Though Democrats don’t have a monopoly on tax cheats, it sure seems that way – particularly recently. Of course this behavior comports quite well with the arrogance and contemptuousness that they displayed for the American people when they had unopposed control of the federal government – both the House and Senate in Congress and the White House.
Why should they care very much if they raise taxes? After all, many are so wealthy that it affects them little. And besides, for those Democratic politicians who do actually pay their taxes, many have found loopholes and other stratagems in order not to pay their “fair share”.
Also by using this taxation power, they are in effect, “buying” voters (those that pay little or no taxes) who will keep them in office.
We, the productive citizens who are bearing an ever increasing tax burden to support these Democratic politicians and their “entitled” minions, need to assiduously work to make sure that they don’t get re-elected.
Tax-Challenged Dems
Investor's Business Daily 03/22/2011
Hypocrisy: A Missouri senator up for re-election is the latest administration crony to overlook or avoid paying all her taxes. Funny, they have no problem raising them on or collecting them from the rest of us.
If you ever wonder how we could find ourselves $14 trillion in debt and sinking fast, consider how fast and loose the mythical guardians of the public purse are with keeping their own finances in order and meeting their own tax obligations.
As Politico has reported, Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., said Monday that she will sell her private plane and pay $287,273 in back Missouri property taxes that somehow slipped her mind while she was supporting ObamaCare and spending the rest of us into oblivion.
"This is not good," McCaskill said during a conference call with reporters on Monday as she detailed the Missouri property taxes she owed: $72,790 in 2007, $74,699 in 2008, $69,394 in 2009 and $70,401 in 2010. Meanwhile, other Missouri property owners struggled to keep up with far lesser means.
The property taxes are owed on a plane — a 2001 single-engine, turbo-prop Pilatius PC-12 valued at $2.2 million — acquired in July 2006 during McCaskill's Senate run against Republican incumbent Jim Talent. It had been registered in Delaware, where no taxes were imposed. Then it was moved to Illinois, which imposes no personal property taxes on private aircraft.
Because planes are not licensed in Missouri, the state has no record of who owns them, so local governments — which levy property taxes — send no bills. As a result, McCaskill said, her husband and the company owning the plane had no knowledge that the property taxes were owed. Ignorance of the law, it is said, is no excuse, especially if you're the state's U.S. senator.
McCaskill's family opted to move it in 2007 to Spirit of St. Louis Airport in St. Louis County. As a senator, McCaskill has flown at least 89 flights chartered by Sunset Cove Associates LLC — a company incorporated in 2002 by her husband, St. Louis businessman Joe Shepard, according to records kept by the Missouri secretary of state's office.
The senator had used the plane she co-owns with her husband and other investors for political purposes, paying for the travel with taxpayer money from her Senate office, which she now calls a "mistake," for which she will reimburse the government nearly $89,000.
Oops.
McCaskill recently co-sponsored a bill in the Senate that would send pink slips to federal employees who are found to have unpaid taxes. This was the situation Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was found in during his confirmation hearings in which he was touted as the only person on the planet capable of leading us back to financial stability.
It was revealed that Geithner had since 2001 failed to pay nearly $40,000 in Social Security and Medicare taxes because he worked for the International Monetary Fund, which conveniently failed to withhold those taxes as U.S. firms do. Like McCaskill, Geithner forgot to check.
Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., lost his post as chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee after it became known that he failed to pay 20 years of back taxes on a Caribbean villa, on top of tax issues related to four rent-controlled apartments in Harlem used by his campaign.
Then there's Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, who docked his family's new $7 million yacht in neighboring Rhode Island, letting him avoid paying roughly $500,000 in taxes to his cash-strapped home state, where honest taxpayers were struggling to put ketchup on the table.
The power to tax is the power to destroy. It also is an opportunity for hypocrites to benefit at taxpayers' expense, an act that calls for removal from areas of control over the public purse.
If they can't run their own affairs cleanly and openly, they shouldn't run ours.
The supportive arguments regarding the pay, rights, importance and contributions of public sector workers have been presented in a highly over exaggerated, asymmetrical fashion to almost a chimerical degree by the news media, labor bosses, members and Democrats. Meanwhile, the other side of these issues, that is, the one where the interests of the taxpayers and the financial viability of the States are concerned, has received sparse and denigrating reportage.
