Budget Battle BS

After watching and hearing the wrangling over the budget battle from afar, I’m not optimistic that conservatism will win this round. What I’ve heard and seen has been so far removed from reality that it’s starting to resemble a circus. Not that Washington politics has ever been rooted in reality, but this is getting ridiculous.

As a bullshitter par excellence myself, I must say I’ve never heard so many lies of commission and omission in my life.

Never.

Let’s start with a few facts, shall we? Our esteemed President’s favorite sport, right after golf, is blaming his predecessor George Bush for each and every little thing that’s currently wrong with our economy, from the debt, to inflation, skyrocketing gasoline prices, to post-nasal drip and painful rectal itch. It’s what he does.

Well, that may have worked for a while, but two and a half years into his term, that just doesn’t cut it anymore. One thing is very clear: Obama owns this economy, lock, stock, and rotting barrel.

I’ve been wanting to run this graph for a while, since everyone else in the blogosphere has. I know, me, Alabama, slow, etc.

We Who Follow These Things So You Don’t Have To know that Congress was taken over by the Democrats following the little fit the American voters had in 2006 when they tossed Republicans out in a grand display of displeasure with their spendthrift ways. They had controlled Congress and the White House and yet had failed to rein in spending.

Granted, we were in two wars, which always tend to be rather expensive affairs, but the economy was still roaring along. If you remember, the Mainstream Media looked upon any downturn in what we’d all gladly return to today as signs of the Coming Apocalypse. I’m sure y’all remember when the talking heads claimed DOOM! (Hi, Monty!) when the unemployment number figure rose a mortifying two tenths of one percentage point.

President Bush was an economic terrorist! Soon, dogs and cats would be sleeping together, there would be a river of evil slime running through New York sewers, oh, wait, that was a movie, never mind.

Still, I think today, everyone in the country would gladly go back in time to the days of essentially full employment and nonexistent inflation.

And just so everyone remembers, here are a few numbers from those days that the MSM said were so horrible: Unemployment was dreadfully high at 4.6% Gasoline was an unthinkable $2.25/gal. (Click on the History tab)

The horror.

As the chart above clearly shows, this debt crisis didn’t start until the Dems controlled Congress and Obama became President. Bush’s TARP was just the beginning of federal spending, soon to be followed by the Stimulus, a debacle of near-Biblical proportion that did a great deal to add to the deficit and nothing to solve our economic problems. Next up was ObamaCare, then the Dodd-Frank takeover of Wall Street, the bailouts of GM and Chrysler, Cash 4 Clunkers, the student loan takeover, an avalanche of new environmental regulations, Obama’s illegal oil drilling moratoriums in the Gulf, the list goes on. At the same time that the Pelosi-Reid Congress was spending the country into ruin, President Obama was busy putting the clamps on the private sector, resulting in the lowest amount of federal revenue since 1950.

My point is that the very same Democrats who got us into this mess are the ones currently striving with all their might to keep us in it.

One would think that Republicans would have a large cache of rhetorical ammunition in the way of facts to launch against the Dems in this battle, and one would be quite correct. But have they used any of it? No. They. Haven't.

Why this is is a wonderment to me, as I’m sure it is to you. Obama, Reid, and Pelosi clearly started this mess and are now blaming the Republicans for it. But, hey, it’s what they do. If you want just a taste of what the Dems are saying, you need look no further than this quote by DNC ChairThing, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz:

“Aren’t we at the point where the closer we get to chaos, the more concern that there should be about coming to the table and compromising with Democrats?” Wasserman Schultz asked. “This is not leadership. This is almost like dictatorship. I know they want to force the outcome that … their extremists would like to impose. But they are getting ready to spark panic and chaos, and they seem to be OK with that. And it’s just really disappointing, and potentially devastating.”

So, let me see if I have this straight: We’re the extremists for wanting Washington to act in a fiscally responsible way, just like we do in our lives? WTF? On what planet do you live, darlin’, where this makes any kind of sense?

Another thing, Debbie, your psychological projection is showing: it was President Obama who recently stated that he finds the idea of being a dictator “tempting” in a speech last week before the radical racist Mexican supremacist group La Raza.

I have a few questions for the GOP: why haven’t you called the Dems’ bluff yet? Why haven’t you guys used the word “obstructionist” to characterize the Senate Democrats repeated threats to squash any bill that comes out of the House? Or even used that term for the Presidents’ same threats? That’s a game anyone can play.

