Ireland Vs. Greece (And Obama's America)

This is an excellent observation at Politico:

...if the Obama economic team really believes budget deficits provide “fiscal stimulus” to an economy, why aren’t they advising Greece to run bigger budget deficits?

Though Greek deficits and debts have dominated the news lately, Ireland’s fiscal crisis was widely considered at least as dangerous to the euro late last year. Ireland is in the worst trouble of all the eurozone countries, the International Monetary Fund then reported. Ireland’s budget deficit was as large as that of Greece in 2008, and the Irish economy had shrunk 9 percent in 2009.

But we don’t hear much about Ireland today. Why not? Because that country successfully repeated what it had done so boldly in the late 1980s — slash spending on payrolls and benefits, subsidies and transfer payments.

Here's how they did it:

Ireland’s public service salaries, for example, were reduced last year by 5 percent to 15 percent. Unlike Portugal, Ireland did not adopt damaging tax increases. Unlike Greece, which is getting ever deeper in debt to its neighbors by begging for a bailout, Ireland is now lending 1.3 billion euros to Greece.

On the other hand...

The Greek national debt amounts to 125 percent of the economy’s annual gross domestic product, compared with 60 percent for U.S. debt.

Were spending to keep rising as it has during the Bush-Obama years, however, the U.S. debt could easily exceed 90 percent of GDP by 2020. At that level, the idea of the U.S. facing a crisis of Greek proportions is no joke.

So, how do we follow in the footsteps of Ireland? It's simple, really (emphasis mine):

That requires making the correct choices sooner rather than later. From the experience of other countries — including Ireland — we know that means getting spending under control, not raising tax rates.

In a study for the National Bureau of Economic Research, Harvard economists Alberto Alesina and Silvia Ardagna examined how 21 leading economies addressed government spending and taxes from 1970 to 2007. When it came to cutting budget deficits, they found that “fiscal adjustments, those based upon spending cuts and no tax increases, are more likely to reduce deficits and debt over GDP ratios than those based upon tax increases. In addition, adjustments on the spending side rather than on the tax side are less likely to create recessions.”

Successful deficit reduction plans — ones that cut the deficit without hurting economic growth — are “completely based on spending cuts accompanied by modest tax cuts,” the authors found. Spending was cut by about 2 percent of GDP, with entitlement reductions accounting for half that.

Ireland, for example, first became a “Celtic tiger” by slashing government spending 6.9 percent from 1987 to 1989. Those spending cuts facilitated the celebrated 12.5 percent tax on corporate profits, plus substantial cuts in rates for personal income taxes, payroll taxes and consumption taxes.

The Irish economy suddenly switched from a 0.2 percent rate of economic growth in the early 1980s to annual real GDP growth of 7.2 percent from 1989 to 2001. It slowed only slightly, to 5.3 percent, from 2002 to 2007. With GDP nearly doubling each decade, the ratio of Ireland’s government debt to GDP dropped from 125 percent of to 25 percent by 2007.

If that's not a roaring economy, I don't know what is!

But what happened in 2008 when the global economy tanked? They hung fast to what brought them out of the hole:

In 2008-09, however, Ireland suffered one of the world’s worst housing and banking crises. But the government nonetheless avoided “fiscal stimulus” schemes. Instead, it cut spending by more than 6 percent.

One important result was to preserve the government’s credit rating. The European Central Bank reports that the yield on 10-year Irish government bonds was 4.76 percent in April, compared with yields for Greece of 7.83 percent — and close to 15 percent at times.

Unlike Greece, the Irish economy is showing encouraging signs of recovery. Manufacturing increased strongly in March and April, and consumer confidence and retail sales are also up.

Bottom line: the Irish formula of spending cuts and tax cuts worked. Every time. Even in the toughest of situations. Unlike everyone else, who spent so much that drunken sailors got envious, and who are still trying to limp their way to anything resembling a genuine recovery. Ireland has the correct answer figured out, and it has nothing to do with their famed luck...just intelligence guided by experience, and willpower to stick to it when it really counts.

Do we?

Not while Barack Obama and the spending-addicts in Congress remain in charge.

There's my two cents.

Cap-N-Trade Tax Update ***UPDATE***

So, the last of the pillars of the radical Leftist takeover -- the energy sector -- is now under assault, with a vote coming in the Senate before too long. We'll get to that in a moment. First, let's recap some of the most wonderful tenets of the enviro-wacko movement that is pushing this energy takeover.

These lovable folks are the very same ones who endorse the enforcement of limits to the number of children any family can have, too. What happens if you accidentally get pregnant with more? Well, don't think too hard about that.

Naturally, Green High Priest Al Gore is so concerned about the rising waters due to the melting ice caps due to *ahem* man-made global warming that he just dropped $9 million on a new vacation home...overlooking the ocean, of course. Never mind the fact that only 1/3 of U.S. meteorologists actually believe that humanity is the cause of global warming. You're also supposed to ignore the fact that this planet is not, in fact, running out of oil, which provides cheap, reliable, and safe energy to everyone. But for those of us who lack a personal fortune with 7 or more digits, the costs of energy legislation like this will be crippling.

Interestingly, one of the primary alternatives to this horrible use of oil is wind power. Aside from the rather obvious fact that the wind doesn't always blow everywhere, people live close to windmills always seem to find them objectionable. Shucks, that's too bad.

The bottom line is that the environmentalist movement has been exposed as a bunch of suckers who've been taken in by a hoax and a lie, and simply refuse to acknowledge reality in their quest to serve their self-appointed cause. In fact, it won't be long until they declare food to be hazardous to your health. Oh wait...they've already done that.

But let's address the current legislation, whether the latest cap-n-tax bill or the EPA regulations being kicked around (they both do essentially the same thing in the end). As with everything these radical Leftists are doing, beware...all is not as it seems. It's a full-blown legislative Trojan horse, in fact:

The basis of the EPA’s regulatory efforts is the agency’s finding that carbon dioxide is a “pollutant” that supposedly “endangers” us by causing global warming. Once the EPA made this unprecedented and unsupported endangerment finding under the Clean Air Act, it put the enormous regulatory machinery of the federal government in gear to generate rules regulating CO2, rules that will damage every aspect of the U.S. economy. Thankfully, substantive legal challenges to the endangerment finding and the rules the EPA is generating have been filed.

One rule the agency has already issued, something known as the tailoring rule, seems, at first glance, different than its economy-stifling kin. The tailoring rule was supposedly designed to exempt smaller CO2 emitters from the new regulations until 2016. While the Clean Air Act itself states that pollutant emissions of 250 tons or more must be regulated, EPA’s tailoring regulation simply contradicts the law, stating that for now the agency will only regulate CO2 sources emitting 50,000 tons or more.

How, you may ask, can a federal agency just overturn a law by regulation? Good question. The reality is that the EPA is well aware that the tailoring regulation contradicts black-letter law; consequently, it knows legal challenges have high prospects for success. So why would an agency like the EPA that has no trouble flexing its regulatory muscles exempt tens of thousands of potential regulatory targets with such a rule? Quite simply, in addition to recognizing the regulation’s tenuous legal grounds, the EPA realizes that as the number of individuals aware of the pending regulatory burden grows, the stronger the backlash against its CO2 rules will be. Crafty bureaucrats also know that the biggest hurdle they now face is beginning the process of regulating CO2 — striking out against our national economy from the regulatory beachhead of the EPA’s very questionable endangerment finding.