Ann Coulter’s editorial below simplifies, elucidates and places into perspective the issues involved in this “controversy”. It is quite eye opening particularly since this information is conveniently ignored by the Left.
Six-Figure Bus Drivers & Other Working-Class Heroes
Ann Coulter 03/09/2011
Can we stop acting as if people who work for the government are the heroes of working people?
Fine, we understand that Wisconsin public sector employees like the system that pays them an average of $76,500 per year, with splendiferous benefits, and are fighting like wildcats against any proposed reforms to that system. But it's madness to keep treating people who are promoting their own self-interest as if they are James Meredith walking into the University of Mississippi.
This isn't how we usually view people fighting for their own economic interests.
When Wall Street opposes financial reforms or a tobacco company opposes new cigarette taxes, no one hails them as "working men and women" who "deserve a decent pay and decent retirement." We're not told Wall Street has a "fundamental right" not to be regulated, or tobacco companies promoting their own interests are just trying to "help working people and middle-class people retain a good job in America." People on the other side of the issue aren't said to be "just trying to kick the other guy in the shin and exterminate him."
And yet all that was said by the Democratic governor of Illinois, Pat Quinn, on MSNBC's "Hardball" last week, about government workers fighting to preserve their own Alex Rodriguez-like employment contracts.
Yes, we understand that public sector employees got themselves terrific overtime, holiday, pension and health care deals through buying politicians with their votes and campaign money. But now, responsible elected officials in Wisconsin are trying to balance the budget.
MSNBC is covering the fight in Wisconsin as if it's the 9/11 attack -- and the Republicans are al-Qaida. Its entire prime-time schedule is dedicated to portraying self- interested government employees as if they're Marines taking on the Taliban. The network's Ed Schultz bellows that it is "morally wrong" to oppose the demands of government employees.
Yes, and I guess pornographers are noble when they launch a full-scale offensive against obscenity laws.
Public sector workers are pursuing their own narrow financial interests to the detriment of everyone else in their states. That's fine, but can we stop pretending it's virtuous?
Because of the insane union contracts in Wisconsin, one Madison bus driver, John E. Nelson, was able to make $159,000 in 2009 -- about $100,000 of which in overtime pay. Jackie Gleason didn't make that much playing bus driver Ralph Kramden on "The Honeymooners." Seven bus drivers took home more than $100,000 that year.
When asked about the outrageous overtime pay for bus drivers -- totaling $1.94 million in 2009 alone -- Transit and Parking Commission Chairman Gary Poulson said: "That's the contract."
It's ludicrous to suggest that these union contracts were fairly bargained. Only one side was at the negotiating table. Ordinary people with jobs were not at the meetings where public sector compensation was discussed.
Union hacks play on our heartstrings, weeping about the valuable work government employees do: These are the people who educate our children, run into burning buildings and take dangerous criminals off our streets!
Politicians who do not immediately acquiesce to insane union demands are invariably accused of hating teachers, nurses or cops. In California, this has been standard operating procedure for decades. The voters never seem to catch on.
In 1972, E. Richard Barnes lost his re-election campaign to the California state Assembly after being accused by cops and firefighters of coddling criminals.
In fact, Barnes, a conservative Republican, had one of the toughest records on crime. But he had voted against fringe benefits and better pension benefits for public employees.
Years later, in 2005, Don Perata, Democratic state senator from Oakland, suggested that the legislature reconsider the requirement that 40 percent of the entire state budget be spent on public schools. The teachers' unions instantly plastered his district with fliers calling him anti-education. Perata is a far-left Democrat, who had himself been a teacher for 15 years before entering politics.
Fine, we like teachers, firemen and police officers. We appreciate them. (And for the record, it is statistically more dangerous to be a farmer, fisherman, steelworker or pilot than a cop or fireman. Soldiers also have pretty dangerous jobs, and they don't get to strike.)
Does that mean we should pay them $1 million dollars a year? How about $10 million? After all, these are the people who educate our kids, run into burning buildings and take dangerous criminals off our streets!
Assuming the answer is no, then apparently we're allowed to discuss government workers' compensation -- even though they do important work. As George Bernard Shaw concluded his famous quip (often attributed to Winston Churchill), "Now, we're just negotiating over the price."