Why haven’t you pointed out that all this wild spending started when the Dems took over congress in 2007? And that Obama said it was only temporary? And that he also said he wanted to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term in office? You could even use a little bit of snark by saying you only want to help him fulfill his promise.

What are you guys waiting for? You’re clearly losing the public relations battle and yet you seem stricken by Bush’s Disease: you refuse to defend yourself with even a few simple facts that a lot of Americans already know. Facts that would work in your favor if only you'd say them out loud. Facts that would expose the Dems for the tax-and-spend radicals that they are.

You guys could be winning this and enjoying a much-needed boost in your popularity, and yet you seem reluctant to do so. I mean, hell, if I can do it, certainly you can too. It’s not rocket surgery.

You guys can’t even defend the concept of a free market economy nor point out how this administration is twisting it into something unrecognizable. All you’re doing is giving ammunition to those who wildly claim that capitalism doesn’t work. How can it, under these circumstances, when those we’ve elected to act in our place don’t understand even the basics of how our economy is supposed to work and pat themselves on the back for placing mountains of restrictions on it?

Mr. Boehner, why don’t you realize that you will be attacked for anything you do or say? You might as well be criticized for stating the truth. Doing that will strike a chord with the nation. You could step up to the podium armed with facts, yet you refuse to do so.

You can be cordial and biting at the same time without appearing to be whatever it is that you’re trying to avoid. We know you’re trying to be the adult in the room and you’re almost there. Almost.

If you were to try to appeal to the vast majority of hard working Americans who understand what it will take to get the country out of the Obama Depression, you’d find your own and congressional Republicans’ poll numbers would start climbing, thereby preparing the ground for the 2012 elections, which the GOP stands poised to win.

Your reluctance to embrace a truly smaller government makes the rest of us who are rooting for you question whether you really want that or if you are just another big government bureaucrat in disguise. Please stop acting as if last November’s elections didn’t mean anything and that Congressional Republicans don’t have a clear mandate to stop this Marxist/Socialist administration from further crippling our country’s economy.

It’s up to you, Mr. Speaker. An anxious country is waiting for you to tell us the truth and counter the lies and propaganda coming from the radical, leftist Alinskyites who have infested Washington.

It’s time to get your own ass in line.

Economy Monday – Obama Demands Concessions While Offering None

It’s Monday, boys and girls, and you know what that means when it comes to the wrangling over the Federal budget: not a lot got done over the weekend.

Oh, words were tossed about. President Obama continues to try to cast himself as the adult in the room, an image that the public is finding increasingly transparent. And by transparent, I mean that we can see right through it. Keith Henessey has a good post on the weekends’ lack of progress to solve our current fiscal crisis.

If you listened to the Sunday talk shows, particularly the ones on the so-called Mainstream Media channels, you’d just hear a recitation of all the White House talking points and very little in the way of real information. Personally, I can’t flagellate myself that way, especially when I know what needs to be done, as does everyone else.

I was reminded this weekend of a famous quote by former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher who once said that any British housewife could balance the budget. In that same spirit, any American could balance our budget. As I’ve stated before, Washington’s budget is no different from the budget of most American households, except there are a lot more decimal places and zeroes.

But you’d never know that if all you listened to were the MSM Sunday shows. Those alleged purveyors of knowledge leave out much more than they include when it comes to their reporting and their opinions on the budget battle. Bob Shieffer on CBS’ Face the Nation tried to corner Senator Marco Rubio on the issue yesterday. Rubio responded by saying this,

"The way the deal is currently structured right now, it gives the President the ability to raise the debt limit. But as I've said already on the problem; The debt limit is not really the problem here, the problem here is the debt.


"The debt limit is actually the easiest part of the problem. It's one vote away from being solved. But, if all we do is raise the debt limit and it's not accompanied by a credible solution to America's debt problem, we're in big trouble."

What you won’t hear from the MSM is the simple fact that the Democrat-controlled 111th Congress, led by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, is directly responsible for this crisis, along with President Obama. With Democrats in full control of the White House and Congress, they ran up our debt to stratospheric heights. We were told at the time that these increases were temporary. Now, President Obama is trying to make them permanent, all the while still managing to blame his predecessor for a problem that he created.

Not only that, his recent citing that some 80% of Americans favor tax increases has been proven false. In fact, Ace points this out rather adroitly in his dissection of an NPR poll where they gather one set of opinion statistics and report something completely misleading. Nice work, there.