The reality is that with or without the tailoring exemption, the Clean Air Act is already festooned with complex and expansive regulatory mechanisms. The EPA’s extension of its grip to CO2 will be another unparalleled regulatory bonanza for this government agency. Once done — like virtually every other federal regulatory effort — the scope of the agency’s CO2 powers will only continue to expand. While a small business, family farm, or ranch might escape the EPA’s direct regulatory burden and a particular permitting process with the tailoring rule (perhaps only temporarily), they will still suffer from this unlawful aggregation of power by a federal agency. At the end of the day, the enormous economic costs of job losses, reduced GDP, and dramatically higher energy prices from the impact of the EPA’s rules will punish all of us.

In fact, if you look objectively at the numbers, it's not only going to drastically increase costs of just about every good or service in the country, it's a proven job-killer. And, amazingly enough, as with all of these massive, unread, undebated, constructed-in-secret, freedom-destroying bills we've seen in the past year and a half, it's also a thinly disguised payoff to liberal Democrat special interests.

Another way to put it would be that it's an egregious power grab, but there's a chance to stop it:

The Senate will vote Thursday on Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski's S.J. Res. 26, which would forestall the EPA's efforts to give itself authority to impose sweeping new regulations on greenhouse gases. U.S. code lays out Congress's power to review new rules promulgated by federal agencies to enforce existing laws. Congress can overturn these rules by issuing a "joint resolution of disapproval."

In the Senate, such resolutions are privileged and thus not subject to filibuster. S.J. Res. 26 already has 41 cosponsors, including three Democrats. A fourth, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D., W.V.) is heavily leaning toward supporting the measure. But even if the resolution gathers enough additional Democratic votes to pass and makes it to the president's desk, the Obama administration announced today that it will likely face a veto.

This latest wrinkle adds a level of boldness to the Executive's blatant attempt to circumvent separation of powers and legislate from the White House. Even if administration can't goad enough Democrats in Congress to yield their constitutional authority to the EPA; even if they cannot pass a version of Kerry-Lieberman, the White House will have its cap-and-trade. One way or another.

Of course, even if that resolution succeeds, the battle is not completely over:

We also shouldn't forget that the Democrats don't need Kerry-Lieberman to get the grab-bag of green subsidies and the new conservation mandates they want. The editors make the case today that the Democrats really don't need Kerry-Lieberman at all: They can pass the Bingaman bill — which contains all the new subsidies and mandates, but lacks cap-and-trade — and just let the EPA do the dirty work of rationing carbon. This is looking increasingly like their default strategy.

And things will be miserable along the way...by design. Remember:

And, keeping in mind the fact that well over half of our nation's energy comes from coal:

The bottom line is that the radical Leftists in charge of the government right now will stop at nothing to gain control over every possible aspect of the nation in order to control as many people as possible. They don't care how badly they damage this nation, how much havoc they wreak, or how miserable they make life for peons like you and me during their greedy quest for power.

The only thing that will truly stop them is to force them out of the positions of authority that will allow them to dictate policy this way. Start by placing a call to your Senators today.

There's my two cents.


Related Reading:
Stopping the EPA's CO2 regulations
Window dressing cap-and-trade won't make the costs go away
Subsidized green jobs still destroy jobs elsewhere


***UPDATE***
The Senate voted Murkowski's bill down, 53-47. Some analysis to keep in mind:

Don’t cry too hard over the vote. For one thing, there was zero chance of it passing the House (although watching purple-district Democrats agonize over whether to vote for it would have been fun) and The One would have vetoed it even if it had. For another thing, consider this a trial run on the viability of cap-and-trade. If Reid can’t get 60 to agree that, yes indeed, carbon is very dangerous, he’s not getting 60 for a much broader regulatory regime like C&T. Nor, given the latest polling from Nevada, will he want to even try. Exit quotation from Dan Foster: “I don’t want to hear a liberal bemoan executive supremacy ever again. This is Congress abdicating its own authority because the Democrats know they can’t get the votes to pass cap-and-trade.”

Unfortunately, this allows the EPA to declare things like dirt and air to be deadly to your existence. Good luck with the coming cost increases...

Documented Proof That The Left Is A Bunch Of Economic Dunces

Veronique de Rugy reports and comments on a WSJ column by Dan Klein:

Which Political Party Understands Economics Best?

That's the question asked by George Mason University's Dan Klein in the Wall Street Journal this morning.

Who is better informed about the policy choices facing the country — liberals, conservatives or libertarians? According to a Zogby International survey that I write about in the May issue of Econ Journal Watch, the answer is unequivocal: The left flunks Econ 101.

Klein's results come from a survey of 4,835 respondents (all American adults) in which he asked them to answer eight survey questions about basic economics and then asked about their political leanings: progressive/very liberal; liberal; moderate; conservative; very conservative; and libertarian.

Read the details here. It's quite amazing. Notice that libertarians rocked this test:

The survey also asked about party affiliation. Those responding Democratic averaged 4.59 incorrect answers. Republicans averaged 1.61 incorrect, and Libertarians 1.26 incorrect.

The WSJ piece is based on research that Klein did a few months ago with his co-author, Columbia University psychologist Zeljka Buturovic. Among other things, they show that thinking like an economist is not correlated to going to college. They also find that it is the highest among those self-identifying as "conservative" and "libertarian," and descends through "moderate," "liberal," and "progressive." Other variables include party affiliation, religious participation, union membership, NASCAR fandom, and Walmart patronage. Their results were originally published here.

I reported on some of Klein's research here and here.

This doesn't really do anything but put concrete numbers to what we already anecdotally knew: liberals suck at economics.  Just look at history every time liberal run the show.  They've expanded government (thus taking away individual freedoms) in monstrous leaps, hammered the private sector, penalized success and prosperity through high taxation, and pulled just about every poor economic rabbit that exists out of their hat.

I don't think it's any coincidence, either, that it is liberals who tend to take sides on issues based purely on feelings rather than how things work in the world.  It's why I think they suck at just about every other policy area, too.  Illegal immigration?  They want to feel good about giving illegals a better life (never mind all the horrendous expenses, crime, health risks, or security problems).  Welfare?  They want to ease people's suffering and difficulty (never mind how much taxpayer money it costs, and how self-destructive a permanent entitlement mindset is).  War on Terror?  They think we just need to understand why those poor Muslims from those hot and dirty desert countries are so mad at us (never mind the fact that Islam itself repeatedly demands they kill or subjugate all non-Muslims).  Universal health care?  They want everyone to have everything they could ever wish for because anything less is unfair (never mind the realities of cost, supply and demand, research and development, or just how unfair their notion of 'fairness' is).

See how it works?  For liberals, it's never about the real world, but rather about how they feel about the real world.  It never ceases to amaze me how liberals never seem to think forward to their professed utopia.  What if they actually get what they want?  Will they actually be thrilled if America digresses into a pseudo-European nation that is only marginally prosperous, has a smothering level of taxation, little growth or innovation, no military to speak of, and a stagnant job market?  Those are the end results of the policies they're advocating (we can see most of them real-time in present day Europe), so is that what they genuinely want?  But no, they don't think that far ahead.  For liberals, there is nothing other than the feelings of the moment, and that means politically correct 'fairness', warm fuzzies, puppies, rainbows, and unicorns.

And now we have the numbers to prove it.

There's my two cents.

