Little progress can be made by merely attempting to repress what is evil; our great hope lies in developing what is good.
Calvin Coolidge
The Super Committee Fails:
It Never Had a Chance
Democrats to Blame: Thumbs DOWN!
This is not a partisan blog. When I finally split as a conservative Democrat from the Democratic Party in protest to the unconscionable Senate rejection of the Robert Bork SCOTUS nomination, I joined the Republican Party, but not as a Ronald Reagan recruit (although, like Reagan, I migrated from the other party). I was a sharp critic of both President Reagan and the Democratic-controlled Congress for fiscal irresponsibility.
I have been a registered Republican, but I have never worked for or contributed to the party; I have been a critic of politicians from both parties. If you've read my detailed commentaries, my views are closer to Ron Paul; for example, while most of the candidates have been discussing maybe doing away with the Education Department, I called for eliminating several Cabinet positions, independently of Ron Paul; we've talked about reductions in the federal payroll. We think that the US's foreign policies are unsustainable, and there are no sacred cows in cutting spending. Where do I differ from Ron Paul and why don't I support him now? I'm more of a pragmatic libertarian-conservative. Readers may disagree, but whereas I'm a persistent critic, say, of Obama, I think Ron Paul likes being provocative and is more strident. Ron Paul also lacks an administrative track record.
The failure of talks here rests entirely with the Democrats, and it starts at the top with Barack Obama. I knew as soon as I heard the selections of the super committee, especially the Democrats, the committee would fail. Keep in mind over 2 years into the "Obama recovery" we are spending 40 cents on the federal spending dollar we don't have. Obama has never made any substantive attempt to reduce short-term spending; he's constantly refused to release unallocated spending authority. When he restricted things like pay hikes, it's been limited to a few political appointees, not the vast percentage of federal employees with six-figure compensation (factoring in unsustainable benefit packages).
Keep in mind in terms of the budget deal we were talking about $1.2T over 10 years. This amounts to $120B dollars a year: this is in response to projected TRILLION DOLLAR ANNUAL DEFICITS. We are ALREADY at our credit limit--even if somehow we miraculously added not a single additional dollar to the national debt. The amount of the expired Bush tax cuts for higher-income people amounts to roughly $70B dollars a year, of and by itself. The overall Bush tax cuts are roughly 4 times that.
Barack Obama did not endorse the recommendations of his own bipartisan deficit reduction committee. He ignored the Gang of 6 suggestions. He's suggested maybe gradually stretching out the retirement age--several years from now. He hasn't done things like zero-based budgeting, lowering program eligibility or cutting benefits.
In fact, consider this sample current news item:
ObamaCare is rapidly increasing medical costs. For example, under Obama care there are appointed committees that determine which medical procedures will be paid for and how much will be paid. Recently, the first of these committees ruled insurance plans must pay for birth control without charging a deductible. If insurance must pay the costs, the money must come from premiums, which increased 9 percent in the past year per CNBC. This is just the first ruling from the first committee.The federal government should NEVER subsidize the ordinary expenses of citizens' sex lives. (Whether the money is directly from the government or required by the government is conceptually irrelevant: money is fungible. The mandated benefit is an indirect form of taxation.)
What is absolutely a ludicrous Democrat talking point not questioned by the national media is that the failure of the talks is due to the "Tea Party". The Democrats have been talking about short-term revenue increases WITHOUT short-term spending cuts. At all. They have been stonewalling, despite spending roughly 24% of GDP, nearly 5 points above the historical level of federal spending since 1950 or so. We aren't hearing any substantive approaches, say, to cap transfer payments, to privatize non-core government functions, to raise funds by asset sales, to freeze government projects, to implement hiring freezes, to fix collective bargaining abuses, etc. The Democrats are talking about raising taxes--which WOULD STUNT ECONOMIC GROWTH, the exact opposite of what you should do in a struggling economy. This is sort of like an employee going to his boss and saying, "You need to pay me more because I'm spending more than I make." It's absolutely insane: what the boss can pay reflects your contribution to business revenues and profits. He or she has no control over how foolishly you spend your own money. Likewise, businesses have no control over how Obama fritters away their tax payments on things like the ideologically-driven Solyndra financing. The idea that they should effectively have their costs increased by tax hikes so Obama can find other ineffective ways of wasting THEIR, not HIS money, is ludicrous. (HE didn't earn that money: THEY did.)
What we have here is a clear (once again) failure of "leadership" under Barack Obama. No wonder Democratic pollsters Pat Caddell and Doug Schoen publicly called on Obama to withdraw from the 2012 race to make way for Hillary Clinton. (If they were serious, they would pick one of the Blue Dog Democrats--Clinton is just as ideological as Obama and unacceptable for any true independent or moderate.)
There were a lot of ways to close a $120B gap. Yet the Democrats rejected one constructive plan after another, including Senator Toomey's (R-PA) offer to put $300B of new revenues (e.g., by limiting various credits, exclusions, etc by higher-income entities) on the table, meaning $3 cuts/$1 taxes to close the gap. Toomey is one of the most conservative GOP legislators out there. So this nonsense about a Norquist veto must be rejected; the Democrats failed to be constructive and stonewalled an agreement for political reasons--the politically courageous step of actually having to cut spending, which will invariably draw protests from some special interest group.
New Romney Ad: Thumbs UP!