Another voice of reason in this debate is Charles Krauthammer. He’s been making the rounds of the political talk shows with one question. When confronted with the false MSM talking point that it’s the Republicans who are blocking the path to negotiation of a budget solution, he now asks the liberals, “Where is Obama’s plan?”


(h/t to Newsbusters.com)

That’s the best way to shut up liberals: confront them with facts. Works every time.

What’s needed is what I call The Neo Plan to reduce the budget. “Cuts, lots of cuts.”

There are plans out there. Curiously, President Obama chooses to ignore the recommendations of his own Simpson-Bowles Commission while he criticizes the Ryan plan. If you want to see a credible plan that imitates what you or I would do with our own budget mirrored at the federal level, be sure to check out this link from Financial Times, Lawrence Solomon: A Tea Party Budget.

I shall tease you with this,

First, scrap government departments that overlap with functions traditionally and primarily met at the state level, and that often do more harm than good. The country’s educational performance declined after the federal government imposed its educational priorities on the states, which have the prime responsibility for education. Scrap the Department of Education, a failed Carter-era experiment that had its roots in president Dwight Eisenhower’s desire to imbue the education system with Cold War thinking, and out goes a US$77-billion annual expense. Likewise, scrap all or parts of the Department of Energy, the Small Business Administration, the Federal Transit Authority, Federal Highway Administration, Housing and Urban Development and other federal areas that intrude on state and local responsibilities. Apart from the dollar savings from eliminating duplication and cancelling perverse projects, the quality of public services is likely to rise when the former federal functions move closer to home in state or local government, or become privatized and are delivered in the private sector.

It should be noted that the Department of Energy has one useful function: there’s a lot of military research and development that goes on there that shouldn’t be cut. That’s the part we need to keep.

One important thing to remember in any budget talks is this: when liberals and even so-called moderate politicians speak of cuts to federal programs, what they call a cut is actually a cut in the rate of increase of funding. That’s built in to the budget, sometimes to allow for inflation, sometimes for population increases. It doesn’t take much to see that an ever-growing federal budget is a given, and is a big part of why it’s out of control.

What’s needed are drastic cuts, meaning real, live reductions in staff, salaries, and benefits for these bloated bureaucracies and, at a minimum, a moratorium on any new regulations combined with a thorough review of the effectiveness of those regulations. Just like President Obama promised, but hasn’t done. It's almost like he has no idea how the economy works.

Also, note that President Obama has not offered up one single concession of his own. At no time has he suggested even one of his signature programs for cuts. Not the Stimulus, not ObamaCare, not the bailouts of the auto companies, not the student loan takeovers, nothing. All of his programs must remain in place unaltered.
Who’s being the rigid ideologue now?

Obama Threatens Social Security Checks if Budget Deal Not Reached

Wow. I mean, just, wow.

Remember that ad that Democrats ran a few weeks back accusing Paul Ryan (through his budget plan) of pushing Granny off a cliff in her wheelchair?

This one?


How prescient. Except for one thing: it’s not Ryan who wants to push Granny off the cliff, it’s President Obama. He said yesterday that he couldn’t guarantee that the August Social Security checks could be mailed out if Congressional Republicans didn’t give him the massive tax increases he is demanding.

So, who wants to remake that ad now?

This is beyond the pale. Obama has pulled back the curtain on his true nature, that being a Chicago henchman who’s willing to hurt anyone, and I mean anyone, to get his way. Do I need to explain just how despicable this is to anyone?

You should be ashamed of yourself, Mr. President.

As I’ve covered earlier, should a debt deal not be reached, we would not default. In that case, the Constitution requires that foreign debt be paid first, with the remaining funds to be allocated by the Treasury Department. But, the demagogues on the left would have us believe that the world would end in a just a few hours, and it would all be the fault of the Republicans in Congress.

Don’t be fooled.

Mark Levin lays out the situation well. Take a listen to better understand just what it is that Obama’s doing with regard to our debt crisis. (h/t The Right Scoop)

American Thinker blog also has a good post on the debt. Worth a read to get up to speed, too.

Naturally, if you receive Social Security, this sent a chill up your spine. It was designed to do that, and by inference, indict John Boehner, Ryan, Mitch McConnell and anyone else who dares to resist Obama’s efforts to bankrupt our nation and to make them look like the bad guys in this situation.

However, it won’t work. It can’t work.

Obama just insured his defeat in the 2012 presidential election. What? Somebody had to say it. Do you honestly think that Obama won’t be blamed for his decision to stop those checks?