Update On 2/3 Of The Radical Leftist's Roadmap To Taking Over America

First up is even more good news about DemCare:

Come September, a feature of the ACA will kick in that could spell the end of affordable "mini-med" coverage plans for low-income workers. Such plans typically provide access to a limited number of health-care providers and cap annual benefits payouts, but a provision in Obamacare bans insurance companies from doing the latter. That could spur massive spikes in premiums that put the mini-med plans beyond the reach of the very consumers for which they are designed.

And remember, the up to 1 million workers who will be affected by the provision won't have exchanges or subsidies to fall back on for years, thanks to the tax-and-regulate now, pay later structure of Obamacare.

Or, put another way:

Democrats will get their wish — but the employees won’t get their coverage. The law imposes the penalties for mini-med plans in three months, but the exchanges won’t start until 2014. That means more than three years of having no insurance at all for low-income workers who previously had it, even if Obama and Pelosi sniffed at the worth of the plans.

So why did they do it this way? Good question:

This was part of the “front-load” strategy of the Democrats, who wanted to implement what they thought would be the most popular components of ObamaCare immediately, in order to build support for its continuance. Instead, the mandates will mean that mini-med plans will either cost so much that the employees can’t afford it, or more likely, the insurers will drop the plans as money-losers. It’s a big indicator that the people who drafted the law had very little understanding of the insurance industry, or of the private sector.

NO...! I'm shocked SHOCKED that the Obama administration doesn't understand the private sector.

Hot Air points out that the massive unintended consequence here is that up to 1 million people could be kicked out of their health insurance by DemCare just a few weeks before the election. I'm pretty sure that's not going to do any favors for any Democrat on any ballot.

RedState thinks that not even the brainwashed, sycophantic media can cover over this one...but they'll give it another shot, anyway:

Why sell it when it does not go into effect for a few more years and it has already passed Congress? To improve Democrats’ chances in November, of course. Duh.

Let’s take a walk down memory lane and remember that past performance is the best indication of future success. So you liberals shouldn’t expect this time will be any more successful than all the other times.

June 7, 2010: “Tomorrow, Democrats and the White House will hold more than 100 simultaneous events nationwide as President Obama plunges back into health reform, selling the historic plan all over again…” (Politico Playbook) “White House Mounts PR Blitz for Health Care Reform” (AOL News)

May 18, 2010: “White House seeks missing health bounce. The White House is aggressively touting the new healthcare law after failing to see an immediate bounce in polls from congressional approval of the legislation.” (The Hill)

May 11, 2010: “White House health-care campaign begins. The Obama administration’s campaign to sell the new health-care law to a skeptical public is beginning to take shape…” (The Washington Post)

May 8, 2010: “President Barack Obama on Saturday touted the benefits of his healthcare overhaul, renewing a bid to counter Republican criticism and ease public doubts more than a month after he signed reform into law.” (Reuters)

April 22, 2010: “Stephanie Cutter, the Democratic communications strategist who spearheaded the White House effort last year to win Senate confirmation of Justice Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, is returning to the Obama administration to help sell the newly passed health care bill.” (The New York Times)

March 24, 2010: “Clearly, inside the White House there is acknowledgement that Republicans outmaneuvered Democrats in the weeks after the stimulus bill passed and did a better job of defining for the public what was in that bill. … The White House is determined to learn from that experience. ‘Obama and the Democrats won’t make the same mistake,’ said Thomas Mann, who studies Congress for the Brookings Institution.” (CongressDaily)

And those are just the efforts to sell it after it was passed into law! Hit the link for many, many more.

Related:
The federal government is a bunch of radicalized, hippy slackers
DemCare starts squeezing the private sector



Now, on to the economy in general...

This morning White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and budget director Peter Orszag will release a memo directing all federal agency heads “to develop plans” to cut at least 5 percent from their budgets by “identifying programs that do little to advance their missions or President Obama’s agenda.” This spasm of fiscal responsibility can mean only one thing: the Obama administration is about to go on another wild spending binge. And sure enough Politico reports that while Blue Dogs in the House managed to whittle what was a $200 billion “jobs” bill down to $146 billion last month, the Senate is now larding it back up again with a $24 billion Medicaid bailout and a $23 billion teachers union bailout.

This spend-now/cut-later act has become a staple for the Obama administration.

It just doesn't work very well when you go overboard with the 'spend-now' part and never get around to the 'cut-later' part, which is exactly what Obama has done.

Of course, to be fair, overspending isn't solely an Obama problem. Washington in general has an overspending addiction that needs to be stopped immediately. Of course, you and I both know that the way to fix that problem is to STOP THE SPENDING, but the geniuses in Washington haven't quite figured that out yet.

Case in point:

On May 13, 2010, Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) introduced H.R. 5297, TARP III. The bill is being promoted as necessary to increase the availability of credit for small businesses. TARP III would create a $30 billion lending fund and authorize the Treasury Secretary to make capital investments in banks with less than $10 billion in assets.

Another TARP?! What happened to the previous ones?? They failed, that's what. They did little to stimulate the economy, nor generate jobs or anything useful; all they did was to prop up some favored liberal constituent groups and lobbies. Now that the money is running out, the bribes must continue, so they're back to the spigot for more. The GOP points out several of the inconvenient problems with TARP 3:

Taxpayers Can't Afford Another Bailout: The original bailout bill, TARP I, was $700 billion. In 2009, the Democrats enacted a $1.138 trillion "stimulus" plan, including the cost of interest, a $410 billion FY09 omnibus appropriations bill and a $3.6 trillion FY2010 budget. The Democrats increased the debt ceiling by $1.9 trillion, and the national debt now stands above $13 trillion. The taxpayers lost $145 billion by bailing out Fannie and Freddie, and the CBO expects the cost to approach $400 billion. Recently, the EU and the IMF pledged $145 billion to bail out the bankrupt nation of Greece. America's taxpayers are on the hook for $6.8 billion in loan guarantees from the IMF. The EU and IMF also announced a $1 trillion bailout plan that could put America's taxpayers on the hook for $50 billion in additional loan guarantees to bail out other financially irresponsible members of the EU. Yet, the Democrats continue to spend the nation into a financial abyss.

Creates Unnecessary Programs: Under the original TARP, Treasury created several programs to generate lending to small businesses. In addition, the federal government instituted federal guarantee programs through the FDIC and the Small Business Administration. The creation of a $32 billion TARP III program to do what the $700 billion TARP and other federal programs were intended to do is simply unnecessary. In fact, according to a recent survey by the National Federation of Independent Business, 8 percent of the small businesses surveyed cited a lack of credit as an immediate problem, but more than 50 percent cited a lack of sales as an immediate problem. In other words, small businesses are suffering due to a lack of jobs for consumers.

Lacks Proper Oversight: The TARP III program would not be subject to the effective oversight of the Special Inspector General for TARP. SIGTARP's Neil Barofsky, on February 19, 2010, sent a letter to Treasury's assistant secretary for financial stability, Herb Allison. In the letter, Barofsky, expressed concern regarding Treasury's decision to remove TARP III from SIGTARP's oversight and warned that such a move would be "terribly wasteful" and "could lead to significant exposure to waste, fraud and abuse."

