reports Show Conflicting Number of Jobs Attributed to Stimulus Money
• Stimulus Watchdog: job counters confused, need guidance
• Why stimulus jobs aren’t here to stay
• Many California jobs ’saved’ by stimulus funds weren’t in jeopardy

Luckily the American people do not need to count on phony new jobs studies to provide the objective data necessary to hold President Barack Obama accountable for his economic policies. The Bureau of Labor and Statistics has been collecting accepted and standardized data employment data since the 1940s. When President Obama was selling his $787 billion stimulus to the American people he promised unemployment would never rise above 7.8% and that by 2010 the U.S. economy would employ 138.6 million jobs.

Today, BLS released its monthly jobs report and the numbers speak for themselves. The economy shed another 190,000 jobs in October, bringing the number of jobs lost since Obama was sworn in to 3.8 million. Worse still, the unemployment rate rose from 9.8% to 10.2% percent. With only 130.8 million jobs in the U.S. economy, President Obama is now 7.8 million jobs short of what he promised the American people. That makes President Obama’s stimulus an objective failure.

The Obama stimulus failed because it was based on faulty Keynesian beliefs. Heritage fellow J.D. Foster explains:

The Keynesian stimulus theory fails for the simple reason that it is only half a theory. It correctly describes how deficit spending can raise the level of demand in part of the economy, and ignores how government borrowing to finance deficit spending automatically reduces demand elsewhere.

Fortunately, the economy’s natural recuperative powers may be ending the recession. Last week the Commerce Department reported that the economy grew at 3.5%. But if this recovery is going to include job growth along with GDP growth, then job killing initiatives like Obamacare and cap and trade will have to be abandoned.

QUICK HITS

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has confirmed she will break her pledge to put the final language of the health care legislation online for 72 hours before a vote.

Boxer’s Procedural Gambit Pushed Bill Out of Committee

WASHINGTON POLITICIANS' MOST TITANIC LIE

If we stop the deficit spending, we may be able to save Social Security and our economy. If the government would just lower spending, they wouldn't have to keep robbing from the Social Security Trust Fund.

Sounds logical, no? The only problem is we now have an administration dead set on expanding government control and spending tax dollars on tunnels for turtles and airports to nowhere, not to mention millions to the Clinton Library [?] from the Stimulus Bill which was passed to create jobs and "save us from the brink".

Let's do as Sen. DeMint suggests -- take the wheel and vote these crooks out of government. Make a list from his SenateConservatives.com.

Senator Jim DeMint R-SC writes about our social security in the Washington Examiner:


Washington Politicians' Most Titanic Lie
by Sen. Jim DeMint, OpEd Contributor, October 1, 2009

If you watch C-Span for a while, you’re sure to hear a politician or pundit criticizing some idea by comparing it to “rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.” It’s a vivid illustration of the short-sightedness and futility of so much of what Washington does superficially to improve failed programs.

In Washington today, however, we are witnessing an unprecedented extension of the Titanic analogy: Both parties and both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue are focused on rearranging our deck chairs while there is still time to steer around the iceberg, if only someone would grab the wheel.

This week, the Associated Press reported that for the next two years, the Social Security system will pay out more money than it takes in. The story contained the following bizarre formulation:

“The deficits — $10 billion in 2010 and $9 billion in 2011 — won't affect payments to retirees because Social Security has accumulated surpluses from previous years totaling $2.5 trillion. But they will add to the overall federal deficit.”

How can it be that Social Security has $2.5 trillion in reserves, but that a mere $19 billion shortfall will add to the federal deficit? Because the “surpluses” do not exist. The Trust Fund is empty and has been for years. There is no money in there; just IOU’s. That’s why the 2010-2011 shortfalls will add to the deficit – we don’t have the money.

The very concept of a Social Security Trust Fund is not so much a myth as it is a lie. For decades, Congress has raided the Trust Fund to pay for other government programs and used accounting gimmicks to hide the true size of the deficit.

Even at the end of the Clinton Administration, when the federal government was supposedly running a surplus, the national debt went up every single year. The surpluses were as imaginary as the Trust Funds.

So insatiable is Washington’s appetite to spend that the federal government has not only spent all the money it has, but all the money previous generations were thought to have saved, and now we’re working our way through the money future generations hope to earn.

What our government has done is a crime. And yet, almost no one in Washington – in either party – seems interested in the giant iceberg we’re steaming toward… Not when there are deckchairs to rearrange!