Why do public sector employees have absurd overtime rules? Why don't they pay for their own health insurance? Why do they get to retire at age 45 with a guaranteed pension of 65 percent of their last year's pay -- as state police in New Jersey do?
This is asymmetrical warfare. Seven percent of the population cares intensely about public sector union contracts -- and nothing else. The remaining 93 percent of voters can't be bothered to care.
Meanwhile, state after state spirals into bankruptcy.
Jesse Jackson, Jr. is a chip off the old liberal demagogue block. His father should be proud.
The rest of America, that is, the one that is working hard to support themselves and their families should be outraged once again.
This is a plea for more of the big government liberal agenda to further burden the overtaxed taxpayer into having more of their paycheck vaporized in support of those who are largely irresponsible and indolent.
More government sanctioned wealth/income transfer.
Republican Governors Scott Walker of Wisconsin, Chris Christie of New Jersey and Mitch Daniels of Indiana are showing firm, principled leadership in their respective states in support of their citizens and taxpayers. They embody the antithesis of the inept, impotent, radical, pro-union, anti-American “”president” Obama.
These Governors are fighting for fiscal responsibility and solvency of their states (for their taxpayers) and often face brutal, unwarranted attacks by Democrats and those on the Left including the news media and are risking political suicide. Obama, as evidenced by his wholly craven and irresponsible 2012 budget, is either trying to buy votes for 2012, seeks to undermine the financial underpinnings of America, is intellectually devoid of economic theory and its applications - or a combination of these (all 3 we believe).
We need to offer these Republicans as well as several of those in Congress such as Rep. Paul Ryan our full support such as by sending supportive emails, writing the local papers, calling talk radio and even attending and offering our services and time to the local Tea Party and/or Republican Party.
Finally, we have some politicians who are there for us, defending our interests.
Daniels and Christie Light Fuse Under GOP Lawmakers
Michael Barone 2/21/2011
As congressional Republicans mull whether to address the government's long-term fiscal problems -- House Republican leaders are being pushed by the 87 freshmen to do so, while some Senate Republicans are seeking some bipartisan accords with Democratic colleagues -- two Republican governors barreled into Washington with the message that the lawmakers better get moving. And that congressional Republicans might do just fine politically if they do.
The two Republican governors are Mitch Daniels of Indiana, who spoke to a Conservative Political Action Committee dinner Feb. 11, and Chris Christie of New Jersey, who spoke at American Enterprise Institute (where I am a resident fellow) on Feb. 16.
In style, they're a contrast. Daniels is slight, balding and spoke quietly from a carefully prepared text. Christie is large and spoke bombastically without notes. But in substance, they were much the same.
They were both mightily concerned with what Daniels called "the red menace" -- "the debts our nation has amassed for itself over decades of indulgence." He warned that "federal spending commitments now in place will bring about the leviathan state" and "the slippage of the United States into a gray parity with the other nations of this earth."
The response, he said, must be "the creation of new Social Security and Medicare compacts" that "reserve their funds for those most in need of them." And "our morbidly obese federal government needs not just behavior modification but bariatric surgery."
Daniels also called for changes in taxes, regulation and energy policy, and he roiled some conservatives by saying that defense shouldn't get a free pass. He roiled others by ignoring the cultural issues on which he suggested last June we should have a "truce."
But his central message was that Republicans must address entitlements -- Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. Which Barack Obama conspicuously failed to do in the budget plan he released a few days after Daniels' speech.
Christie was less elegant and even more blunt than his Hoosier colleague. Drawing on his struggles with New Jersey's public employee unions over pensions and benefits, he turned to national issues.
"My children's future and your children's future are more important than political strategy," he began. "You're going to have to raise the retirement age for Social Security. Whoa, I just said it, and I'm still standing here. I did not vaporize.
"We have to reform Medicare because it costs too much and it is going to bankrupt us. Once again, lightning did not come through the windows and strike me dead. And we have to fix Medicaid because it's not only bankrupting the federal government, it's bankrupting every state government."
Obama, he said, was offering "the candy of American politics" -- high-speed rail, plug-in cars -- and congressional Republicans so far haven't offered much more. If those he campaigned for don't, he said, "the next time they'll see me in their district is with my arm around their primary opponent."
