Storified by Brian Empric· Sat, Mar 30 2013 17:02:02
Since February 2009 when Obama held a so-called Fiscal Responsibility Summit at the White House and our debt was $10.8 trillion, he’s added another $6 trillion to the amount that we and our children will have to repay, while reneging on his commitment back then to take responsibility “right now, in this administration…”
“Let's say your car is on cruise control at 100 miles per hour, and there's a brick wall in the distance. The responsible course of action would be to slow down gradually and turn the car so it's no longer pointed toward the brick wall. But if President Obama were driving the way he conducts fiscal policy, he'd be lowering the speed to 98 miles per hour and continuing on the same trajectory -- simply assuming he'd be able to slam on the brakes right before impact.”
“As with past financial crises, there are always voices warning about the inevitable but others who want to keep dancing until the music stops… There are several problems with waiting for an actual crisis to hit before taking action. To start, it limits the range of options available to lawmakers and results in ugly policy…”
“Emergency measures are likely to be much more disruptive to the economy and to people's lives. As the Congressional Budget Office wrote last month, ‘Deciding now what policy changes to make to resolve that long-term imbalance would allow for gradual implementation, which would give households, businesses, and state and local governments time to plan and adjust their behavior.’ It's also fairer to spread the policy changes among multiple generations, rather than imposing more drastic measures on a future generation.”
“How can anyone take President Obama seriously when he tells us our national debt is no big deal? Well, we have to take him seriously, because, unserious thinking or not, he has serious power, including the power to obstruct progress on reducing the debt.”
“The enormity of our annual interest payments on the debt alone renders Obama's dismissiveness about the debt surreal.”
“House Speaker John Boehner framed the problem quite accurately when he summarized the parties' respective positions. ‘Republicans want to balance the budget. The president doesn't,’ said Boehner. ‘Republicans want to solve our long-term debt problem. The president doesn't. We want to unlock our energy resources to put more Americans back to work. The president doesn't.’”
“Republicans need to launch a 24/7 public campaign blitz explaining Paul Ryan's new budget, which is based on real and specific numbers and proposes to balance the budget in 10 years and make structural changes to our entitlement programs to put them on a sustainable path.
“Democrats and liberal journalists are already out in force, savaging Ryan and the other Republicans -- again -- for their good faith effort to save the nation from a Grecian-style bankruptcy.
“I am convinced that if the Republicans will strike back with as much fervor as Obama constantly hits them and take their winning case to the people, the people will finally learn the truth: that Ryan's plan would not throw seniors or the poor under the bus and is, in fact, their best chance for the future and certainly the best hope currently on the table to restore America's solvency.”
“President Barack Obama on Monday nominated Tom Perez, head of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, as labor secretary - a job that would give him a key role in the administration's efforts to raise the minimum wage and reform immigration laws.”
“Obama urged the Senate to confirm Perez quickly. He said he would be an integral part of his economic team as the administration works with Congress to try to overhaul immigration laws to give the country's 11 million illegal immigrants a pathway to citizenship.”
“Republican Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama called Perez ‘the wrong man for this job’ and criticized him for being too aggressive helping undocumented immigrants find work as part of an advocacy group called Casa de Maryland.”
“Senator David Vitter, a Republican from Louisiana, said he would block Perez's nomination until the Justice Department answered questions about enforcement of the National Voter Registration Act in his state.
“Charles Grassley of Iowa, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he was concerned about Perez's role in persuading the city of St. Paul, Minnesota, to withdraw a Fair Housing Act case from the U.S. Supreme Court last year.”
“No matter what progress Republicans may make in electoral politics over the coming years, it will be difficult to roll back the steady march of liberalism that has taken place inside our cultural, bureaucratic and legal institutions -- from academia to regulatory agencies to the Department of Justice -- but we have to try.”
“Radical liberals are characteristically activists, strategists and organizers. Their plan to infiltrate and dominate academia was hardly spontaneous, and its effects have hardly been sporadic… The same phenomenon occurs throughout the nation's regulatory bureaucracies. Liberals have managed to place so many ideologically charged people inside powerful administrative agencies, such as the Environmental Protection Agency, that these institutions tend to be radicalized from the bottom up.”