This year alone, the Senate has passed a $787 billion stimulus, a $350 billion Wall Street bailout extension, a $400 billion, earmark-infested omnibus spending bill, a $109 billion loan to the International Monetary Fund, $6 billion to federalize charities and pay volunteers, $3 billion for cash for clunkers, $400 million in corporate welfare to help tourism corporations advertise overseas, and a $4 billion bailout of the Postal Service.

(To see how your Senator voted on these Titanic Spending Bills, go to SenateConservatives.com, a site I’ve created to hold senators of both parties accountable.)

And now Congress is working its way through 2010 appropriations bills that will increase spending 10-20 percent over last year. Those bills will include thousands of willfully wasteful earmarks, spending billions of dollars we don’t have.

And all of this is being done in a fiscal context that can only be described as terrifying. This year, Washington will spend twice as much as it takes in. The national debt is now as large as our entire economy, nearing $12 trillion borrowed from countries like China.

The long-term projected shortfalls for Social Security and Medicare alone are more than $100 trillion. Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn has warned that every child born in America today is burdened with a $400,000 bill to pay for federal programs in the coming decades.

It is in this climate – incredibly, maddeningly – that Congress and the president are trying to pass a health care takeover plan that will cost an additional trillion dollars in the near term, and orders of magnitude more in the long run.

And all along, the architects of this fiscal catastrophe are called “progressive” and compassionate, while skeptical taxpayers at tea parties and town halls are derided as crazy.

And thus comes the Titanic comparison full circle. You see, when our leaders finally run us into that iceberg, they know they will have seats set aside for themselves in the lifeboats. It’s the rest of us, our parents and our children, who will find ourselves locked in steerage, forced by our ruling class to pay for their sins, and go down with the sinking ship.

There’s still time to rescue the ship, but Washington is too busy fiddling with the deckchairs. To prevent catastrophe, the American people are going to have to take the wheel.

Republican Sen. Jim DeMint is the junior senator from South Carolina.

STIMULUS IS DESTROYING, NOT CREATING JOBS

You hear over and over again, with speech after speech, "I have saved you from the brink!".  Tell us, Mr. President, how did you do that? 

Since less than 10% of the so called "Stimulus" money has been spent, the Cash for Clunkers is a total failure, and your 8% cap on unemployment is nearly 10%, looks like we're closer to the brink than ever. So just how have you saved us from the brink?

A report from The Heritage Foundation:

Stimulus Is Destroying, Not Creating Jobs
The Foundry, September 16, 2009 -- Enterprise and Free Markets

Even as National Economic Council Director Lawrence Summers says the stimulus is working he also warned that he expects unemployment to remain unacceptably high for years to come. Unfortunately, Summers is half right: unemployment will probably stay high, but because of – not in spite of – the stimulus bill.

The Obama administration claimed that the government spending in the nearly $800 billion stimulus bill would “create or save” millions of jobs. And in one limited sense it will. The enormous increases in government spending will directly employ many workers. But that does not mean the stimulus will increase overall employment in the economy. Just the opposite in fact.

Academic research shows that increased government spending and government jobs crowd-out private sector employment. The government does not create wealth, it only moves resources around in the economy. Even now, with the economy in a recession, the money spent on government jobs is money that cannot be used by business to expand their own operations. Businesses are still investing, but at a lower rate than the recession began. The money the government spends on “stimulus projects” cannot be used by these same businesses to expand. So while government employment grows – private sector jobs shrink. Overall the jobs created by government spending are offset by losses in the private sector – and then some. One study of the Swedish economy found that for each government job created 1.15 private sector workers lost theirs. Government spending does not “create or save” jobs.

Worse, higher government spending discourages private sector investment. A larger and more expansive government – and the taxes needed to fund it – reduce profitable business opportunities and deter investors from putting their money to work in the economy.

Unemployment has primarily risen because of the reduced private sector investment and job creation since the recession started. The stimulus bill – and the taxes that will eventually need to be raised to pay for it –discourage investment and entrepreneurial job creation. No wonder that research shows that reducing government spending helps the economy while raising taxes harms it. Unemployment will probably remain unacceptably high for years to come – in part because of the misnamed stimulus bill.

DON'T ENABLE THE FINANCIAL-REGULATORY COMPLEX

Over the years Federal regulations have strangled financial institutions, forcing them to make risky loans, beginning with Jimmy Carter's Community Reinvestment Act in 1977 to most recently Barney Frank and Chris Dodd's shenanigans.

