Quote of the Day
Principle -- particularly moral principle -- can never be a weathervane, spinning around this way and that with the shifting winds of expediency. Moral principle is a compass forever fixed and forever true.
Edward R. Lyman
Obama's Partisan Address from the White House: THUMBS DOWN!
Speaker John Boehner's Response: The Best Response Ever: THUMBS UP!
TRUE LEADERSHIP is in the House, NOT in the White House
"Balanced approach"? "Fair share"? "Compromise?" It isn't enough that the Demagogue in Chief has attempted to disingenuously co-opt the phrase "shared sacrifice". I could literally go through every freaking sentence of his address, which, once again, providing incontrovertibly demeaning the office of the Presidency by using the time not to unify the country, but to try to convince independents and moderates his approach was "centrist". In fact, he deliberately resurrected a divisive class warfare theme and cynically and explicitly tried to attack Republicans with a "divide-and-conquer" strategy aiming at House Republicans.
Where do you start? How about the perennial Bush bashing (once again) where Obama attempted to argue that the Republicans and Democrats were equally at fault when it comes to the deficit? I am not a GOP shill here because I am critical of the years under Bush; he added a prescription drug benefit to Medicare which already had large unfunded liabilities, and he almost never threatened vetoes over spending with earmarks for things like the Bridge to Nowhere (or its functional equivalent in Alaska). I do give him credit for attempting to address unfunded liabilities for social security early after his reelection.
But let's be clear: deficits were projected after the Clinton tax increases in the mid-90's. The Democratic-controlled House had not balanced its budget in decades. Clinton wanted to spend more than the GOP House allowed; the GOP also had been the heavy lifters in quashing Clinton's health care initiative. The GOP achieved a string of consecutive surplus years.
What have we seen starting with the Bush Administration? Despite experiencing the aftershocks of the 2000 stock market meltdown, 9/11, the Wall Street scandals (Enron, Tyco, etc.), and, of course, the 2008 economic tsunami, Bush over 8 years added roughly $5T to the national debt. Obama, over 2.5 years, less than a third of Bush's tenure, has already added $4T. He's had 3 consecutive years of $1.3T or more deficits. One can argue that a third of the first year could be attributed to Bush, but that's an unfair allocation because it assumes that decisions made under a majority Democratic Congress, deferred until after Bush left office, should be allocated to Bush. In fact, a significant factor in the housing bubble was Democratic legislation promoting home ownership at the expense of risk-based factors and the Democratic-championed GSE's (Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae) which dominated the housing markets using implicit government guarantees. I do agree that Bush and some Republicans allied with the Democrats in responsibility for dysfunctional government policies aiding and abetting the housing bubble.
But the fact of the matter is that Obama's own budget estimates showed at least a trillion dollars deficit a year for the indefinite future. And this is assuming that the doubtful cost savings in Medicare, the same types of cuts which have required infamous so-called "doc fixes".
So last year we spent almost $200B in interest expense--with what I regard an artificially low interest rate. This is given federal receipts of just over $2.1T. This is a ticking time bomb. So what happened last year after his own bipartisan commission came up with a plan which won all but 1 vote from Senators on the panel? Nothing. It has been business as usual. Nothing but accounting gimmicks and dubious and deferred cuts, no substantive cuts in any domestic program of the kind of hard choices we've been seeing at the state and local level. While Medicare's trust fund will be exhausted in just a few years, we are only hearing about things like a possible phased-in deferred age eligibility and dubious cuts to providers. In the meanwhile, while running $1.3T deficits, Nancy Pelosi and others are bragging about "free" health care program benefit mandates and doughnut fills.
What did we hear from Obama tonight? The same garbage about $170B or so add-ons (war spending and upper-income differential top bracket percentage). Never mind the Democrats have doubled or tripled the deficit subject to the same tax rates, subject to the same loopholes, etc. Never mind the fact that Obama and Democrats have added many of the loopholes with their crony incentives to green energy and the private jet incentives that Obama outrageously attempts to link to the GOP.
And then the address was full of the same old same old talking points. He talks about the loopholes, but even the increased projected increased tax revenues amount to roughly $80B a year over the coming decade. $80B vs. $1.3T? As McEnroe would say, "You can't be serious."
So, Mr. "President", where are your cuts? You want to continue the payroll partial tax holiday? Did you mind, with your "integrity", telling the American people there's no such thing as a free lunch? [Of course not.] That payroll partial tax holiday actually adds to relevant unfunded liabilities.
You claim that your "balanced" approach resolves the problem, but you offered no such solution when you asked for an increase in the debt ceiling, without cuts or tax hikes, earlier this year. Economic growth is slowing, and your "solution" is to tax job creators even more? This is CRAP. You are trying to add back the one compromise you've made during your Presidency on the Bush tax cuts last December--right when Boehner was ready to sign off on tax reform, claiming the only people paying over a third of their incremental income in taxes aren't paying their fair share--never mind half of lower/middle-class workers don't pay a single cent towards government operations and in fact a large number are net beneficiaries of government money. You are insisting that a default would be a disaster--but you won't accept a bridge agreement unless it's past next year's election.
And raising Ronald Reagan's name in trying to suggest Obama's approach is similar? Exactly what are you offering of substance, you hypocrite? After tax reform around 1986, the top tax bracket was around 28% versus 35% today? That's right: the same Democratic House that agreed to a top 28% tax bracket now insists that it's only fair that we push the top rate to nearly 40%, that higher-income people aren't paying their fair share.
I am sick and tired of a grossly incompetent, partisan President whom seems to think that the Democrats, including the Democratic-majority Senate which hasn't formulated its own budget as demanded by law for the second year running, are the "adults in the room". All we hear about are totally misleading phantom Draconian cuts to domestic programs, we hear the same President whom whacked about $500B out of Medicare funding to fund his "health care reform" argue that the Republicans, facing a $50T unfunded liability in senior citizen entitlements, are balancing the budget on the back of seniors. I MEAN, IS THERE A SINGLE PERSON IN AMERICA STUPID ENOUGH TO TAKE THIS PATHETIC EXCUSE OF A "LEADER" AT FACE VALUE?
America would have to be INSANE to reelect this incompetent demagogue to a second term. A second term of Obama is UNSUSTAINABLE.
Political Humor
Bank of America announced that it lost $9 billion in the second quarter. It’s not good. In fact, when I put my card in the ATM, it said, “Do you mind if I borrow this for a while?” - Jimmy Fallon
[I think Obama finally knows where to find his next Treasury Secretary...]
"Sarah Palin's son Track and his wife are having a baby. They haven't picked a name yet, but they do know it will be a verb." –Conan O'Brien
[Grandma Palin suggests 'Field'.]
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups
ELO, "Calling America". This is my last selection for ELO. My next group will be the Eagles.