Washington insiders and old-timers tend to think Republicans would be foolish to heed Daniels' and Christie's advice. Talking about entitlements is supposed to be the third rail of American politics.
"I don't think it's fatal," Christie said. "You just have to have the spine to take the lead," and if you ask for shared sacrifice and don't let people game the system, voters will respond.
Daniels and Christie both said that in traveling around their states they get the sense that voters support their major policy changes and are ready for more. The political numbers tend to back them up.
Daniels was elected to a second term in 2008 by a 58 percent to 40 percent margin, even as Barack Obama was carrying the state. In 2010, Republicans transformed the Indiana House from 52-48 Democratic to 60-40 Republican, and their margin in the state Senate is 37-13.
In the popular vote for U.S. House of Representatives, a good proxy for national partisan sentiment, Republicans in Indiana led 56 percent to 39 percent in 2010, up 10 points from 2008.
Daniels and Christie have been in the trenches, facing opposition legislatures, addressing fundamental issues and getting results voters like. Are congressional Republicans listening?
As goes Wisconsin, may go the rest of the states. What is transpiring in this state is of profound importance for the present and the future of many of the states, their citizens and youth, taxpayers and future generations. This is a struggle between citizen and taxpayer rights, democracy and freedom versus greedy, strangulating, corrupt self-serving public unions that have destroyed quality education and have brought the state to the precipice of fiscal disaster.
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and the state’s Republican Senators have bravely remained resolute in their positions to be fiscally responsible and prudent and protect the interests, rights and freedoms of the state’s citizens who elected them for this purpose. They are relentlessly being attacked not just by the state’s public unions but by other national unions, the far-left “mainstream” news media and even the Obama Administration through mostly through proxies such as Organizing for America. Tens of thousands of union members are being bused in (and paid) to protest and millions of dollars are being spent by these same unions to lie and mislead the public in order that they can retain their power and stranglehold over this state (and others) and its taxpayers.
This is a David versus Goliath fight. It is clearly not just this state’s issue – it will set a critical precedent with national consequences. Send e-mails.
We must vigorously support Gov. Scott Walker and the citizens of Wisconsin. Send supportive e-mails to his office. Write to newspapers, magazines, call in on radio. Inform your neighbors and have them do the same.
Help Scott Walker Today
Newt Gingrich 02/23/2011
It is vital that every one of us help Governor Scott Walker today.
In Madison, Wisconsin, we are witnessing a profound struggle between the right of the people to govern themselves and the power of entrenched, selfish interests to stop reforms and defy the will of the people.
In 2010, Wisconsin Republicans ran on a clear agenda of reforming government to gain control of spending. This agenda included many reforms to state government employee pay.
These reforms were desperately opposed by the Democrats and union bosses during the campaign and a full and vigorous debate on the merits of these reforms took place in the months before the election.
Then came the moment for the people of Wisconsin to make their choice – Election Day. And thanks in part to this bold agenda, the people of Wisconsin chose to switch control of the governorship, assembly and senate to Republicans.
The people of Wisconsin sent a clear message. They elected leaders that promised to change the way government operated in Madison. The will of the people was expressed through the ballot box, exactly how it is supposed to work in a representative democracy.
However, through a campaign of intimidation and cowardice, the government employee union bosses and the Democratic Party that is beholden to them, are trying to thwart the will of the people.
Every Democrat in the Wisconsin Senate, exploiting a rule that requires a quorum when voting on fiscal matters, has fled the state to prevent a promised government union reform bill from receiving a vote.
Worse, the government employee unions, with the backing of the Democratic Party - including the White House political operation, Organizing for America - have further paralyzed Wisconsin through a series of protests at the state capital.
Furthermore, while most state workers have shown up for work during the protests, some schools have been forced to close without enough teachers reporting. News stories have emerged that teachers have been receiving phony doctor’s notes to justify their absence.
This deliberately organized chaos has one goal - to intimidate Governor Walker and other elected reformers into abandoning the people of Wisconsin’s calls for reform.
A Fight over a Fundamental Question: Who’s In Charge?
The showdown in Madison is precisely the crisis between elected self government and organized self interest seeking to impose their will through intimidation which led Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, during the coal miner’s strike of 1984-85, to warn, “No government or no people can surrender to that kind of mob violence or intimidation, because if we did democracy would be finished.”