This administration is looking to nationalize the financial institutions, pushing America further towards financial ruin.  The Heritage Foundation reports:

Don’t Enable The Financial-Regulatory Complex

September 14, 2009

This Saturday, tens of thousands of Americans marched on Washington to protest the unprecedented amount of power being concentrated in Washington, DC under the Obama administration. And even the New York Times admits they have a point: “The government is the nation’s biggest lender, insurer, automaker and guarantor against risk for investors large and small. Between financial rescue missions and the economic stimulus program, government spending accounts for a bigger share of the nation’s economy — 26 percent — than at any time since World War II.”

And on the Sunday New York Times op-ed page, George Mason University professor of economics Tyler Cowen writes:

For years now, many businesses and individuals in the United States have been relying on the power of government, rather than competition in the marketplace, to increase their wealth. This is politicization of the economy. It made the financial crisis much worse, and the trend is accelerating. … President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned of the birth of a military-industrial complex. Today we have a financial-regulatory complex, and it has meant a consolidation of power and privilege. We’ve created a class of politically protected “too big to fail” institutions, and the current proposals for regulatory reform further cement this notion.

President Barack Obama will be pitching those very financial regulatory reforms today from Federal Hall, where the founders once argued bitterly over how much the government should control the national economy. Unfortunately, the blueprint for financial regulatory reform issued by his administration is a detailed mixture of overreaching policy mistakes, missed chances for real reform, blanks that will be filled in later after studies, and a few good ideas.

The President and Congress should:

• Avoid Making the Federal Reserve Serve as Systemic Risk Regulator: The Obama Administration proposes to put the Federal Reserve Board in charge of regulating systemic risk, but it is not clear how such regulation would work in practice or even if this method is the best way to approach the problem. Charging a single entity with reducing systemic risk is likely to raise false expectations. It is very doubtful that any systemic regulator will be able to successfully fill this role unless it has almost unlimited powers, and this type of open-ended power would be difficult to constrain and should be resisted.
• Do Not Create a Consumer Financial Protection Agency: The administration proposes to consolidate existing consumer regulators into a new and very powerful Consumer Financial Protection Agency. This is the single biggest policy mistake in the Obama plan. The proposal assumes that consumers are unable to understand any financial products other than the most simple, basic versions even with detailed disclosures in advance of purchase. This basic contempt for the intelligence of consumers would extend to requiring them to refuse certain basic products before they would be allowed to purchase anything else.
• Resist Giving the FDIC Resolution Authority for “Too Big to Fail” Financial Firms: Dealing with failing financial companies that could cause risk to the financial system is a valid concern, but the Administration’s approach seems more geared toward facilitating future bailouts and justifying additional intervention. Clearly, a receiver/conservator that can operate the least certain subsidiaries until they can be sold or orderly closed is necessary in order to maximize returns to debtors. But the Treasury plan assumes that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) should handle this role rather than allowing the courts to determine a receiver and then supervise it.
  

Instead of a Washington-centric top-down approach, the President and Congress should pursue a more modest approach. Rather than giving a government agency the ability to take over and operate large financial institutions, bankruptcy law ought to be modified to accommodate the special problems of resolving these firms and also allow the courts to appoint receivers with the specialized knowledge necessary to best deal with their failure. Instead of creating a regulatory scheme that results in the federal government financing 9 out of 10 new mortgages, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should be eliminated. And rather than seeking to micro-manage “too big to fail” financial institutions, it would be better to require them to have more capital than is required for smaller financial institutions.

HE'S NOT JIMMY CARTER

Conservatives, don't get over-confident in the diving numbers of Obama. He is nothing like Jimmy Carter, whose polls also began to tumble. We are dealing with a far more devious man, and cannot take our eye off of him for a minute.

The American Spectator has an interesting piece:


He's Not Jimmy Carter
By Quin Hillyer, September 3, 2009

Conservatives are taking too much solace in the precipitous drop in Barack Obama's approval ratings, and too many of us are overconfident that his administration is merely a replay of the hapless presidency of Jimmy Carter that was easily swept out in a landslide election.

Today's situation is far different, far more conducive to our political adversary's political power, than that which faced Carter. And Obama is an entirely different breed of cat. He's more ruthless, more tactically savvy, and has far more dangerous objectives. A drop in his poll ratings isn't as serious a setback for him as similar occurrences were for the peanut farmer from Plains.

