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"[A] wise and frugal government ... shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government." --Thomas Jefferson
Government & Politics
The Leftist Vision for Government
The Obama deficit will weigh the nation down
As we noted last week, Barack Obama is now paying lip service to fiscal conservatism by calling for a "freeze" on federal spending in the face of huge deficits. Yet the freeze would apply to only a small fraction of spending and save a measly $15 billion -- and not until 2011. With Monday's budget release, in which outlays will reach $3.72 trillion for fiscal 2010 and $3.83 trillion in 2011, this political posturing becomes all the more disingenuous.
While the projected deficit will hit a record $1.56 trillion this year and a cumulative $5.08 trillion over the next five years, spending will reach 25.4 percent of GDP this year, a post-World War II record. The phony freeze simply sets a new floor for government largesse -- a floor that's nearly 30 percent higher than in 2008.
The Wall Street Journal reports, "Despite talk of 'tough choices' in [Monday's] document, the Administration wants $25 billion in new spending for states for Medicaid, $100 billion for yet another jobs 'stimulus,' big boosts in spending for low-income family programs, for health research, heating assistance and education." Additionally, the budget moves Pell Grants out of the "discretionary" spending column and into the permanent entitlement one at a cost of $307 billion over 10 years.
To finance this growth in government, including the assumption that ObamaCare and cap-n-tax become law, the budget includes nearly $2 trillion in tax increases over the next decade. Yet Obama had the gall in his SOTU to declare, "Now, let me repeat: We cut taxes." Characteristically, the budget drops one of these cuts after 2012 -- the $400 payroll tax credit.
When Congress repeals the Bush tax cuts and returns the top rate from 35 percent to 39.6 percent, Obama's budget will increase taxes by $1 trillion for individuals earning more than $200,000 a year and couples earning $250,000. The 33 percent rate would also rise to 36 percent. Capital gains and dividends would be taxed at 20 percent, up from 15 percent now. Some deductions for higher wage earners would also be reduced. Yet the Obama budget would extend the Bush tax cuts for singles and couples under the $200,000/$250,000 threshold. With this, we suppose, would come a grudging admission that the Bush tax cuts benefited everyone.
Obama's class warfare and targeted tax increases are outrageous, to say the least. Many of those so-called "wealthy" people who he thinks can spare a dime are small business owners and entrepreneurs who will now be unable to hire that additional employee because of higher taxes.
These are just a few examples of the appalling items in the new budget. Our primary objections, however, are rooted not in numbers but in the nation's founding ideals. Most of the present federal budget is extraconstitutional. Provisions for Medicaid, jobs, family programs, health research, heating assistance and education -- all items mentioned above -- are nowhere to be found in the Constitution.
For someone like Obama, for whom everything begins and ends with government, the Constitution is little more than parchment under glass. He repeatedly asserts "that Washington is the answer to everything," writes columnist and former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan. In his SOTU, she adds, "The people are good but need guidance -- from Washington. The middle class is anxious, and its fears can be soothed -- by Washington. Washington can 'make sure consumers ... have the information they need to make financial decisions.' Washington must 'make investments,' 'create' jobs, increase 'production' and 'efficiency.'"
While he was California Governor, Ronald Reagan said, "This is the issue [at hand]: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves."
The budget is further proof that Obama and the Democrats think that they can spend your money and plan your life better than you can. That's the antithesis of liberty.
Hope 'n' Change: Obama Crashes GOP Retreat
On the campaign trail, Barack Obama promised to change the culture in Washington. But this "change" has been little more than trying to force people to support his socialist views, then labeling them as obstructionist when they don't. That plan was on full display as Obama paid a visit to the House GOP conference retreat. He spent a lot of camera time explaining what the Democrats were trying to do with health care, and he hammered Republicans for being "obstructionist."
At the same time, he slyly confessed that he hasn't kept those campaign promises, one of which is that people could keep the health insurance they have after ObamaCare mauls the market. "There's some stray cats and dogs that got in there that we were eliminating, we were in the process of eliminating," the president said of various White House pets, such as bribing Sens. Ben Nelson and Mary Landrieu, that made it into the health care bill. Furthermore, the "we" symbolizes the fact that the Democrats completely rejected any input from Republicans in crafting health care legislation -- and they have no one to blame but themselves for the public's rejection of their plan.
Speaking of public backlash, Republican Scott Brown of Massachusetts was finally sworn in Thursday, meaning Senate Democrats no longer enjoy a 60-seat super majority in the upper chamber. Losing what the media continue to call "Ted Kennedy's seat" in last month's special election was a severe blow to Democrats and is, we think, a harbinger of things to come in November.