“They don't have the same reverence for the Constitution and the rule of law as conservatives. They view things through an ideological prism and act in deference to their ideology and their political ends more than their conservative counterparts. They see themselves as activist agents for change, as crusaders with the lofty goal of advancing an agenda so morally superior that they don't think twice about bending and twisting rules and selectively interpreting laws and regulations to serve their agenda.”
“We have to do a better job of exposing radicals and preventing them from overthrowing our constitutional guarantees from inside our government…”
“He’s done it with a package of tools, some of which date to George Washington and some invented in the modern era of an increasingly powerful presidency. And he’s done it with a frequency that belies his original campaign criticisms of predecessor George W. Bush, invites criticisms that he’s bypassing the checks and balances of Congress and the courts, and whets the appetite of liberal activists who want him to do even more to advance their goals.”
“Arguably more than any other president in modern history, he’s using executive actions, primarily orders, to bypass or pressure a Congress where the opposition Republicans can block any proposal.”
“Presidents since George Washington have signed executive orders, an oft-overlooked power not explicitly defined in the Constitution. More than half of all executive orders in the nation’s history – nearly 14,000 – have been issued since 1933.”
“Most presidents in recent history generally have issued a few hundred orders, and hundreds more memorandums and directives… But, experts say, Obama’s actions are more noticeable because as a candidate he was critical of Bush’s use of power. In particular, he singled out his predecessor’s use of signing statements, documents issued when a president signs a bill that clarifies his understanding of the law.”
“In his first two years in the White House, when fellow Democrats controlled Capitol Hill, Obama largely worked through the regular legislative process to try to achieve his domestic agenda. His biggest achievements – including a federal health care overhaul and a stimulus package designed to boost the economy –came about with little or no Republican support.
“But Republicans took control of the House of Representatives in 2010, making the task of passing legislation all the more difficult for a man with a detached personality who doesn’t relish schmoozing with lawmakers…”
“’The president looks more and more like a king that the Constitution was designed to replace,’ Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said on the Senate floor last year.”
“The plagiarist with the slow-grow hair plugs and the chipmunk fake teeth and the made-up stories about heroics on the football field who quietly won five student draft deferments during the Vietnam War really did become vice president…”
“[W]underboy Joey, despite his hardscrabble Scranton roots and spectacular work ethic (he did hold an actual job for some 18 months before going on the government dole 43 years ago) will not grow up to be the president of the United States. He’s already tried twice, in 1988 and again in 2008 (the latter after giving voters a full generation to forget why they didn’t like him the first time around).”
“The chatter started right around the time then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton got sick, fell down, bumped her head and disappeared for six weeks… Suddenly, all this talk swirled that Joey was going to run in 2016, you know, pick up the mantle of his mental mentor and try to see if he could top the $10 trillion in debt his boss is on pace to rack up…”
“At 70 years old, the Gaffe Machine won’t have time to wait another 20 years so America can forget all the stupid things he says and does…”
“This week brings more to pile onto the horror that the working-man’s vice president charges rent to the Secret Service to use a cottage adjacent to his waterfront home in Wilmington, Del. He and his entourage spent $460,000 for a single night in London earlier this year. And they spent another $585,000 for a night at a five-star hotel in Paris. The stays came amid the crisis in Washington over the budget.
“What’s more, he flies to Delaware nearly every weekend — first from his taxpayer-funded home in Washington on a chopper to an Air Force base, then on Air Force Two. The weekly jaunts have cost Americans more than $4 million so far (according to an article on the Newsmax website).”
Storified by Brian Empric· Sun, Mar 17 2013 08:26:26
FromSowell's columns:
"A hundred years ago, the factthat people from different racial backgrounds had very different rates ofsuccess in education, in the economy and in other endeavors, was taken as proofthat some races were genetically superior to others.
"Some races were considered to be so genetically inferior that eugenicswas proposed to reduce their reproduction, and FrancisGalton urged 'the gradual extinction of an inferior race.'"
"The leading crusaders fortheories of genetic superiority and inferiority were iconic figures on theleft, on both sides of the Atlantic."John Maynard Keynes helped create the CambridgeEugenics Society. Fabian socialist intellectuals H.G.Wells and George Bernard Shaw were among many other leftistsupporters of eugenics.