In short, conservatives should beware. The political battle we're in is far more difficult than any the conservative movement has ever faced. It will take all our energy and all our smarts to win it.

First, consider the differences in political circumstances between Obama and Carter. Unlike Carter, Obama does not face a Kennedy-led left wing of his party that despises him. Unlike Carter, Obama did not take office by an incredibly slim majority vote so close that a few thousands votes in two states would have swung the whole election. Unlike Carter, Obama took office in the middle of a crisis he could blame on his predecessor and coming off an unpopular war that he could blame almost entirely on the Republican Party. On the right, Carter faced a conservative movement (even if not a Republican Party) unified and energized by an inspirational leader -- but no similar, single spokesman today galvanizes conservatives like Ronald Reagan did then. Carter also did not have a nationwide movement kept together by a tool like the Internet, and did not have billionaires behind his general aims the way Obama has George Soros.

Finally, Obama has the advantage of a more ethnically diverse nation that has far less of a common culture and less of a common appreciation of shared socio-political history and values. Why is that an advantage? Because it gives him more leeway to make outlandish claims, and still have huge pluralities believe him, than Carter could ever hope for.

More important than all that, though, is that Obama's personal skills, aims, and training are like nothing we have ever seen before in the White House. Every other president before him has intended at most to achieve change within the American political system. Obama wants to change the system itself. He is a radical's radical, with an authoritarian impulse. His Alinskyite training means that social unrest doesn't unnerve him; it plays right into his hands. Social unrest is both his modus operandi and his mid-term goal. The more unrest, the greater the crisis; the greater the crisis, the more excuse he has to use and consolidate central power in order to completely remake society.

And unlike Carter or most other Democratic presidential nominees of the past 45 years, Obama has tremendous oratorical skills. Sure, Bill Clinton could please lots of audience members with small promises, but he did not possess half the ability to inspire people (however misguidedly) that Obama does. Obama has the talent to raise demagoguery to an art form.

Already we see a cult of personality around Obama, one deliberately encouraged by the Obama political operation. Already we see him push for centralizing, fascistic economic powers. Already we see him creating "a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded" as the regular military, complete with uniformed youths (and even senior citizens) formed into "cadres." And in order to make AmeriCorps less answerable to the public, Obama fired the Inspector General trying to blow the whistle on nefarious AmeriCorps activities. Now he is using AmeriCorps and the National Endowment for the Arts to politically agitate for his "recovery agenda."

And that's not to mention the Big Brother-like data-mining and reporting of "casual conversations" to a White House website, or the creepy address to all the nation's school children -- or the continued public trashing, by the permanent Obama campaign known as Organizing For America, of ordinary citizen protesters as "Right-Wing Domestic Terrorists."

Obama also is politicizing the Census; giving contracts to ACORN; letting a recognized hate group like the New Black Panthers go free; undermining the CIA at every turn, radicalizing the Supreme Court; re-orienting the civil rights division of the Justice Department; appointing more "czars" than anybody can keep track of and who, unlike Cabinet members, do not answer to Congress; resisting transparency on TARP bailout funds; refusing to enforce financial reporting requirements on union political organizers; and doing all sorts of other things designed, as are the items above, to consolidate power, tilt the deck, and rig the political rules in his favor for the long haul.

In foreign affairs, his radicalism is even more apparent. He keeps undermining allies while embracing enemies. He deliberately undercut the brave protesters in Iran. He stubbornly continues to punish Honduras and its citizens, via economic and travel sanctions, because Honduras actually followed its own Constitution in removing a harshly anti-American president from office -- when he should have been rewarding Honduras for its commitment to the rule of law. Yet while he punishes friendly Hondurans, he refuses to punish radical leftist Ecuadorean president Rafael Correa when Correa's government tries to shake down an American company for $27 billion. It's all very bizarre. One wonders what exactly his agenda is. But it's clearly something the likes of which we've never seen. Again, the comparison with Carter's foreign policy is telling. Carter's was full of woolly-minded, pie-in-the-sky idealism, but it didn't deliberately mollycoddle sworn enemies. Obama's, on the other hand, portrays Obama to the world as if Obama himself is more admirable than the nation he supposedly represents -- a nation for which he continually apologizes. This attempt, so far quite successful, to garner personal, worldwide glorification is another gambit for power. Again, it makes him nobody for domestic political adversaries to trifle with. It gives him tools never enjoyed by the Jimmy Carter who was burned in effigy by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his pals in 1979 and 1980.