Obama isn't deterred, however. He told Senate Democrats, "All that's changed in the last two weeks is that our party has gone from having the largest Senate majority in a generation to the second largest Senate majority in a generation." Doesn't sound like he's learned anything.
Meanwhile, lawmakers in 34 states have expressed their concern over the potential for federal meddling in health care by filing or proposing amendments to their state constitutions that would reject broad health insurance mandates by Washington. The plan, which is widespread but not necessarily coordinated across state lines, calls for creating a legal barrier that would prevent the federal government from forcing people to purchase health insurance and prevent businesses from being compelled to provide certain coverage standards.
This Week's 'Alpha Jackass' Award
"A little bit of time and quiet could help. Maybe over time, people will have a chance to understand what is in the legislation." --Sen. Mark Pryor (D-AR), whom the LA Times describes as a "conservative Democrat," but who received a 4 out of 100 rating from the American Conservative Union last year
Memo to Mark: Maybe people already do understand what's in the legislation, and maybe that's precisely why it's dead in the minds of most Americans. Leave it that way.
New & Notable Legislation
The House voted 217-212 Thursday to raise the federal debt limit by $1.9 trillion to a mind-numbing total of $14.3 trillion. Democrats provided every "yes" vote, as they did when the Senate passed the same legislation last week. Lest we think $14.3 trillion is "enough," however, the Treasury announced Wednesday that the nation could hit that level by the end of February. That's right, this month.
Speaking of deficits, Social Security has reached that long predicted moment when it will take in less in taxes than it spends on benefits. Fortune magazine reports, "Instead of helping to finance the rest of the government, as it has done for decades, our nation's biggest social program needs help from the Treasury to keep benefit checks from bouncing -- in other words, a taxpayer bailout." Since the 1960s, Social Security has indeed not been a retirement plan, but rather just another spending item. Revenues have been spent, not saved. Now, Congress can't kick the can down the road any longer -- the deficits are here today. Expect another tax increase as the "solution."
Senate Democrats unveiled their latest "jobs agenda" Thursday with a vote to come next week. Another 20,000 jobs were lost in January (though the unemployment rate fell to 9.7 percent) on top of 150,000 in December (revised downward from 85,000), so Democrats feel the need to do something -- anything -- to "create" jobs. Their plan includes tax breaks for small businesses, money for construction projects by state and local governments, health care subsidies and benefits for the unemployed, money for state and local governments to save education jobs, and, last but not least, incentives to weatherize buildings. We were skeptical until we got to that part, but weatherizing should fix everything.
The Senate Committee on Rules and Administration took up initial proposals this week in a possible legislative response to the Supreme Court's decision on campaign finance restrictions. Two weeks ago, the Court struck down portions of McCain-Feingold that unconstitutionally restricted free speech for corporations. Undeterred by a thing so malleable as the Constitution, however, congressional leftists vow to press forward. Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) admitted that the Constitution would have to be changed in order to restrict free speech, saying, "I think we need a constitutional amendment to make clear that corporations do not have the same free speech rights as individuals." That's the spirit of 1787.
From the Left: Nice Work, if You Can Get It
Ah, the joys of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's life: air travel and junkets paid for by those peons, the taxpayers. While her status as second in line to presidential succession mandates that her travel be more secure than simply flying coach next to some guy with exploding underwear, documents obtained by the watchdog group Judicial Watch reveal that San Fran Nan wasn't exactly frugal in her manner of flying. In just two years, she has led 103 congressional delegations to far-flung corners of the nation and world -- about one per week -- racking up a bill of $2.1 million. Members of her family tagged along on 31 of these trips.
It wasn't just the air travel, either. We the People paid for luxury hotel rooms, bar tabs and fine dining at numerous stops on Pelosi's world tour. It wouldn't do for members of Congress and their staff to eat at Denny's and stay at the Holiday Inn, would it? One three-day trip to the Gulf Coast, supposedly to check out Katrina damage, included 22 Democrat members of Congress and associated staffers and cost more than $65,000. The tab at Galatoire's five-star restaurant in New Orleans alone was more than $10,000.
The Pelosi revelations are neither as shocking nor surprising as they may have been a few years ago when she was disingenuously decrying the Republican "culture of corruption," but given the $3.8 trillion Barack Obama wants to blow in the coming fiscal year, our spendthrift "representatives" are at least leading by example.
O'Keefe Case Update
A couple of interesting allegations have surfaced in the federal case against ACORN-buster James O'Keefe and the incident in which he and three other men were accused of unlawful interference with the telephone system at Democrat Sen. Mary Landrieu's New Orleans office. Read more here.
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