This is the thing that Obama owns now. No one else brought it up. It would be within his power to tell Tim “Turbo Tax” Geithner how to prioritize the payments. If he feels that Social Security recipients shouldn’t get their checks, but that the EPA, the NEA, Planned Parenthood and PBS keep their offices open, there is no one else to blame.

And believe me, there would be political hell to pay if he does, both for him and the corrupt Progressives in Washington that got us into this mess through their irresponsible spending spree that began in 2007 with Nancy Pelosi’s takeover of the House.

Good.

Many seniors I know, since they’re retired, follow politics. It’s a fun hobby (in a masochistic way, to be sure) and it keeps their intellectual muscles toned. And I’m certain that once word of this reprehensible possibility gets around, Obama’s image will suffer a huge downward spike, as it should.

So long, Barry.

While others in the blogosphere aren’t quite as optimistic as I am about the negative political fallout from Obama’ statement yesterday, there are still quite a few who can see through this blatant effort by Obama to scare seniors. Here’s a roundup.

Michelle Malkin, Obama: If We Don’t Get a Deal, I Can’t Guarantee We’ll Be Sending Out Social Security Checks on August 3rd.

NewsMax, Obama Threatens August Social Security Checks in Debt Ceiling Gamble.

The Wall Street Journal Online, Raise Taxes or Granny Gets It.

NiceDeb, Debt Ceiling News Round-Up: “In The End, All This Is About Who Gets The Blame”

And over at Ace of Spades HQ, you think I’m bad about peeing in your economic Wheaties on Mondays, Monty brings the DOOM! every morning, complete with kitteh.

I guess this stuff is finally getting serious.

Another Real, Live, Blog Post

I'm starting to notice that I can't keep up with all the stuff going on, at least on the opinion side of it. Me, Alabama, slow, you know the drill.

And since variety is the spice of life, (and here I always thought it was Tiger Sauce, which is great on eggs, with a beer, which is the official after-gig breakfast) I thought all eight of you might enjoy another post that looks more like a real, live, blog. I kinda enjoy them too.

I watched Obama's presser yesterday about the budget negotiations. Several things struck me, chief among them is the very casual attitude of this President in general. The second thing I noticed was his overall demeanor, that of someone who suddenly discovers he's losing a very expensive hand of poker. I coulda swore I saw some genuine fear in his eyes there a few times. It was subtle to be sure, but still, I've learned to trust these little flashes of insight, however small they may be.

Another thing I've noticed about Obama is his intellectual inconsistency. He will literally say anything at any time on any subject to advance his power and his own sense of self. Here he is in 2009, saying that raising taxes in the middle of a recession is a bad idea. And here he is yesterday digging in his rhetorical heels about the need for a "balanced" approach to the debt problem, which means he wants to raise taxes dramatically to fund what we were told was a temporary increase in spending.

This lack of a consistent stance is indicative of a larger problem. Living in a swirl of thought like a fart in a hurricane is no way for President to be. However, he did once mention that he was a blank screen upon which the nation could project any political impression of him it wished. Um, maybe we thought we were looking in a mirror...

Obama speaks, the Dow drops. There's a bumper sticker in there somewhere.

My Senator, Marco Rubio, knocks it out of the park with this statement, "Everything is worse under Obama." Video at the link.

What President Obama Doesn't Understand About Americans and the Debt Ceiling Debate, from Fox News online. This is not an all-inclusive list, by the way.

Today is the day the bill to repeal the incandescent light bulb ban goes to a vote in Congress. You might want to give your legislator a call and recommend that he/she/it vote in favor. Also, George Bush, what in the hell were you thinking when you signed this bill?

Also, there's an important local vote out in Los Angeles today. Janice Hahn, who has been funneling money to local gang members, among other nefarious acts, must be defeated in her bid for the 36th California Congressional seat. All the sordid details are here. If you know anyone out there who lives in that district, please let them know about this and the importance of keeping her out of office. It's all of our civic duty.

OK, that about wraps it up for this edition of BlogBoy.

Unless, of course, you'd like a little space rock with some politics mixed in. If you've never heard of the band Klaatu, you are in for a real treat, especially if you like progressive music. This is one case in which the word "progressive" actually means something good. If you have a good sound system or headphones, crank it up.

To set this song up for you, it's about some space farers who travel around the universe in eighty days and happen upon the ruins of an ancient civilization about which next to nothing is known, except that they aren't around anymore.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present Politzania.



Or, the Obama National Anthem.

America Knows How To Fix the Budget – Why Doesn’t Washington?