Creates More Uncertainty: Like the original TARP program, the federal government will once again, at it discretion, be able to reach into the boardrooms and pocket-books of private sector firms and employees. The use of the original TARP by some banks begot the use of the Obama administration's pay czar and auto task force (which closed thousands of dealerships). Also, the use of the original TARP inspired the Democrats to pursue a "responsibility fee," another tax on financial firms. Through TARP III, many small and mid-size banks may soon find the federal government as their new senior partner.

Whether they like it or not. And remember, the pay czar will stick his nose in there, and many Dems actually believe that the government should set wages of everyone in every company in the country!

How are you liking the hope-n-change? Just wait...it'll get lots better, I'm sure.

There's my two cents.

That's Quite A Lot Of Skin Ya' Got There...

In the game, that is (courtesy of Gateway Pundit):

Back in January 2009, Barack Obama told Americans that,
“Everyone must sacrifice… Everyone must have some skin in the game.”

Well… Everyone but Barack and Michelle Obama.

Canada Free Press reported, via FOX Nation:

The same hypocrite who says our energy costs must “necessarily skyrocket” to fund his political ambition, is giving Marie Antoinette a run for her money when it comes to spending national treasure on personal luxuries.

While much of the country is struggling to pay their bills, the President and First Lady are partying like rock royalty. The collection of talent that has made the pilgrimage to the White House to entertain Obama and friends is nothing less than amazing: Bob Dylan, Stevie Wonder, Tony Bennet, Paul Simon, Marc Anthony, Herbie Hancock, Martina McBride, Queen Latifah, The Foo Fighters, Faith Hill, and recently foot-in-mouth Paul McCartney to name a few.

This has the makings to be the greatest ongoing concert series ever to be seen on this Earth just to entertain one man … all paid for by the American taxpayer.

…The executive branch does not provide detailed information regarding entertainment expenses, however, it has been estimated the Obamas spent at least $10 million on “drunken White House parties” in 2009 alone.

Remember the liberal modus operandi: two sets of rules, one for them and one for the rest of us. And geez, if you think there should only be one set of rules for everyone, well then you must be racist or something.

There's my two cents.

A Tale Of Two Budgets

We don't have to drown under insurmountable debt:

Last week, Congressman Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Tom Price (R-GA) introduced the Republican Study Committee (RSC) FY2011 budget. This is a welcome fiscal blueprint that would restore fiscal discipline to the nation and avert a Grecian formula meltdown. It also does an excellent job of drawing a sharp distinction between a conservative fiscal plan and the liberal proposal presented by President Obama’s budget. Comparing President Obama’s own budget projections to the RSC’s tells the story of two very different futures for the United States. While the focus is primarily spending and revenue targets, there are sound policy recommendations in the RSC blueprint. One budget sees a nation sinking deeper and deeper into debt while another envisions a significant reduction in spending growth and a return to balanced budgets within the decade.

The numbers paint a striking picture:

Deficits

Obama: The 2019 deficit is projected to reach $908 billion, and in 2020 would climb to more than $1 trillion. Over ten years the Obama budget runs $8.5 trillion in deficits.

RSC: Balances the budget within ten years and achieves surpluses in 2019 and 2020. Over ten years the RSC budget runs $2.5 trillion in deficits.

DIFFERENCE: In a ten year window the RSC budget will run $6 trillion fewer deficits than the Obama budget.

Debt

Obama: The President’s budget will send debt held by the public to $18.6 trillion in 2020, up $11 trillion from the 2009 level of $7.5 trillion.

RSC: Debt held by the public under the RSC plan will reach $12.9 trillion in 2020.

DIFFERENCE: In 2020, the RSC budget projects debt held by the public $5.6 trillion under the President’s projection.

Discretionary Spending

Obama: Under the President’s plan discretionary spending is held relatively constant at approximately the FY2010 levels of $1.4 trillion. Over ten years the Obama budget expects to spend $13.6 trillion.

RSC: Returns discretionary spending to FY2008 levels and freezes it until 2019. By 2016 discretionary spending levels will dip back below $1 trillion for the first time since 2005. The RSC accomplishes this goal by limiting spending and adopting sound policies including:

• Repealing the Davis-Bacon Act, a law that forces the federal government to pay above market wages for federally funded construction. This reform could save $11.4 billion in 2010.

• Eliminating Intercity and High Speed Rail Grants, saving $1.6 billion annually.

• Enacting an earmark moratorium, saving approximately $15.9 billion per year.

DIFFERENCE: Over ten years the RSC budget will spend $3.2 trillion less in discretionary spending than under the President’s budget.

There are no quick exits from our current debt hole...but there are sound exits. The RSC plan gives us a logical, reasonable, attainable pathway to a full recovery in just a few years.

James Carafano adds one major (and legitimate, I think) beef:

Unfortunately, the RSC budget also gets a critical component of the budget wrong. It misses the mark on Washington’s #1 job; its Constitutional responsibility to provide for the common defense. At the heart of the RSC budget is a commitment to bring federal discretionary spending, of which defense is a component, back to FY 2008 levels. It implies that the defense portion of that broader category of spending will essentially be at the levels recommended by the Obama Administration by end of the decade. Thus, the RSC budget carries essentially the same risks for national security as the Obama budget. Our military desperately needs to recapitalize after years of fighting the Long War.

The Defense Department also needs to reign in runaway spending on manpower programs and improve the efficiency of its business and buying operations. But even with those savings, however, the Pentagon is going to need a higher top line to help keep us safe, free, and prosperous in the future.

Otherwise, we will be sending our men and women into harm’s way without the tools they need to protect us.

I'd be perfectly happy to reign in spending on everything but the defense budget. Carafano is right that this is one of the few things explicitly stated by the Constitution as a responsibility of the federal government, and our technology and military advantage has allowed us to stare down or defeat every regime we've faced for decades. It should not be withered. Along with that, I'd also add some extra provisions for veterans...after all, it doesn't matter how good your hardware is if you don't have the honorable and brave people to use it, and their service should be remembered and appreciated long after they're out of active duty status.

But back to the core of the post - the two budgets. Remember, much of our economy runs on simple perception - it's not so much what's going on that counts as what people think about what's going on. Even putting us on this road will have a dramatic effect on consumer confidence, levels of spending, and foreign confidence, all of which will have an aggregate positive effect, too.

Other aspects of the RSC plan that are noted differences from Barack Obama's plan:

Entitlement Spending

Obama: Spending on Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security alone will reach $2.6 trillion by 2020. Bear in mind just five years ago, in 2005, total outlays were $2.5 trillion. This includes the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and all domestic spending. While the Obama budget does note that his fiscal commission will examine the long-term fiscal outlook, it does nothing to restrain entitlement spending this year and the recently passed health package makes things even worse.

RSC: Under the RSC budget spending on these three programs still increases, but at a slower rate. Though Social Security spending remains untouched, Medicare would grow at a rate equivalent to economic growth, and Medicaid would increase with inflation. The budget would also repeal the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), which could save taxpayers up to $36 billion, and completely repeals the government takeover of health care (the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act). ...

DIFFERENCE: Over ten years the RSC budget spends approximately $3 trillion dollars less on the major entitlements than the Obama budget.

Taxes

Obama: As Heritage budget expert Brian Riedl outlined in his backgrounder, the Obama budget would, “raise taxes on all Americans by nearly $3 trillion, and raise taxes for 3.2 million small businesses and upper-income taxpayers by an average of $300,000 over the next decade.”