To defeat Obama's radicalism will take plenty of political savvy on the right. Until the 2010 elections, discontent should simmer, but not boil over. Civil unrest will not win the day; it will only help him. The one, and perhaps only, opportunity to stop his juggernaut will be in those mid-term elections. Every bit of conservatives' efforts should be directed at building a massive voter turnout to defeat Obama's leftist allies in 2010. The TEA parties and town hall protests and all the rest should be aimed at building a political infrastructure and political arguments sufficient to win those elections. The energy of conservatives should climax then and only then. Anything premature, anything over the top, will allow Obama to more effectively mobilize his own troops in the supposed name of order and stability.

Finally, it will help Obama that, probably by design, the bulk of the "stimulus" funds remain unspent. What will happen is that at just the right time, those funds will spur a false recovery -- a "recovery" hailed by the establishment media as proof of Obama's wisdom. The recovery won't last, because it won't be real. But that won't matter. Timed just right, it will allow Obama to claim the economic high road -- something Jimmy Carter never was able to claim. Relieved Americans who are apolitical could easily be swayed to "stay the course," just as Americans stayed the course with Ronald Reagan in 1982. But Reagan's course led to greater freedom; if Obama's course is stayed and he consolidates power in 2010, the diminution of freedom may be well-nigh irreversible.

In short, the wonderful conservative success in August should not hide the reality that our backs are still against the wall. Obama still owns the upper hand. If we make any major mistake, he will use that hand as a fist to smash the conservative movement to bits. Clear-eyed about this possibility, conservatives must keep fighting. Uphill. Against the wind. And without a Reagan to lead us.

A SOBERING WAKE UP CALL

The $787 billion stimulus bill was pushed through Congress without being read. We were told crisis, crisis, crisis and had to rush, rush, rush. Hopefully, we have learned a hard lesson, as more bills are threatening to be rammed through in the same manner.

There are alternatives that can be done to save this economy, and right the stimulus package, as The Heritage Foundation explains:


A Sobering Wake Up Call
August 26, 2009

Defending mounting job losses despite his administration’s $787 billion stimulus package, Vice President Joe Biden told ABC News George Stephanopoulos last month: “The truth is, we and everyone else misread the economy. The figures we worked off of in January were the consensus figures and most of the blue chip indexes out there.” This is just not true. Yesterday the White House released their Mid-Session Review admitting that President Barack Obama’s policies would force our nation to borrow more than $9 trillion over the next ten years.

Commenting on the gap between the new $9 trillion number and the $7 trillion number the Office of Management and Budget used to sell President Obama’s budget to Congress, the Washington Post reports:

The extra $1.9 trillion in red ink mainly reflects the Office of Management and Budget’s adoption of more realistic — that is, more pessimistic — estimates of economic growth and unemployment. White House officials protest that their original, rosier numbers made sense at the time; actually, plenty of forecasters, including those at the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, made more accurate calls. This situation was foreseeable and should have been acknowledged earlier.

While it is good that the Obama administration is finally admitting that the fundamental assumptions driving their economic policy were wrong, the reality of our current budget deficit, and what President Obama’s policies threaten to do to our national debt over the next decade, are truly sobering. Heritage senior policy analyst Brian Riedl details the carnage:

- Since World War II, the largest budget deficit recorded was 6.0 percent of GDP in 1983. The Bush Administration oversaw budget deficits averaging 2.0 percent of GDP. The projected 2009 budget deficit of 11.2 percent of GDP would nearly double the post-war record.
- The 2009 budget deficit will be larger than all budget deficits from 2002 through 2007 combined. More than 43 cents of every dollar Washington spends in 2009 will have been borrowed.
- While President Obama claims to have inherited the 2009 budget deficit, it is important to note that the estimated 2009 budget deficit has increased by $400 billion since his inauguration, and the whole point of the “stimulus” was to increase deficit spending to nearly $2 trillion based on the unproven notion that would it alleviate the recession.
- The 22 percent spending increase projected for 2009 represents the largest government expansion since the 1952 height of the Korean War (adjusted for inflation). Federal spending is up 57 percent since 2001.
- In 2009, Washington will spend $30,958 per household–the highest level in American history–and under President Obama’s budget, the figure will rise above $33,000 by 2019.
- The White House brags that it will cut the deficit in half by 2013. The President does not mention that the deficit has nearly quadrupled this year. Merely cutting it in half from that bloated level would still leave budget deficits twice as high as under President Bush.
- The public national debt–$5.8 trillion as of 2008–is projected to double by 2012 and nearly triple by 2019. Thus, America would accumulate more government debt under President Obama than under every President in American history from George Washington to George W. Bush combined.

