Yearly Archives: 2011

Communism catches the attention of the young at heart but it has always brought repression wherever it is tried (“Schaeffer Sundays” Part 1)

August 7, 2011 – 12:09 am
 Communism catches the attention of the young at heart but it has always brought repression wherever it is tried (“Schaeffer Sundays” Part 1)
Francis Schaeffer is a hero of mine and I want to honor him with a series of posts on Sundays called “Schaeffer Sundays” which will include his writings and clips from his film series. I have posted many times in the past using his material.
Communism has never been tried is something I was told just a few months ago by a well meaning young person who was impressed with the ideas of Karl Marx. I responded that there are only 5 communist countries in the world today and they lack political, economic and religious freedom.
Communism has always failed because of its materialist base.  Francis Schaeffer does a great job of showing that in this clip below. Also Schaeffer shows that there were lots of similar things about the basis for both the French and Russia revolutions and he exposes the materialist and humanist basis of both revolutions.

HowShouldWeThenLive Episode 5

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HowShouldweThenLive Episode 6

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Similarities between French Revolution and Communist Revolution

Schaeffer compares communism with French Revolution and Napoleon.

1. Lenin took charge in Russia much as Napoleon took charge in France – when people get desperate enough, they’ll take a dictator.

Other examples: Hitler, Julius Caesar. It could happen again.

2. Communism is very repressive, stifling political and artistic freedom. Even allies have to be coerced. (Poland).

Communists say repression is temporary until utopia can be reached – yet there is no evidence of progress in that direction. Dictatorship appears to be permanent.

3. No ultimate basis for morality (right and wrong) – materialist base of communism is just as humanistic as French. Only have “arbitrary absolutes” no final basis for right and wrong.

How is Christianity different from both French Revolution and Communism?

Contrast N.T. Christianity – very positive government reform and great strides against injustice. (especially under Wesleyan revival).

Bible gives absolutes – standards of right and wrong. It shows the problems and why they exist (man’s fall and rebellion against God).

Is Christianity at all like Communism?

Sometimes Communism sounds very “Christian” – desirable goals of equality, justice, etc. Schaeffer elsewhere explains by saying Marxism is a Christian heresy – Karl Marx

borrowed some of the ideals of N.T.

Below is a great article. Free-lance columnist Bradley R. Gitz, who lives and teaches in Batesville, received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Illinois.

This article was published January 30, 2011 at 2:28 a.m. Here is a portion of that article below:
A final advantage is the mutation of socialism into so many variants over the past century or so. Precisely because Karl Marx was unclear as to how it would work in practice, socialism has always been something of an empty vessel into which would be revolutionaries seeking personal meaning and utopian causes to support can pour pretty much anything.
A desire to increase state power, soak the rich and expand the welfare state is about all that is left of the original vision. Socialism for young lefties these days means “social justice” and compassion for the poor, not the gulag and the NKVD.
In the end, the one argument that will never wash is that communismcan’t be said to have failed because it was never actually tried. This is a transparent intellectual dodge that ignores the fact that “people’s democracies” were established all over the place in the first three decades after World War II.
Such sophistry is resorted to only because communism in all of those places produced hell on earth rather than heaven.
That the attempts to build communism in a remarkable variety of different geographical regions led to only tyranny and mass bloodshed tells us only that it was never feasible in the first place, and that societies built on the socialist principle ironically suffer from the kind of “inner contradictions” that Marx mistakenly predicted would destroy capitalism.
Yes, all economies are mixed in nature, and one could plausibly argue that the socialist impulse took the rough edges off of capitalism by sponsoring the creation of welfare-state programs that command considerable public support.
But the fact remains that no society in history has been able to achieve sustained prosperity without respect for private property and market forces of supply and demand. Nations, therefore, retain their economic dynamism only to the extent that they resist the temptation to travel too far down the socialist road.
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By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events, Francis Schaeffer | Comments (0)

Republican Presidential Candidates react to downgrade of USA credit rating

August 6, 2011 – 3:19 pm

Investors, business leaders, and politicians reacted Friday night to news that Standard & Poor’s had downgraded the United States’ creditworthiness for the first time in its history. But first out of the gate were some GOP presidential hopefuls eager to make campaign hay out of what they see as a failure of the Obama administration.