RSC: The RSC budget makes all the 2001 and 2003 tax relief, and the Alternative Minimum Tax “patch” permanent. In addition, the budget would fix the Congressional Budget Office baseline to assume current policy and put revenue and spending on equal footing. Under current CBO rules, tax hikes are assumed and must be “paid for” to simply continue the status quo.

DIFFERENCE: The RSC budget would extend tax relief for all American families and businesses by $1.7 trillion in the first five years, and keep taxes around their historical levels.

It can be done, but only with the right economic philosophy and the will to enact it. Will it be easy? No. But the path that Barack Obama and the radical leftist Democrats have set for this country is a guarantee of self-destruction. Why would we do that when we have a way out just sitting there in front of us?

There's my two cents.


Related Reading:
Obama's racked up debt three times faster than Bush

Thieving Slackers

When I first started reading this, I figured I would just post it in one of my linkage updates and call it good. However, the further into it I got, the higher my blood pressure rose until I was thoroughly angry. Rather than try to sum it up, I'm going to post the whole thing from Cassy Fiano at Hot Air's Greenroom, and I strongly encourage you to sink your teeth into the whole thing...it's an important thing to understand:

The housing crisis is still ongoing. While the national conversation has shifted away from foreclosures in favor of unemployment and big government bailouts, many Americans are still in trouble with their mortgages. I seem to remember there used to be a time where, if you were in trouble with a loan, you would pay any little bit you could. Maybe you paid half at the beginning of the month and half on your next paycheck. Maybe it was even less than that. What counted was that you were making the effort. You work with your lender to avoid going into foreclosure at all costs.

That was then. Now, the new hotness is just to say to hell with paying your mortgage. Homeowners are letting themselves go into foreclosure with no intention of paying their mortgages, so that they can use the extra money on truly important things… like going out to eat at Outback and taking trips to the Hard Rock Casino.

For Alex Pemberton and Susan Reboyras, foreclosure is becoming a way of life — something they did not want but are in no hurry to get out of.

Foreclosure has allowed them to stabilize the family business. Go to Outback occasionally for a steak. Take their gas-guzzling airboat out for the weekend. Visit the Hard Rock Casino.

“Instead of the house dragging us down, it’s become a life raft,” said Mr. Pemberton, who stopped paying the mortgage on their house here last summer. “It’s really been a blessing.”

A growing number of the people whose homes are in foreclosure are refusing to slink away in shame. They are fashioning a sort of homemade mortgage modification, one that brings their payments all the way down to zero. They use the money they save to get back on their feet or just get by.

This type of modification does not beg for a lender’s permission but is delivered as an ultimatum: Force me out if you can. Any moral qualms are overshadowed by a conviction that the banks created the crisis by snookering homeowners with loans that got them in over their heads.

“I tried to explain my situation to the lender, but they wouldn’t help,” said Mr. Pemberton’s mother, Wendy Pemberton, herself in foreclosure on a small house a few blocks away from her son’s. She stopped paying her mortgage two years ago after a bout with lung cancer. “They’re all crooks.”

Get that? In today’s loony liberal land, it’s all the lender’s fault. It couldn’t possibly be the homeowner’s fault that they bought a house they couldn’t afford. Right?

Maybe not. The couple quoted in this story, Mr. Pemberton and Ms. Reboyras, aren’t exactly blameless in this situation. Just like most people who go into foreclosure, really.

The couple owe $280,000 on the house, where they live with Ms. Reboyras’s two daughters, their two dogs and a very round pet raccoon named Roxanne. The house is worth less than half that amount — which they say would be their starting point in future negotiations with their lender.

“If they took the house from us, that’s all they would end up getting for it anyway,” said Ms. Reboyras, 46.

One reason the house is worth so much less than the debt is because of the real estate crash. But the couple also refinanced at the height of the market, taking out cash to buy a truck they used as a contest prize for their hired animal trappers.

It was a stupid move by their lender, according to Mr. Pemberton. “They went outside their own guidelines on debt to income,” he said. “And when they did, they put themselves in jeopardy.”

So they refinanced their home to buy a new truck — not even a truck that they needed for themselves, but a truck to give away. And yet, this was a stupid move by the lender?! Right. It’s the big bad predatory lender’s fault for not telling poor Mr. Pemberton that he was a big fat idiot.

And by coincidence, I’m sure, Mr. Pemberton and Ms. Reboyras’ lawyer seeks out these kinds of cases and encourages people to not pay their mortgages. This way, you get to live in your house — for free!

Both generations of Pembertons have hired a local lawyer, Mark P. Stopa. He sends out letters — 1,700 in a recent week — to Floridians who have had a foreclosure suit filed against them by a lender.

Even if you have “no defenses,” the form letter says, “you may be able to keep living in your home for weeks, months or even years without paying your mortgage.”

About 10 new clients a week sign up, according to Mr. Stopa, who says he now has 350 clients in foreclosure, each of whom pays $1,500 a year for a maximum of six hours of attorney time. “I just do as much as needs to be done to force the bank to prove its case,” Mr. Stopa said.

It’s sickening, really. There are people out there milking the system for all its worth, taking no responsibility for their bad decisions, and then blaming the lenders when they end up in trouble. It’s usually the bad decisions of the borrowers that put them into foreclosure to begin with, and then they just want to sit back and do nothing, because somehow, everyone is apparently entitled to live in their home without paying the mortgage on it now. There are always alternatives, ways to avoid foreclosure. It isn’t like selling the home isn’t an option, but no one wants to do that. They can’t renegotiate their loan either, because the lenders are big bad predatory crooks out to get them. Apparently, the right thing to do is to squat in a house you don’t even fully own yet without paying what you legally owe.

In reality, this is theft. It’s a crime, and the bums should be thrown out on the street like they deserve. I have no sympathy for someone who pays nothing on their mortgage and willingly goes into foreclosure so that they can go out to eat, go on airboat rides, and gamble at the Hard Rock Casino.

Part of this is thanks to Democrats and Obama in particular. The endless demonizing of Wall Street and banks and big business has given people like these bums a ready-made excuse to stop paying their mortgages, yet still expect to live in their house. These people said so themselves. The banks are crooks. Lenders are greedy. They’re getting what’s coming to them, right? No one forced these people to take these loans, no one made them refinance, but it’s always someone else’s fault.

I understand that people sometimes fall on hard times. Honest people don’t use that as an excuse to abandon all responsibility and ignore their own bad decision-making. What is happening here is theft and the lowlifes should be thrown out on the street where they belong.

Hey, if they live on the street, they can still use their money on what really matters, like steak at Outback and gambling at a casino.

[deep breath in...cleansing breath out...deep breath in...cleansing breath out...]

These parasites don't deserve a roof over their heads.

I'm sorry, but I have absolutely ZERO sympathy for people like this who flagrantly puts themselves into debt that is so bad that their neighbors (and all the rest of us taxpayers) have to pick up the tab, then laugh it off and go out for steak.

YOU'VE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!!!

This is the anti-American dream. Rather than following the rules, earning your place, and working hard for what you've got, this lazy, parasitic mindset is what is allowing Mexicans to illegally cross our borders and demand 'rights', property, and government benefits. This is what is enabling an entire generation of young people to pass from grade level to grade level without passing scores simply because their feelings might be hurt otherwise. This is what is preventing summer soccer leagues from keeping score because, GOD FORBID someone has to lose! This is what's allowing frivolous lawsuits over hot coffee. It's sheer idiocy, and it all boils down to the fact that people want to leech off of the productivity and success of others without having to do any real work or put for any real effort on their own.