It’s Monday morning and time for some arsenic in your coffee. You’re welcome.

As of this writing, the budget talks between Congress and the White House have collapsed. Thankfully, the Republicans stood their ground for a semi-sane solution to the impending deadline of August 2nd. This is the date that the Obama administration has deemed the point past which the oceans will stop receding, or something.

Oh wait, that’s when we’ll default on our massive debt obligations to our most favored trading nation, Communist China. But from what I can gather, this date is merely the one on which Obama can start his newest assault on House Republican for failing to approve his budget with $2T, yes, that’s a T, of tax increases.

We have plenty of revenue coming in to service these payments to our fine financial friends, but you’d never know it, especially if you relied on the Mainstream Media to keep you informed. Timmy “Turbo Tax” Geithner was interviewed on two MSM political talk shows yesterday, yet was never asked the one very simple question that might have calmed concerns in the markets: Do we have enough money coming in to pay our obligations? Click here to hear Geithner’s prefabricated, blame-the-Republicans interviews.

If that date passes without a budget, there will be repercussions, but if they are handled properly, this could force the bloated Obama administration to finally start living within its means, as the overwhelming majority of Americans want them to. We don’t want the debt ceiling raised, especially when there are cuts that can keep us under the present one.

Here’s the deal: we are constitutionally bound to pay these debts, as we should be. You may have seen this story on the Drudge Report where some Progressives, in a staggering reversal of their traditional ignorance of our Constitution, recently found within it an “obscure” provision that permits President Obama to sidestep Congress and proceed with his budget. Section 4 of the 14th Amendment, which states that “the validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law . . . shall not be questioned,” is cited as their justification for usurping what has been for the past oh, 235 years or so, the sole power of Congress to control America’s purse strings.

As you may have guessed, that’s not exactly true. Or close to true. Or even in the same room with the truth. Or the same building. I could keep going, but you get the idea.

Only by the most tortured of definitions could this even be considered as an excuse by Obama to increase our already staggering debt. It’s that pesky “authorized by law” thingy. Only Congress can generate the law, since that’s where all laws originate according to the Constitution. See, that was easy.

Apparently, it’s so simple, that the Soros-funded, radical, far-left Obama think tank Center for American Progress can’t understand it. But then again, we’re dealing pretty much in plain English here, so their apparent confusion is to be expected.

But I’m digressing all over the place.

What this means is that our debt obligations will take priority over other expenditures. We’ll pay our good buddies, the ChiComs, first. After that money is spent, then the rest of Washington’s vast richness of departments, like the Department of Showing African Men How to Clean Their Genitals After Sex, might just be forced to get by with a little less money for a while.

If, and that’s a big if, House Republicans do it just right, they can start to reduce the drastic amount of spending that Obama said was only temporary. After all, that’s what we sent them there to do in the Great Shellacking of 2010. They have a clear mandate, one of the clearest in a generation. What this administration is doing with regard to the budget is bordering on can abuse.
They could claim that all these cuts were the direct result of Obama’s refusal to recognize fiscal reality, because they’d be right. They could just say that they’re helping Obama do what he said he’d do, namely cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term.
Remember that?

They’d just be doing it in a slightly different way, the way you and I would do it with our household budgets, by cutting unnecessary spending. You know, the right way, with no smoke or mirrors and no class warfare.

Cut the EPA’s budget? Done. Ditto with the Departments of Energy, Education, Agriculture, and all the other departments that are duplicated by the states.

And here’s the biggie: Defense. I’m not really sure we should be cutting the Pentagon’s budget, what with Obama’s habit of engaging us in a new kinetic military action against regimes that don’t pose an imminent threat to us every six months or so.

Wouldn’t be prudent. If you want to cut defense, make damn sure it’s the waste that we’ve all heard so much about, not body armor for our troops.

Rick Santelli, the CNBC correspondent who is largely responsible for the current Tea Party movement, puts it best:

The answer is easy: spend less. . . .


Stop spending. Live within your means. I think what we need to do is live within the revenue intake, . . . end of story and do not ask taxpayers for more money or increase the debt ceiling until you give us a budget. . . .

There’s a right way and a wrong way to do just about everything, especially in Washington. We’re seeing the dismal results of doing it wrong for two and a half years now.

It’s time to start doing something right for a change.



Oh, and remember that chart I was going to create that showed the correlation between increased spending and the increase in unemployment? Someone beat me to it. It also shows the dropoff of the rate at the end of 99 weeks, just as it should.