"It was much the same story on this side of the Atlantic. President WoodrowWilson, like many other Progressives, was solidly behind notions ofracial superiority and inferiority. He showed the movie 'Birth of aNation,' glorifying the Ku Klux Klan, at the White House, andinvited various dignitaries to view it with him."
"Now, instead of genes beingthe overriding reason for differences in outcomes, racism became theone-size-fits-all explanation. But the dogmatism was the same. Those who daredto disagree, or even to question the prevailing dogma in either era weredismissed -- as 'sentimentalists' in the Progressive era and as 'racists' inthe multicultural era."
"Among the many reasons for different levels of achievement is somethingas simple as age. The median age in Germany and Japan is over 40, while the medianage in Afghanistan and Yemen is under 20. Even if the people in all four ofthese countries had the same mental potential, the same history, the sameculture -- and the countries themselves had the same geographic features -- thefact that people in some countries have 20 years more experience than people inother countries would still be enough to make equal economic and other outcomesvirtually impossible.""Once we recognize that large differences in achievement among races,nations and civilizations have been the rule, not the exception, throughoutrecorded history, there is at least some hope of rational thought -- andperhaps even some constructive efforts to help everyone advance.""History has many dramatic examples of the rise and fall of peoples andnations, for a wide range of known and unknown reasons. What history does nothave is what is so often assumed as a norm today, equality of groupachievements at a given point in time.""[T]oday we have bean counters in Washington turning out statistics thatare solemnly presented in courts of law to claim that, if the numbers are notmore or less the same for everybody, that proves that somebody did somebodyelse wrong.""The desire of intellectuals for some grand theory that will explain complexpatterns with some solitary and simple factor has produced many ideas that donot stand up under scrutiny, but which have nevertheless had widespreadacceptance -- and sometimes catastrophic consequences -- in countries aroundthe world."The theory of genetic determinism which dominated the early 20th centuryled to many harmful consequences, ranging from racial segregation anddiscrimination up to and including the Holocaust. The currently prevailingtheory is that malice of one sort or another explains group differences inoutcomes...""Groups that lag behind have often blamed their lags on wrong-doing bygroups that are more successful. Since sainthood is not common in any branch ofthe human race, there is seldom a lack of sins to cite, including haughtinessby those who happen to be on top for the moment. But the real question iswhether these sins -- real or imagined -- are actually the reason for differentlevels of achievement.
"Intellectuals, whom we might expect to counter mass hysteria with rationalanalysis, have all too often been in the vanguard of those promoting envy andresentment of the successful."
"Both the intellectuals' theoryof genetic determinism as the reason for group differences in outcomes andtheir opposite theory of discrimination as the reason have created racial andethnic polarization. So has the idea that it must be one or the other.
"The false dichotomy that it must be one or the other leaves moresuccessful groups with a choice between arrogance and guilt. It leaves lesssuccessful groups with the choice of believing that they are inherentlyinferior for all time or else that they are victims of the unconscionablemalice of others."
"Among the many irrational ideas about racial and ethnic groups that havepolarized societies over the centuries and around the world, few have been moreirrational and counterproductive than the current dogmas ofmulticulturalism.""Multiculturalism is a tempting quick fix for groups that lag by simplypronouncing their cultures to be equal, or 'equally valid,' in some vague andlofty sense. Cultural features are just different, not better or worse,according to this dogma.""In other words, members of minority groups that lag educationally,economically or otherwise are to continue to behave in the future as they havein the past -- and, if they do not get the same outcomes as others, it issociety's fault. That is the bottom line message of multiculturalism.""[I]ntellectuals see themselves as friends, allies and defenders of racialminorities, even as they paint them into a corner of cultural stagnation. Thisallows the intelligentsia to flatter themselves that they are on the side ofthe angels against the forces of evil that are conspiring to keep minoritiesdown.""Multiculturalism, like the caste system, paints people into the cornerwhere they happened to have been born... Multiculturalism not only serves theego interests of intellectuals, it serves the political interests of electedofficials, who have every incentive to promote a sense of victimhood, and evenparanoia, among groups whose votes they want, in exchange for both material andpsychic support.""The biggest losers in all this are those members of racial minorities whoallow themselves to be led into the blind alley of resentment and rage, evenwhen there are broad avenues of opportunity available. And we all lose whensociety is polarized."