Entitlement.

It's one of the most insidious effects of rampant liberalism, and it is extremely hard to root out once it's taken hold. I read an article the other day (I would cite it but I don't recall where I saw it) about how this entitlement mentality is similar to a drug addiction - the first hit is free, and every time after that the addict gets more and more desperate for a bigger and bigger snort. The only way out is to hit rock bottom and gut through the horrendous withdrawal symptoms on the way to a true recovery.

Does America have the wisdom to find its way to rock bottom? Does it have the fortitude to gut through the withdrawal symptoms? Facing a historically unprecedented mountain of debt that will bury future generations as surely as a literal mountain of dirt and rock, that appears to be the situation we must answer.

Thieving slackers like the Pembertons are prime examples of entitlement, and prime examples of why America has an existential problem. If the Pembertons and other parasites like them can't beat their own addiction, they'll drag all of the rest of us down with them, and we're all in for some historically unprecedented pain.

There's my two cents.

Don't Get Suckered By The May Employment Numbers

Hot Air:

Advance word on this week's employment numbers due on Friday morning is that the figure will be eye-popping — a growth of over a half-million jobs in May.  However, only a third or less will come from the private sector.  Most of the rest will come from an explosion of Census Bureau hires last month, some of which have already ended, according to The Hill:

Hiring by the U.S. Census Bureau is expected to spike May's job figures dramatically.

Economist Mark Zandi of Moody's.com projects the economy will add 575,000 jobs in May, while the Economic Policy Institute's (EPI) rough projection is for 560,000 jobs. …

Vice President Joe Biden, speaking at a Democratic fundraiser on Tuesday, touted what he said would be a positive report for Democrats, who are hoping a revitalized economy will help them in this fall's elections. He said the May report would be "well beyond" the 290,000 jobs created in April, according to Reuters.

The numbers pose a problem for the administration, however, in terms of their reflection of economic growth.

Zandi expects that only 150,000 of the jobs created in May will come from the private sector, while 425,000 new jobs are sparked by the once-a-decade census.

Those jobs are temporary ones that will disappear as the Census completes the process of collecting data from people who did not mail in their forms.

In fact, if Zandi is correct, the inflated number will obscure a drop in private-sector growth.  April's employment figures showed the addition of around 224,000 private-sector jobs, the first significant growth against population expansion in more than two years.  Adding 150,000 jobs would still beat population growth — it takes adding more than 100K jobs to keep pace — but not by much.  That would signal a slowing economy, not a move to sustainable growth, although one month could also be a hiccup — just as April's could have been a hiccup as well.

But that's not all.  We've already been over how crooked the entire Census project appears to be in terms of employment.  John Crudele at the New York Post also throws this into the mix:

A couple weeks ago I found out that Census was repeatedly hiring and firing workers without any apparent reason. I questioned if this was being done to artificially boost the nation's employment figures since the Labor Dept. considers it a new job created whenever someone is hired to work as little as one hour in a month.

Was Census churning jobs to make the economy look healthier than it really is?

Could be.  If so, HA's conclusion is awfully hard to escape:

...the big issue for the Obama administration is what happens when the Census Bureau completes its work.  Hundreds of thousands of workers will be back looking for jobs that won't exist, which will spike the unemployment number later in the year, just when voters go to the polls.  If the private-sector numbers come in as weakly as Zandi predicts, it could be a sign that we've just about squeezed all of the growth possible from the artificial stimuli applied by the Democrats.

And what happens then?  When everything they've tried has demonstrably failed, and when even the made-up money is gone, what then?  Double dip recession?  Great Depression 2.0?  Greece?!

Barack Obama and liberal Democrats have no answers, no solutions, and no hope of bringing anything to this nation but oppression, deception, and destruction.  The longer they retain power, the worse off we'll all be.

There's my two cents.

The Rich And Their Taxes

It's never bad to have another reminder about who pays what taxes. Here's a quick video that hits the high points:

For much, much more, check out these previous posts.

And don't ever forget how it really works...

There's my two cents.

This Congress Has No Shame

This is some supremely good stuff from Heritage:

On February 4, 2010, pushing for passage of her pay-as-you-go (PAYGO) legislation, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said on the House floor: “When I became Speaker of the House, the very first day we passed legislation that made PAYGO the rule of the House. Today we will make it the law of the land. … So the time is long overdue for this to be taken for granted. The federal government will pay as it goes.” That was the promise. But here is the reality: in the three years that Speaker Pelosi has enforced her PAYGO rule, the House has violated it by nearly $1 trillion.

And now with the U.S. Debt Clock officially passing the $13 trillion milestone Wednesday, the House is set to violate their own PAYGO law yet again, this time to the tune of around $150 billion. The legislation clocks-in at almost one-fifth the size of President Barack Obama’s original $862 billion failed economic stimulus, and the leftist majority in Congress has titled it “The American Jobs and Closing Tax Loopholes Act.” And it is a tax-hiking, spending-exploding, job-killing, deficit-hiking wonder.

The Tax Hikes: The entire purpose of this bill was originally to extend some popular and well-established tax cuts that have been around for years but have to be reapproved every year. But being the big government lovers that they are, the left has crafted a bill that actually increases tax revenues by $57 billion over ten years. The biggest items are a job-killing tax on American corporations that compete overseas, a job-killing tax on innovation-creating venture capital partnerships, and a four-fold increase in the tax on oil production that ostensibly is supposed to go to the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund, but is instead being siphoned off to help pay for completely unrelated new domestic spending.

The Spending: The bill originally clocked-in at almost $200 billion, and Democrats have since cut the spending to just under $150 billion, $95 billion of which will go straight onto our children’s credit card bill in flagrant violation of Congress’ own PAYGO rules. Goodies include $26 billion for infrastructure, more than $40 billion for yet another unemployment insurance extension, another $24 billion bailout of state Medicaid programs, $8 billion in needlessly expensive health insurance subsidies, and $2.5 billion for states to increase their welfare rolls. Even some Democrats are beginning to question the endless UI extensions, with Rep. Kathy Dahlkemper (D-PA) telling The Washington Post that businesses back home complain that they want to start hiring but are getting few applicants because Congress has repeatedly extended unemployment benefits.

And then there is what was originally the largest-ticket item in the bill: $65 billion over three and a half years for increasing physician Medicare reimbursements, aka the “doc fix.” This one item alone proves that all of President Barack Obama’s claims that his health care law reduces the deficit are 100% false. The CBO report this month estimated that $276 billion would be required to shore up the “doc fix” over the next decade. Adding that spending to Obamacare’s already $940 billion total would easily push it into the red. That is why Congress did not address the problem in Obamacare. Brandeis University professor Stuart Altman calls the “doc fix” charade “one of the worst pieces of legislation I’ve ever seen.” The House has cut this version of the “doc fix” down to $21.8 billion just through December 2011.

Across the country, millions of American families are struggling to make family budgets and keep to them. Not Congress. For the first time in the history of the budget process, the House of Representatives has failed to plan how they will spend your tax dollars. Instead they will recklessly continue to flagrantly violate their own PAYGO rules as they add billions and billions worth of debt onto your children. This Congress has no shame.

That's right. And they deserve to be sent packing for it.

There's my two cents.