This capacity for government employee unions to blackmail the American people is exactly what President Franklin Delano Roosevelt worried about when he warned in 1937:
“All government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining…cannot be transplanted into the public service…The very nature and purpose of Government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with Government employee organizations…Their employer is the whole people, who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives in Congress. Accordingly, administrative officials and employees alike are governed and guided, and in many instances restricted, by laws which establish policies, procedures, or rules in personnel matters.”
We are witnessing one of the most important struggles in modern America.
At stake is a fundamental question of elected government: who’s in charge?
Governor Scott Walker and Wisconsin Republicans, after receiving a clear mandate from the people of their state, have placed the very legitimacy of representative self government on the line by demanding profound reform of government unions.
Going in, Scott knew this would become a life and death struggle with the forces of the old order.
As Milwaukee County Executive (the only Republican elected there in modern times, Scott won three times) he learned that every major reform designed to save money or improve services would be opposed by the government employee union leadership. Indeed, throughout the United States, government employee unions have been consistent advocates for raising taxes and against reforms to save money and improve service.
From this experience, Scott concluded the only way to make government affordable and enable Wisconsin to attract new jobs was through fundamental reform of state government employee unions.
Callista and I helped launch the Scott Walker for Governor Campaign with a huge event in Milwaukee. During the following year I campaigned with him and heard him make the case for reforming the government unions.
At an event in October 2010, I remember Scott vividly describing the stakes, saying we can no longer function as a society “where the public employees are the ‘haves’ and the taxpayers who foot the bill are the ‘have-nots.’”
When the people of Wisconsin voted last November they knew exactly who they were electing.
Governor Scott Walker's union reform proposals today are precisely the union reform platform he campaigned on for all of 2010. Furthermore, the Governor's proposals were validated by the Republican state legislative successes.
It is in this context of fairly won elections in which Wisconsinites consciously chose reform over the status quo that the government employee unions and Democratic Party have decided they would side against the people.
President Obama's support for the government union bosses is a fundamental betrayal of the principle of self government. The leadership and resources the Democratic National Committee is putting into anti-reform demonstrations and other activities proves what a reactionary, anti-reform force the Left has become.
As Goes Wisconsin…?
This showdown started as a Wisconsin story, but the decision by the national Democratic Party and the intense media interest has made it national in scope.
Government employee union leaders know they are losing the battle for public opinion and that reform is coming. A Clarus Poll found that 64% of the American people do not think government employees should be represented by unions.
A victory for the forces of reform in Wisconsin would provide enormous energy on government reform efforts to balance budgets in Ohio, New York, New Jersey and elsewhere. It will also extend to other issues like meaningful education reform.
However, a defeat for Walker and the reformers would embolden those who seek to preserve the status quo. Yesterday, borrowing a play from their brethren in Wisconsin, Democrats in the Indiana House fled their state to prevent a vote on a measure that would make Indiana a right to work state.
That’s why it is vital for all who voted in favor of reforming government, wherever you live, to support Scott Walker and the Wisconsin reformers.
The most important way you can help is by articulating the case for self government and government reform to your friends and neighbors.
Call your Senators, Congressmen, Governor and state legislators to urge them to stand with the reformers in Wisconsin.
Call talk radio and write letters to the editor.
And if you have friends in Wisconsin, contact them and convince them to be on the side of reform.
Click here for some facts and figures about the sensible reforms Governor Walker is proposing.
We are witnessing and soon will be directly or indirectly involved in a “class” struggle, first at the state level then nationally. This isn’t one of the middle vs. the upper or lower class. This is one between greedy, reckless, public unions who can never be paid or compensated enough versus the hard working taxpayer who is footing their extortionate costs through ever escalating taxes.
These public union employees are paraded around often as compassionate teachers who just want the best for your children. Meanwhile, they and other in the public sector are taking home 40% to 90% more than comparable jobs in the private sector – that is you and me. In fact, many taxpayers are struggling to put food on the table and keep a roof over their heads but still are coerced into paying for these avaricious union members.
Have scores from knowledge tests skyrocketed during these past 20 or 30 years?
Of course not!