Storified by Brian Empric· Wed, Mar 06 2013 19:58:04
“There’s debt denial and debt denial denial, but there is one wave of liberal truth-telling sweeping the land. We are increasingly hearing admissions that paying for the promises the federal government has made will require higher taxes on everyone, not just the rich.”
“[L]iberals who don’t need votes from the American people are still allowed to do math. To pay for the social programs they want, they will ultimately need more tax revenue from the middle class as well as high earners.”
“Since the 1980s, the two parties have had a tacit agreement. We get the Republicans’ tax rates in exchange for the Democrats’ spending programs. There were some upward adjustments of the top rates under George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton in the early ’90s and in the fiscal cliff deal at the end of last year, but this has basically held. The price has been chronic deficits… Now those deficits are becoming unsustainable and the major entitlement programs will soon be in the red.”
“The plain fact is that big government has actually limited the political options available to the American people, leaving them with only unpleasant options. But at least we can be honest that the bill is about to come due.”
“Using GAAP-based accrual accounting, though, as typically used by private corporations, the government’s day-to-day operations were shown to have suffered a shortfall of $1.3 trillion, with an additional $5.3 trillion shortfall in the year-to-year increase of unfunded liabilities in social programs, such as in Medicare and Social Security…”
“Based on the same official GAAP numbers, the federal government’s total obligations as of September 30, 2012, stood at $85.4 trillion…”
“Suggestions that somehow the total GDP can cover the government’s deficit, debt and obligations problems are nonsense. With decades of practice and fine-tuning, the U.S. government has reached the practical limits of the net cash it can siphon out of the income-producing private sector. The system has reached that delicate balance, where the government’s raising taxes actually reduces the government’s cash receipts, where higher taxes reduce economic activity enough to reduce tax revenues.”
“Often, before a large company goes bankrupt, creditors can see the financial collapse coming and tighten up on credit, freeze credit, or move to collect a debt while there still may be time. The same thing happens at the level of sovereign states, and the global financial markets increasingly have indicated waning patience for the United States to address its longer-range solvency issues.”
“With limited tax-raising options, massive spending cuts have to be put in place and the social programs recast so as to be solvent, if there is to be any hope of restoring long-term solvency for the United States government… There is no political will apparent among those currently controlling the White House and Congress to do so.”
“In the nearly four years since Senate Democrats last passed a budget (on 4/29/2009), government spending has driven our national debt up past $16 trillion (and rising). That’s more than $52,000 for every man, woman, and child.”
“While our debt continues to grow, President Obama and Senate Democrats are demanding more tax hikes to fuel more ‘stimulus-style spending. That’s why Speaker John Boehner says we don’t need higher taxes – ‘It’s time to focus on the real problem here in Washington, and that is spending.’”
“The search for an elusive grand bargain — more taxes, fewer benefits — may be blinding us to the potential for incremental progress. The two parties fundamentally disagree over the future of our welfare state, but there may be space for common ground.”
“Both sides should agree at least to spend less money on the wealthy — via means testing. It may surprise some Americans to learn that the United States spends quite a lot on the affluent, especially through the entitlement programs at the heart of the budget fight: Social Security and Medicare… Means-testing — allocating benefits according to need — might offer both sides a way out.”
“First, give less to the wealthy rather than take more from them… Second, assess wealth based on lifetime earnings rather than on income or assets… Basing benefits on lifetime earnings… would encourage saving over time, would be far more difficult to game and, provided it was based on pre-retirement earnings, would not discourage older Americans who are able to work from continuing to do so.”
“Some on the left might complain that curtailing our entitlement programs’ universal character would undermine their social purpose and political support. But targeting benefits to those who most need them is surely better than reducing payments to providers (many of whom will drop out of Medicare), as President Obama’s 2010 law does. Some on the right might complain that such reforms would punish success. But surely rewarding achievement with government aid is no one’s idea of conservatism.”
“Liberalism has its advantages. It puts government in the driver’s seat and encourages the creation of more and more government programs that sound good and seem nice. Who could be against them?”