The Economic Duh Factor: Increased Government Spending Results In Higher Unemployment

The explanation:

Don't color Veronique de Rugy shocked, shocked to find that government spending crowds out private investment, but the results of the new study by Harvard Business School will certainly shock some Keynesian academics — and high-ranking government officials.  Instead of providing a stimulating effect to the economy, government spending creates pressures on private industry to reduce staff and investment.  The study's authors count themselves as among the shocked:

Recent research at Harvard Business School began with the premise that as a state's congressional delegation grew in stature and power in Washington, D.C., local businesses would benefit from the increased federal spending sure to come their way.

It turned out quite the opposite. In fact, professors Lauren Cohen, Joshua Coval, and Christopher Malloy discovered to their surprise that companies experienced lower sales and retrenched by cutting payroll, R&D, and other expenses. Indeed, in the years that followed a congressman's ascendancy to the chairmanship of a powerful committee, the average firm in his state cut back capital expenditures by roughly 15 percent, according to their working paper, "Do Powerful Politicians Cause Corporate Downsizing?"

"It was an enormous surprise, at least to us, to learn that the average firm in the chairman's state did not benefit at all from the unanticipated increase in spending," Coval reports.

This surprising result does not come from a misapprehension about pork and its relation to the chairmanships of the committees.  Indeed, the study shows that pork dollars flow in mighty streams from those chairs to home districts and states.  It's not just earmarks, either, but also legislative expenditures that increase:

The average state experiences a 40 to 50 percent increase in earmark spending if its senator becomes chair of one of the top-three congressional committees. In the House, the average is around 20 percent.

For broader measures of spending, such as discretionary state-level federal transfers, the increase from being represented by a powerful senator is around 10 percent.

And yet:

In the year that follows a congressman's ascendancy, the average firm in his state cuts back capital expenditures by roughly 15 percent.

There is some evidence that firms scale back their employment and experience a decline in sales growth.

If this seems counterintuitive, it might be from marinating too long in Beltway conventional wisdom.  When private entities (citizens or businesses) retain capital, it gets used in a more rational manner, mainly because the entity has competitive incentives to use capital wisely and efficiently.  The private entity also has his own interests in mind, and can act quickly to use the capital to its best application.  Private entities innovate and look to create and expand markets, creating more growth.

In comparison, government moves much slower with capital.  It generally works to its own benefit and not that of private entities.  Lacking competition, there is no incentive for efficiency.  Most importantly, it rarely creates new markets or growth but instead creates a spoils system that ends up reorganizing the status quo to favor some and disfavor others.

All of that is certainly true in the long-term sense.  It now appears true in the short-term sense as well, despite the immediate application of government funds to specific areas.  If this study is true, it calls into question the entire concept of Keynesian stimulus, and it shows that the Obama administration has gone in an entirely wrong direction both in concept and in practical terms in attempting to create economic growth.  The best way to achieve growth appears to be to eliminate government interventions and to keep capital in the hands of the private sector.  And that's no shock at all to anyone who pays attention to economics.

Nor to anyone who's been reading this blog over the past two years.  Isn't it great to be ahead of the curve?  Now, if we could just wake up our liberal friends on the other side of the aisle...

There's my two cents.

Socializing America

Obama must be happy about this (emphasis mine):

Paychecks from private business shrank to their smallest share of personal income in U.S. history during the first quarter of this year, a USA TODAY analysis of government data finds.

At the same time, government-provided benefits — from Social Security, unemployment insurance, food stamps and other programs — rose to a record high during the first three months of 2010.

Those records reflect a long-term trend accelerated by the recession and the federal stimulus program to counteract the downturn. The result is a major shift in the source of personal income from private wages to government programs.

The trend is not sustainable, says University of Michigan economist Donald Grimes. Reason: The federal government depends on private wages to generate income taxes to pay for its ever-more-expensive programs. Government-generated income is taxed at lower rates or not at all, he says. "This is really important," Grimes says.

We've been on a path of gradual socialization for a very long time, but Barack Obama has shifted this process into warp speed.  He campaigned on re-making America, his background pointed to this conclusion, and his policies have implemented socialist-style Statism at every turn.  The Dems in Congress have played along the whole way.

And it won't stop until they're thrown out of office:

President Obama and Democrats on Capitol Hill are publicly fretting about the dangers of spending and debt, which can mean only one thing: Another big spending "stimulus" bill is in the works. And sure enough, the House plans to vote this week on $190 billion in new spending, $134 billion of which it won't even pretend to pay for.  ...

This bill is also one of the most expensive corporate welfare giveaways in recent years with subsidies for municipal bond traders, cotton farmers, yarn producers, sheep growers, Hawaiian sugar cane cooperatives, motor sports businesses, renewable energy firms, the steel lobby, and so on. Any industry that doesn't get a tax credit or other handout in this bill should fire its lobbyist.

All of this is "paid for," in the Beltway lingo, with a net tax increase on business of about $40 billion and at least $134 billion of new debt. There's a new 24 cent a barrel tax on oil companies, which would flow to consumers in higher gas prices, because Congress says the industry's profits are excessive.

I'm not sure 'paid for' should count hypothetical tax increases because it hasn't happened yet, and it has a negative effect on the economy anyway.  And since when does Congress get to determine how much a company can earn before it's considered 'excessive'?  Anyway, this new jobs bill is just more of the same.

Here's the almost inescapable conclusion:

Perhaps you're wondering what happened to the "pay as you go" budget rules that Mr. Obama announced to great media fanfare as recently as February. Democrats now say "paygo" doesn't apply because this spending qualifies as an "emergency." But while the new spending isn't paid for, Democrats are insisting that the bill's extension of the R&D tax credit and small business depreciation allowance must be offset by the tax increases.

Oh, and by the way, the President is unveiling a new line-item veto proposal this week to "rein in wasteful spending and hold Congress accountable," as Senator John Kerry put it yesterday in a press release. If any of them were remotely serious, they'd start by line-item vetoing this entire bill.

Yeah, that'll happen.

On a related note (emphasis mine):

Tuesday's primaries were more proof of the anti-incumbency mood felt in many parts of the nation, and a new Rasmussen Reports poll finds that many voters continue to feel a randomly selected sample of people from the phone book could do a better job than their elected representatives in Congress.

The latest national telephone survey of Likely Voters finds that 41% say a group of people selected at random from the phone book would do a better job addressing the nation's problems than the current Congress. ...

These findings show little change from early January and early September 2009. However, the number of voters who feel a random selection could do better is up eight points from early October 2008, just before the presidential election.

I find this tidbit very interesting:

Yet while 57% of Mainstream voters think a random selection from the phone book would do a better job than the current Congress, 90% of the Political Class disagree.

Ignorance is bliss, Congress.  Ignorance is bliss.  Until you get thrown out on your rotten, lying, out-of-touch butts, that is.

There's my two cents.

This Really Is Not Helpful

Gateway Pundit:

The democrats in Congress finally jumped into action. The tax-and-spend liberals decided the best thing they could do to help out in the Gulf after the disastrous oil spill was to quadruple the gas tax.
What a complete stunner.
Here comes higher gas prices for everyone thanks once again to democrats.
The AP reported:

Responding to the massive BP oil spill, Congress is getting ready to quadruple—to 32 cents a barrel—a tax on oil used to help finance cleanups. The increase would raise nearly $11 billion over the next decade.

The tax is levied on oil produced in the U.S. or imported from foreign countries. The revenue goes to a fund managed by the Coast Guard to help pay to clean up spills in waterways, such as the Gulf of Mexico.