NOTE: I have not yet endorsed Mitt Romney (stay tuned), but let me point out that I called for McCain to dump Sarah Palin from the ticket in favor of Mitt Romney in my 9/28/08 post. The post didn't focus so much as why I wanted Romney, but there were reasons why I picked him over other prospective replacements, like Tim Pawlenty, Mike Huckabee and others: "Given this time of financial crisis, Romney is the perfect choice, and this would be very acceptable with many conservatives." In other words, I felt his superior knowledge of and private sector experience with business and economics and public sector administrative experience would perfectly complement McCain's strength on national defense and foreign policy. In fact, I'm convinced that if the economic tsunami had occurred before or during the competitive phase of the GOP Presidential campaign, Mitt Romney would likely have won the nomination.
Could Mitt Romney have beaten Obama or Hillary Clinton in 2008? Not by polls taken earlier in the year, this was a change election year with a highly unpopular GOP incumbent President, and Democrats as the social safety net party had a huge advantage with voters worried about their economic security. I would simply say this in terms of how I might have approached the election in his place: I would have preempted predictable fear-mongering by Democrats suggesting the GOP would renege on commitments to poor people and senior citizens during an economic downturn; I would have distanced myself from George Bush: if Obama could claim credit for votes he never made before becoming US Senator (i.e., authorization of the liberation of Iraq), surely I wouldn't have had to accept responsibility for supporting open-ended nation building commitments, Bush's inadequate use of veto powers and his miserable record on federal spending and deficits (I would have especially hit Obama on supporting funding for the Bridge to Nowhere, part of the collusion of senators to grab their "fair share" of their grandchildren's tax money), and his responsibility in unfunded Medicare benefit expansions. I think some Republicans would have been furious at Romney attacking Bush, but it would be the best way to position himself with centrists deciding the election.
Why am I presenting a campaign video here? Primarily because the Democrats are furious about an excerpt from a 2008 Obama stump speech which they consider taken out of context (a similar charge made when Perry recently clipped an "Americans are lazy" statement, which came from an incompetent Obama talking point that the reasons foreign companies weren't investing in American plants because government officials and business executives didn't talk up the advantages of expanding in America. My response was the core problem with the invest in America pitch had to do with unacceptably high business tax and regulatory burden.). The questioned clip is at roughly 20 seconds into the ad: Obama is putting himself in the shoes of John McCain and talks in the first person (paraphrased), "I'm doing okay so long as I don't have to talk about the economy and jobs."
The fact of the matter is that independent economists declared that the recession was over by June 2009, just 5 months after Obama took office. After passing an ineffectual massive stimulus bill (largely ignoring the business spending portion of the economy), except for brief grandstanding over massive new extensions of unemployment benefits, the Democratic-controlled Congress and President turned their attention to things like climate change, health care and financial reform legislation, exacerbating regulatory burden on businesses and deferring discussion of expiring Bush taxes until after the mid-terms. All the while (and up to the present), Obama has constantly shirked responsibility, pathetically and constantly blaming the Bush Administration for the economic tsunami, a real estate bubble which started in the Clinton Administration (I know: when I moved to the Santa Clara area in 1999 and rented a small one-bedroom apartment at more than the average rent for a 2-bedroom nation wide, small houses were selling at half a million dollars, more than twice the price of much nicer houses of relatives in Texas). The Bush Administration was not responsible for Fed easy money policies or in the expansion of GSE's using cheap government-backed financing to gain a dominant position in the market, exposing taxpayers to huge risks. The real estate market has cycles; it was inevitable that there was a correction.
The point is, if you can't take the heat, stay out of the kitchen. Grow a pair and take responsibility for the job you ran for. Much has been made about the huge drops in jobs that occurred in the 3 months before President-elect Obama took office. The Democrats conveniently overlook the fact that job losses accelerated AFTER Obama's election. I would submit that any fair-minded person would hold Obama responsible for any job losses AFTER the election, period, because businesses were factoring the election into business decisions like staffing, not the policies of a lame-duck President. The indisputable fact is that there was a concern about business prospects AFTER a President and Congress were elected on a decidedly anti-business platform.
The fact of the matter is that Democrats took control of the Congress in 2007, long before the recession started that December. Bush had very little control over policy beyond the power of the veto. In what view is Bush responsible for the real estate crash? The banks are regulated by states as well as the federal government. Bush was, in fact, pushing to more tightly regulate the GSE's after the accounting scandals, rejected by a bipartisan (mostly Democratic) opposition. But I agree that both Democrats and Bush took credit for the historically high ratio of home ownership, and they should share responsibility. But "eight years of failed policy" is a knowing, deliberate distortion based on mere partisan rhetoric. A vacuous slogan is no rationale for the fact that once in power, Obama and the rest of his legislative Democratic cronies couldn't come up with any answer beyond unsustainable tax, spend, and regulate policies.
"My administration has a job to do as well. That job is to get this economy back on its feet. That’s my job, and it’s a job I gladly accept. I love these folks who helped get us in this mess and then suddenly say, “Well this is Obama’s economy.” That’s fine. GIVE IT TO ME. My job is to solve problems, not to stand on the sidelines and carp and gripe. So, I welcome the job. I want the responsibility." POTUS Obama, 7/14/09
Political Humor
"Energy Secretary Stephen Chu testified before Congress yesterday that he thought it was a good idea to lend $535 million of our tax dollars to the solar panel company Solyndra right before they went bankrupt. If he'd taken all of that money, put it in a big pile and set it on fire, it would have produced more energy than Solyndra." - Jay Leno
[Stephen Chu has a Nobel Prize in Physics, and Barack Obama has a Nobel Peace Prize. Unfortunately, neither has a bachelor's degree in accounting or finance.]
"I read that Texas Gov. Rick Perry has challenged Nancy Pelosi to a debate. Yeah, Perry got the idea when he was like, 'I can’t remember. Am I good or bad at debates?'" - Jimmy Fallon
[Perry said to Pelosi, "You need to debate me so the voters can find out what we're made of."]
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups
Boston, "We're Ready"