They have been plummeting while teacher compensation packages are going through the roof, resulting in many states approaching the precipice of bankruptcy. Our international ranking regarding the education level of our children has dropped embarrassingly and precipitously.
As expected, “president” Obama has now insinuated himself in the Wisconsin situation, siding with the union protestors and against the state. This is quite reminiscent of his stance against Arizona.
Obama, the anti-President, and anti-American in Chief, is yet again acting in a divisive, anti-State and anti-citizen fashion.
Fortunately, Wisconsin’s Republican Gov. Walker rebuked Obama in a quite forceful and appropriate way.
We applaud and strongly Gov. Walker’s strong leadership and responsible and principled stand (as well as the Republicans in that state’s Senate). They must remain resolute and protect the hardworking taxpayers in that state.
Their example may very well serve as the paradigm for what is anticipated to be a struggle that will be repeated across the country in many states.
The honest hardworking citizens of America must be the ultimate victor.
Unions' Fight in Madison Is a Disgrace
Larry Kudlow 2/18/2011
The Democratic/government-union days of rage in Madison, Wis., are a disgrace. Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan calls it Cairo coming to Madison. But the protesters in Egypt were pro-democracy. The government-union protesters in Madison are anti-democracy; they are trying to prevent a vote in the legislature. In fact, Democratic legislators themselves are fleeing the state so as not to vote on Gov. Scott Walker’s budget cuts.
That’s not democracy.
The teachers’ union is going on strike in Milwaukee and elsewhere. They ought to be fired. Think Ronald Reagan PATCO in 1981. Think Calvin Coolidge police strike in 1919.
The teachers’ union on strike? Wisconsin parents should go on strike against the teachers’ union. A friend e-mailed me to say that the graduation rate in Milwaukee public schools is 46 percent. The graduation rate for African-Americans in Milwaukee public schools is 34 percent. Shouldn’t somebody be protesting that?
Governor Walker is facing a $3.6 billion budget deficit, and he wants state workers to pay one-half of their pension costs and 12.6 percent of their health benefits. Currently, most state employees pay nothing for their pensions and virtually nothing for their health insurance. That’s an outrage.
Nationwide, state and local government unions have a 45 percent total-compensation advantage over their private-sector counterpart. With high-pay compensation and virtually no benefits co-pay, the politically arrogant unions are bankrupting America -- which by some estimates is suffering from $3 trillion in unfunded liabilities.
Exempting police, fire, and state troopers, Governor Walker would end collective bargaining over pensions and benefits for the rest. Collective bargaining for wages would still be permitted, but there would be no wage hikes above the CPI. Unions could still represent workers, but they could not force employees to pay dues. In exchange for this, Walker promises no furloughs for layoffs.
Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels is also pushing a bill to limit the collective-bargaining rights of teachers for wages and wage-related benefits. Similar proposals are being discussed in Idaho and Tennessee. In Ohio, Gov. John Kasich wants to restrict union rights across-the-board for all state and local government workers. More generally, both Democratic and Republican governors across the country are taking on the extravagant pay of government unions.
Why? Because taxpayers won’t stand for it anymore.
In an interesting twist on this story, even private unions are revolting against government unions. Private unions pay taxes, too. And they don’t have near the total compensation of the public unions. It’s no wonder they’re fed up.
So, having lost badly in the last election, the government-union Democrats in Wisconsin have taken to the streets. This is a European-style revolt, like those seen in Greece, France, and elsewhere. So it becomes greater than just a fiscal issue. It is becoming a law-and-order issue.
President Obama, who keeps telling us he’s a budget cutter, has taken the side of the public unions. John Boehner correctly rapped Obama’s knuckles for this. If the state of Wisconsin voters elected a Chris Christie-type governor with a Republican legislature, then it is a local states’ rights issue.
But does President Obama even know that the scope of collective bargaining for federal employees is sharply limited? According to the Manhattan Institute, federal workers are forbidden to collectively bargain for wages or benefits. Instead, pay increases are determined annually through legislation.
Meanwhile, Gov. Scott Walker said it would be “wise” for President Obama to keep his attentions on Washington, not Wisconsin. “We’re focused on balancing our budget,” he said in a television interview. “It would be wise for the president and others in Washington to be focused on balancing their budget, which they’re a long ways from doing.”
Amen.