“If programs lifted from the liberal book of dreams are enacted, Obama and his allies will be thrilled. If conservatives—congressional Republicans in this case—block those programs, that’s fine too. Democrats can exploit GOP opposition to winsome new programs to recapture the House in 2014 and transform Washington into a liberal juggernaut for the president’s final two years.
“If you think this tactic cannot work, think again. We’ve just seen it work brilliantly in Obama’s reelection campaign. The election was less a referendum on Obama’s first term—the norm for reelections—and more a negative verdict on Mitt Romney, the challenger. The Obama team cast Romney as a heartless corporate buccaneer and made him the centerpiece of its campaign…”
“In effect, (Obama)’s accepted a slow growth, high unemployment, high tax, large debt economy, but he can’t acknowledge it for obvious reasons… Nor can he turn to the most effective tools for stirring economic growth and job creation—that is, cutting tax rates on individual income and capital gains and reducing government spending. He just raised rates on income and capital gains and wants to increase spending. Besides, Obama is loath to unleash the private sector to boost the economy. That way, government loses control.”
“For Republicans, the response may be easier than they think. It’s simple: Forget the politics and do what’s right. Obama thinks the public loves government programs and wants more, whatever the cost. If he’s right, Republicans are doomed regardless of what they do politically. If he’s wrong, a Republican comeback is slouching toward Washington.”
“Americans need to understand that Mr. Obama is threatening that if he doesn't get what he wants, he's ready to inflict maximum pain on everybody else. He won't force government agencies to shave spending on travel and conferences and excessive pay and staffing. He won't demand that agencies cut the lowest priority spending as any half-competent middle manager would… It's the old ploy to stir public support for all government spending by shutting down vital services first.”
“Mr. Obama just whacked the economy with a roughly $160 billion tax increase in 2013 that he says will do no harm, but he wants us to believe that $85 billion in spending cuts will trigger a recession… Mr. Obama has taken government spending from 21% to 24% of GDP, yet we've had the weakest economic recovery in three generations.”
“For 30 years bipartisan tax reform has meant lowering tax rates in return for closing loopholes. But having already raised rates, Mr. Obama now wants fewer loopholes for those he dislikes while keeping the higher rates. This is nothing but a grab for more revenue so he and Democrats can keep spending.”
“If Mr. Obama really wants to eliminate the sequester, Republicans are ready to negotiate. But if he won't drop his tax increase and negotiate in good faith, as he hasn't during his Presidency, then the sequester is the only way that any spending is going to be cut. The economy will be better for it.”
“The major objection most Republicans have to the coming sequestration budget cuts is that the cuts will fall disproportionately on the Department of Defense. That’s true; defense spending is about one-fifth of the federal budget but will take about half of the sequester cuts.
“But even for the Pentagon, the cuts are only to the rate of growth for the defense budget in coming years. They are not actual cuts that make spending decline…”
“[A]ssume that U.S. involvement in the war in Afghanistan does end in the next year or so, and that war spending goes down or even disappears altogether. Even in that scenario, defense spending is scheduled to increase in every year except one, even with sequestration cuts…”
Bob Woodward notes that during the campaign last fall Obama blamed Republicans in Congress for proposing and then insisting upon the sequester; however, Woodward’s reporting in his book “The Price of Politics” showed that the sequester was initiated by Jack Lew and Rob Nabors in the White House.
“What is the non-budget wonk to make of this? Who is responsible? What really happened?”
“Obama personally approved of the plan for Lew and Nabors to propose the sequester to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). They did so at 2:30 p.m. July 27, 2011, according to interviews with two senior White House aides who were directly involved.”
“A majority of Republicans did vote for the Budget Control Act that summer, which included the sequester. Key Republican staffers said they didn’t even initially know what a sequester was — because the concept stemmed from the budget wars of the 1980s, when they were not in government.”
“Why does this matter? … First, months of White House dissembling further eroded any semblance of trust between Obama and congressional Republicans… Second, Lew testified during his confirmation hearing that the Republicans would not go along with new revenue in the portion of the deficit-reduction plan that became the sequester…”
“In fact, the final deal reached between Vice President Biden and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) in 2011 included an agreement that there would be no tax increases in the sequester in exchange for what the president was insisting on: an agreement that the nation’s debt ceiling would be increased for 18 months, so Obama would not have to go through another such negotiation in 2012, when he was running for reelection.