The tax increase is part of a larger bill that has grown into a nearly $200 billion grab bag of unfinished business that lawmakers hope to complete before Memorial Day. The key provisions are a one-year extension of about 50 popular tax breaks that expired at the end of last year, and expanded unemployment benefits, including subsidies for health insurance, through the end of the year.

The House could vote on the bill as early as Tuesday.

I think that over the past year and a half we've seen more than ample evidence of the undeniable fact that the instantaneous liberal reaction to literally everything that happens on the face of the Earth is to reflexively raise taxes.  This episode, in particular, really helps underscore Obama's promise to implement crushing environmental regulations and penalties that would 'necessarily skyrocket' energy prices.

This is no accident, friends.  This is a deliberate attempt to destroy the American domestic energy industry and to force all Americans to pay through the nose for energy in all its forms.  In a time of economic turmoil, this really isn't helpful.

Of course, we already know that Obama's intent isn't to provide relief to American families, so things like this should come as no surprise.

There's my two cents.

Economic Contrast

Two proposals. Two plans. Two very different outcomes. Check 'em out (emphasis mine)...

Democrats

...as Keith Hennessey suggests in his must-read deconstruction of the big-spending bill Congress will approve this week, the Call It Anything But Don’t Call It Stimulus Act. Nancy Pelosi calls it the American Jobs and Closing Tax Loopholes Act of 2010, which forms the acronym AJCTLA, and that sounds like nonsense when spoken. It’s a perfect match for its title, as Hennessey explains, because it does nothing to help American jobs and everything to allow Congress to help itself to even more fantasy money.

In fact, it manages to both increase the deficit and hike taxes, a rather neat little trick that one might think would embarrass even Democrats in 2010. The CBO confirms that AJCTLA has the following long-term consequences:

• $40 B net tax increase
• $174 B spending increase
• $134 B deficit increase

How does it manage to do that? Hennessey gives us the bullet points:

• increases infrastructure spending by $26 B over ten years;
• extends a raft of expiring tax provisions, mostly for one year
• provides funding relief for certain employer pension plans;
• raises a bunch of taxes, mostly on businesses and a certain kind of partnership income called “carried interest;”
• extends unemployment insurance benefits, increasing federal spending by $47 B over the next two years;
• increases Medicare payments for doctors for eighteen months at a $63 B cost;
• increases health insurance subsidies for the unemployed (through “COBRA”) by $8 B over the next two years; and
• increases federal Medicaid spending by $24 B for a six-month policy change.

Yes, at exactly the moment when businesses need pricing signals for a decrease in costs in order to attract the kind of investment that spurs growth, Congress wants to hike taxes instead — in order to pay for its own aggrandizing public projects.

Republicans

Democratic attempts to paint Republicans as the Party of No got a little tougher today with the release of a new plan from the House Republicans on the Budget Committee. The GOP has demanded spending cuts, and today the group led by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) laid out a preliminary slate of specifics. If adopted, they predict that they can save over $1.3 trillion over the next ten years. In the preamble, the GOP caucus slams the Democrats for failing to provide a budget for FY2011:

Having shoveled out trillions of dollars in new spending and debt, House Democratic leaders now admit they cannot budget for all of it – and won’t even try. For the first time, the House will fail even to propose a budget. Instead the Democratic Majority will resort to an ad hoc, spend-as-you-go process that abandons any pretense of governing.

The primary responsibility of any Congress is to develop a budget for the next fiscal year. One hundred and ten Houses have managed to meet that responsibility, even when the chambers were narrowly divided along partisan lines, and when control between Capitol Hill and the White House was divided between Republicans and Democrats. In this year, Democrats have an 18-seat majority in the Senate, more than a 70-seat majority in the House, and they control the White House. What possible excuse could Democrats have for not producing a budget, other than incompetence or dishonesty?

In contrast, the Republicans list a number of spending proposals to close the budget gap, most of which has already been introduced to the House and ignored by Nancy Pelosi. It counters the entire narrative of the Party of No, showing that Republicans have attempted to offer ideas to reduce spending and the national debt, or at least to slow down the growth in both. Had Democrats decided to actually produce a budget, they would have had to consider the following:

• Cancel Unused TARP Funds. Prohibit the Treasury Secretary from entering into new commitments under the Troubled Asset Relief Program [TARP]. Ending TARP would prevent up to $396 billion in additional disbursements; CBO estimates savings of $16 billion. H.R. 3140 introduced by Rep. Tom Price of Georgia.
• Cancel Unspent ‘Stimulus’ Funds. Rescind all unobligated budget authority authorized under the “stimulus” bill and dedicate to deficit reduction. Saves up to $266 billion. H.R. 3140 introduced by Rep. Tom Price of Georgia.
• Cut and Cap Discretionary Spending. Return non-defense discretionary spending to pre-Obama (fiscal year 2008) baseline levels. Saves up to $925 billion. Legislation introduced by Reps. Ryan and Hensarling (H.R. 3964) and Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio (H.R 3298) include caps on discretionary spending.
• Reduce Government Employment. Hire one person for every two who leaves civilian government service until the workforce is reduced to pre-Obama levels (exempting the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, and Veterans Affairs). Saves an estimated $35 billion. H.R. 5348 introduced by Rep. Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming.
• Freeze Government Pay. Freeze Federal civilian pay for 1 year. Saves an estimated $30 billion.
• Adopt the Legislative Line-Item Veto. Enact a constitutional line-item veto law. The President’s FY 2011 budget included terminations, reductions, and savings that would achieve $23 billion in one year. While Congress may not accept all these savings, the Line Item Veto can help reduce spending. H.R. 1294 introduced by Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin.
• Reform and Bring Transparency to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Reform these companies by ending conservatorship, shrinking their portfolios, establishing minimum capital standards, reducing conforming loan limits, and bringing transparency to taxpayer exposure. According to CBO, the cost to taxpayers of putting government in control of Fannie and Freddie is $373 billion through 2020. Saves an estimated $30 billion. H.R. 4889 introduced by Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas. H.R. 4653 introduced by Rep. Scott Garrett of New Jersey.
• Create a Sunset Commission. Establish a commission to conduct systematic reviews of Federal programs and agencies, and make recommendations for those that should be terminated; and provide for automatic sunset of programs unless expressly reauthorized by the Congress. H.R. 393 introduced by Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas.
  

Dems are being flamingly hypocritical on this by not only failing to play by their own financing rules, but by not even attempting to play by their own financing rules. They just rubber-stamp everything they want to do as an emergency so they can drive the debt truck through a loophole the size of Jupiter. There is also the usual bag of goodies for preferred lobbyist groups, the making permanent of temporary programs, and more accounting gimmicks than Enron had ever heard of. Hit the Hennessey link for all the details.

On the other side of the coin, ironically, some mighty big chunks of the GOP cutting plan are very similar to some of the things Pelosi promised when the Dems took over the House back in 2007. Not that they followed, through, of course, but these ideas are absolutely nothing new or shocking to them. They loooove to promise such lovely sounding things as tax cuts and reduced spending, but show me the last time a Democrat in national office actually did it (as opposed to just promising it) and I'll show you the very beginnings of the Moon Lander program.

This is the contrast between the two parties now. Pick which you like better, then remember that when you go vote this November. And bring some friends - this is one election America simply cannot afford to get wrong.

There's my two cents.