Obama should stay out. And Governor Walker should stand tall and stick to his principles. A nationwide taxpayer revolt against public unions can save the country. Otherwise, the spiraling out-of-control costs of state public-union entitlements will destroy the local fisc, just as surely as the unreformed federal entitlements of Social Security and health care are wrecking our national finances.
Yesterday, we reviewed and critiqued (Obama’s Budget Is Not “Winning the Future”) some of the details of Obama’s indefensible budget particularly regarding the unsustainable and irresponsible deficit spending which he has defended as part of his plan of “winning the future”. Today, we scrutinize it as regards to its record spending, massive tax increases and the subsequent effects on the economy and unemployment future financial insolvency.
The whole plan is a deception that will likely not be approved by the House. Interestingly, Obama plays shrewd politics (possibly by accident?) by all but ignoring entitlement reform. This way, he avoids taking a tremendous amount of heat by not proposing substantial but necessary reductions to Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid which will likely prove extremely unpopular to large blocs of voters and, instead, places the onus on the Republicans to do the dirty work.
This could be politically devastating for them as it is a Catch - 22. Addressing these entitlements may save the economy but could lose the Republicans enough voters to result in the Democrats regaining control of the House and greater control of the Senate again - and we know where that will lead...
Conversely, by not seriously tackling these entitlements, the country will crash and burn in bankruptcy with disastrous consequences for all.
Obama's Gutless Budget Proposal
Investor’s Business Daily 02/14/2011
Spending: The White House's new budget is far worse than merely bad. By not attacking the underlying cause of our debt explosion and by raising taxes, it will lead inevitably to a weaker economy and perhaps even default.
Numerous studies show that if you cut runaway spending in a serious way, the deficit will disappear. Oblivious to this fact, President Obama in his new budget chooses to make puny cuts and instead to focus on tax hikes — the last thing our stumbling economy needs right now.
All told, the new taxes total $1.5 trillion over 10 years — ranging from new levies on small-business owners and corporations to taxes on energy and banks. Passed as is, the Obama budget would make economic stagnation and 9% unemployment the status quo.
Yet, in his "Budget Message" released with the numbers, the president says that his spending plan "lays out a path for how we can pay down these debts and free the American economy from their burden."
The White House pledge to "pay down these debts" is beyond absurd. The expected deficit this year alone — $1.6 trillion — is greater than all the "deficit cuts" Obama has in 10 years.
Obama's "spending freeze" is likewise a gimmick. In just two years since he took office, discretionary spending has surged 24% — 84% if you count stimulus. "Freezing" spending at this elevated level is little more than numbers legerdemain, a kind of three-card monte played on sucker taxpayers.
Under Obama's plan, federal tax revenues are forecast to rise from 15% of GDP — their current level — to 20% of GDP, a jump of 33% as a share of the economy. Spending, however, isn't cut at all; it's 25% of GDP today, and that's exactly where it will be in 2020.
Even then, we'll have a deficit of over $1.2 trillion. Indeed, over the next decade, thanks to persistent red ink, total debt nearly doubles, soaring from $13.5 trillion in 2010 to $26.3 trillion by 2021. At that level, we as a nation become insolvent.
Obama seems to be playing a political game of chicken with the Republicans — betting they won't have the guts to make the cuts that he refuses to make. And if they do, he'll blame them for the pain that results.
No doubt that's why he totally ignored his own "bipartisan" deficit-cutting commission, which in December recommended big spending cuts and entitlement reform to reduce future budget shortfalls. Obviously, Obama took his copy of the report and shredded it.
As the budget debate heats up, Americans will hear that, as bad as Obama's plan is, the GOP "hasn't come up with an alternative." But that's a bald lie.
Rep. Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee, has issued an extensive, detailed blueprint that would sharply reduce deficits and reform entitlements — and put America back to work again.
The only question is, will Congress have the guts to pass it? And if so, will American voters be smart enough to embrace it?
With brazen arrogance and unfettered prevarication and sophistry, Obama claims that his new budget for 2012 will be a down payment on deficit reduction and part of the plan of “winning the future”. Meanwhile, his $3.7 trillion plan includes at least a $1.65 trillion deficit, substantially exceeding his outrageous and previous record setting deficit of $1.3 trillion. It also includes part of his planned 10 year tax hike of $1.6 trillion.