“So when the president asks that a substitute for the sequester include not just spending cuts but also new revenue, he is moving the goal posts…”
“And when the Republicans opened the seventh seal of the sequester, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black and the stars fell unto the Earth; and our nation's ability to forecast severe weather, such as drought events, hurricanes and tornados, was seriously undermined. Lo, and the children were not vaccinated, and all the beasts starved in the zoos, and the planes were grounded.”
“But if any of these cataclysms do come to pass, then they will be mostly Mr. Obama's own creation. The truth is that the sequester already gives the White House the legal flexibility to avoid doom, if a 5% cut to programs that have increased more than 17% on average over the Obama Presidency counts as doom.”
“This White House has never been fussy when a statutory text or even the Constitution interferes with its political ambitions. (See ObamaCare, immigration executive orders, recess appointments and much else.) Could it be that Mr. Obama is exaggerating the legal stringency of the sequester in a gambit to force Congress to shut it off?”
“If air traffic control and airport security really are the models of government efficiency that anyone who has ever traveled knows they are not, perhaps Homeland Security could begin by targeting some of the programs identified by Oklahoma Republican Tom Coburn this week. These include necessities such as grants for a security conference in San Diego that featured ‘zombie apocalypse training’ or funds for towns like Keene, New Hampshire (pop. 23,000) to purchase armored tank-like vehicles called Bearcats. Seriously.
“Before furloughing park rangers, maybe start with the 10% of the 75,000 Department of the Interior employees who are conserving the wilderness of Washington, D.C. Before slashing cancer research, stop funding the $130-million-a-year National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine that studies herbs and yoga. Cut after-school funding only after consolidating the 105 federal programs meant to encourage kids to take math and science classes.”
See also: AMERICA'S GROWTH CORRIDORS: The Key to National Revival
“Overall, these corridors account for 45% of the nation's land mass and 30% of its population. Between 2001 and 2011, job growth in the Great Plains, the Intermountain West and the Third Coast was between 7% and 8%—nearly 10 times the job growth rate for the rest of the country. Only the Southeastern industrial belt tracked close to the national average.”
“Energy, manufacturing and agriculture are playing a major role in the corridor states' revival. The resurgence of fossil fuel–based energy, notably shale oil and natural gas, is especially important…”
“Since 2000, the Intermountain West's population has grown by 20%, the Third Coast's by 14%, the long-depopulating Great Plains by over 14%, and the Southeast by 13%. Population in the rest of the U.S. has grown barely 7%...”
“The corridors' growing success is a testament to the resiliency and adaptability of the American economy. It also challenges the established coastal states and cities to reconsider their current high-tax, high-regulation climates if they would like to join the growth party.”
“A display case in the lobby of the Federal Reserve Bank (in Richmond, VA) might express humility. The case holds a 99.9 percent pure gold bar weighing 401.75 troy ounces. Minted in 1952, when the price of gold was $35 an ounce, the bar was worth about $14,000. In 1978, when this bank acquired the bar, the average price of gold was $193.40 an ounce and the bar was worth about $78,000. Today, with gold selling for around $1,600 an ounce, it is worth about $642,800. If the Federal Reserve’s primary mission is to preserve the currency as a store of value, displaying the gold bar is an almost droll declaration: ‘Mission unaccomplished.’”
“The Fed failed to cure the (Great Depression), and today’s unprecedentedly anemic recovery — approximately 3 million fewer people are working than were five years ago — has failed to cure the (Great Recession): If the workforce participation rate were as high as it was when Barack Obama was first inaugurated, the unemployment rate would be 10.8 percent.”
“Will Rogers said, ‘Be thankful we’re not getting all the government we’re paying for.’ Today we are not paying for all the government we are getting, and the political class benefiting from this practice should be thankful for the Fed’s low interest rate policy, which makes running deficits inexpensive. In addition to making big government cheap, this causes a flight of investors from interest-paying assets into equities — the rising stock market primarily benefits the wealthy — and commodities, rather than job-creating investments.
“Fed policy, which has failed so far, can also fail by succeeding. If strong economic growth begins, interest rates will rise substantially, and the cost of debt service will cause the deficit to explode.”
Storified by Brian Empric· Fri, Feb 15 2013 17:55:40