And now for the real kicker: none of these numbers include the costs of Obamacare which would create another $1.5 trillion health care entitlement on top of our existing unsustainable entitlement obligations. The OMB’s Mid-Session Review should serve as a wake up call to the American people. President Obama’s policies are leading us down a path of unsustainable spending and borrowing.

There is another choice. Not all future spending is inevitable. In the 1980s and 1990s, Washington consistently spent $21,000 per household (adjusted for inflation). Simply returning to that level would balance the budget by 2012 without any tax hikes. Alternatively, returning to the $25,000 per household level (adjusted for inflation) that Washington spent before the current recession would likely balance the budget by 2019 without any tax hikes. So with very little sacrifice, and no new taxes, the government could get its budget under control and the American economy could get fully back on track in three years. Isn’t that worth considering?

A CLUNKER OF A STIMULUS

Has is only been six months? How's that 'Hope & Change' working for you? I know, you don't have to worry about putting gas in your car, or worry about paying your mortgage. And 3 million people are going back to work.

A view from The Heritage Foundation:


A Clunker of a Stimulus
August 18, 2009

Yesterday was the six month anniversary of President Barack Obama’s $787 billion stimulus package. Since the “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act” became law, the United States economy has shed nearly 2.8 million net jobs. When Obama signed the stimulus the nation’s unemployment rate stood at 7.6%. Today it is 9.4%. Nationwide, a total of fifteen states are now suffering from 10% unemployment. No wonder 57% of Americans recently told Gallup that the stimulus package is either having no impact on the economy or making it worse.

The White House has a different view than the American people. Last week when new data revealed that United States Gross Domestic Product fell by only 1% in the 2nd quarter of this year, President Obama rushed to the Diplomatic Reception Room to announce that, “in the last few months the economy has done measurably better than we had thought … And as many economists will tell you, that part of the progress is directly attributable to the Recovery Act.” Oh really? As stimulus tracker ProPublica points out, only 12% of the $580 billion in new spending of the bill has actually been spent. As New York University Associate Professor of Economics Mario Rizzo asks: “what is the mechanism by which about $70 billion in extra spending reduces the rate of increase in unemployment and reduces the rate of decrease in output in a $14 trillion economy? If my advanced arithmetic is correct this is ½ of 1percent of the GDP. What kind of Super Multiplier is that?”

And that reduction in unemployment from a June high of 9.5% to July’s 9.4% is nothing to get excited about. The U.S. economy still lost another 247,000 jobs last month meaning the dip in the unemployment rate came entirely from the fact that 422,000 people stopped looking for work entirely. As a result the labor force participation rate fell to 66.5% which equals the lowest recorded number of the current recession. And when government workers are removed from the mix, only 59.5% of Americans are participating in the private labor market, the lowest level in 25 years. Worse still, new job creation continues to drop. According to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics Job Opportuni­ties and Labor Turnover Survey, which shows the proportion of workers starting at a new job each month, a record low 2.9% of Americans found or switched jobs in June.

American eyes often justifiably gloss over when economic statistics are thrown around, which is why concrete examples like the Obama administration’s much hyped “Cash for Clunkers” program offer such valuable examples of why the left’s Keynesian policies are destined to fail. An Obama stimulus writ small, Cash for Clunkers seeks to rebuild the American economy and help the environment at the same time by borrowing money to spur new spending and car manufacturing now, while also simultaneously decreasing emissions.

Cash for Clunkers has failed at everything but adding to the debt. It has not created any new car sales, but only shifted them into a narrow two month window. It has not stimulated any new consumer spending as consumers just cut back in other areas to pay for their new cars. And finally, it has done nothing for the environment since the new cars get driven more than the clunkers, and the clunkers are then destroyed a tremendous waste of resources that only hurts the environment. It is no wonder that the President did not celebrate yesterday’s stimulus anniversary more prominently. If this is what his relationship with the American economy looks like after just six months, the honeymoon is assuredly over.