So will this massive deficit spending actually reduce the debt?
Of course not! This is so elementary that even a cave man could figure this out.
But this is no surprise ... we are dealing with Obama.
Obama Has Already Thrown in Towel on 'Winning the Future'
David Limbaugh 2/15/2011
It's pretty hard to stomach when President Obama even talks in terms of cutting the deficit, because his entire economic philosophy compels him to keep spending as if his goal were to impoverish our children and because he continues, in fact, to spend at such bankrupting levels.
Reuters reports that Obama's proposed budget would cut the deficit by $1.1 trillion over 10 years. Are you kidding me? We wouldn't even come close to balancing the budget if we applied all those cuts in one year, but spread out over 10 years, they are insulting. Plus, many of these "cuts" would be solely the result of bringing troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan.
We also learned that Obama's deficit for 2011 would not be the outrageously obscene $1.5 trillion the Congressional Budget Office revealed last month, which was already substantially above last year's $1.3 trillion, but a staggering $1.65 trillion.
With their signature audacity and cynicism, White House officials dubbed the administration's 10-year plan a "down payment" on future deficit reduction. I'm not sure that even George Orwell could wrap his arms around such sophistry. To call an enormous increase in an already gargantuan budget deficit a "down payment" on anything (other than this nation's imminent financial ruin) does violence to the English language.
The administration would have us believe that its enormous deficits are the new base line and that as long as we keep deficits at, say, $1 trillion, we are moving toward balancing the budget -- wholly ignoring that our national debt would be increasing by $1 trillion every year.
You don't make progress toward balancing the budget by deliberately jacking up federal discretionary spending to unprecedented levels and then locking in those unsustainable figures with a spending freeze. You don't decrease deficits by first increasing them, and you can never make headway on reducing the national debt until you eliminate deficits altogether.
Putting aside the deceit in the term "down payment," what is with the administration's idea that we need to ease into fiscally responsible behavior? How can Obama and company pat themselves on the back for their perpetual deferrals of real budget cuts in exchange for endless empty promises that we're really going to get serious about this next year or the one after that?
The ugly truth is that they aren't serious about it, because, in addition to their paltry proposed cuts in discretionary spending, they're not even pretending to tackle the entitlement crisis, which is where the real fiscal problem lies, as everyone knows.
But get this: Despite these new horrifying budget projections, Obama's budget director, Jacob Lew, said on CNBC Monday morning, "Our budget also reduces the deficit. We've accomplished the goal which the commission set out to accomplish." Well, that must be news to Erskine Bowles, who heads that commission.
According to the Senate Budget Committee's ranking member, Jeff Sessions, Bowles said that the president's budget would come nowhere close to avoiding this fiscal crisis the nation is facing. Sessions said, "The president has not told us the truth."
Unfazed, Lew insists that Obama's budget would make a real difference and involve real sacrifice. "What I would tell you about this budget is it has a lot of pain." Pain? The only pain this budget could possibly cause is that to future generations of Americans.
Does that ever count for anything with these people?
When pressed about the administration's utter failure to address entitlements, Lew unapologetically said that it would be pointless to tackle them without bipartisan action. Come on. You can't possibly have bipartisan action on entitlements when Democrats have no intention of reforming them.
Meanwhile, President Obama says he's leading us toward "winning the future." "How?" you might ask. Well, he told a group of middle-school children in Maryland that the only way we can win the future is to make sure "that every American is equipped to compete with any worker, anywhere in the world." And the only way to do that "is if our government starts living within its means, if we start taking responsibility for our deficits."
So, let's make sure we understand him correctly. The only way we can win the future is if we balance the budget, yet he is barely committed even to appreciably reducing our current levels of bankrupting deficits, much less tackling the far greater problem of entitlements. In other words, using his own metric, he's thrown in the towel on "winning the future," even while making it his 2012 re-election slogan. And people wonder why some speculate as to whether he's wreaking this havoc on purpose.
All of this underscores just how imperative it is that Republicans seize this moment. There's no time to haggle over what $100 billion in cuts would mean or to delay getting behind entitlement restructuring, such as the plan envisioned by Rep. Paul Ryan in "A Roadmap for America's Future" or one similarly serious. Time's up, guys.
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