Here’s what the GOP candidates had to say:

Michele Bachmann

“We were warned by all of the credit agencies that a failure to deal with our debt would lead to a downgrade in our credit rating, but instead he submitted a budget that had a $1.5 trillion deficit and then requested a $2.4 trillion blank check. President Obama is destroying the foundations of the U.S. economy one beam at a time. I call on the President to seek the immediate resignation of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and to submit a plan with a list of cuts to balance the budget this year, turn our economy around and put Americans back to work.”

Mitt Romney

“America’s creditworthiness just became the latest casualty in President Obama’s failed record of leadership on the economy. Standard & Poor’s rating downgrade is a deeply troubling indicator of our country’s decline under President Obama. His failed policies have led to high unemployment, skyrocketing deficits, and now, the unprecedented loss of our nation’s prized AAA credit rating. Today, President Obama promised that ‘things will get better.’ But it has become increasingly clear that the only way things will get better is with new leadership in the White House.”

Jon Huntsman

“Out-of-control spending and a lack of leadership in Washington have resulted in President Obama presiding over the first downgrade of the United States credit rating in our history. For far too long we have let reckless government spending go unchecked and the cancerous debt afflicting our nation has spread. We need new leadership in Washington committed to fiscal responsibility, a balanced budget, and job-friendly policies to get America working again.”

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Comments (0)

Congress unwilling to cut budget deficit to avoid downgrade in credit rating

August 6, 2011 – 11:49 am

It is a sad day since the US got downgraded in our credit. Evidently Congress did not cut enough out of the bloated budget.

08/05/2011

NEW YORK — There is plenty to dislike about the recently enacted bipartisan deal to cut spending and reduce the national debt. For starters, it neither cuts spending, nor reduces the national debt. After weeks of federal hand-wringing, taxpayers should hope that our masters in Washington become serious about slashing spending. If not, this republic will implode, not eventually on “the children,” but soon atop today’s struggling adults.

“The budget deal doesn’t cut federal spending at all,” Cato Institute analyst Chris Edwards explains. “The ‘cuts’ in the deal are only cuts from the Congressional Budget Office’s ‘baseline,’ which is a Washington construct of ever-rising spending…The federal government will still run a deficit of $1 trillion next year. This deal will ‘cut’ the 2012 budget of $3.6 trillion by just $22 billion, or less than 1 percent.”

Edwards observes that Washington’s “cuts” rarely reduce anything. President Obama​, for instance, proposed boosting the Corporation for Public Broadcasting from $432 million this year to $451 million in FY 2012. However, handing CPB $441 million would constitute a $10 million “cut” In Washington versus a $9 million increase in the real-world.

Thus, as Edwards vividly illustrates at Cato’s downsizinggovernment.org website, these budget “cuts” actually raise federal discretionary spending non-stop for the next 10 years — from $1.04 trillion in Fiscal Year 2012 to $1.23 trillion in FY 2021.

As for red ink, Washington just extended the federal credit card’s limit from $14.3 trillion to $16.7 trillion. In 2021, the national debt is expected to reach $22 trillion — a figure 54 percent above $14.3 trillion. What debt reduction?

Washington refuses to learn what millions of overextended Americans recognize daily: One cannot escape debt by tunneling ever deeper into it.

Fitch, Moody’s, and Standard & Poor’s monitor all of this and are weighing whether or not to scrap America’s sterling AAA credit rating. A debt downgrade would hammer national prestige, hike interest rates, and heap short-term agony on an already achy nation. However, such a startling development may supply the face-down-in-the-gutter moment that Washington’s bipartisan spendaholics desperately need to hit rock bottom, grow up, and enter rehab. Everything else has failed during the Bush-Obama era of the ever-expanding state.

Meanwhile, the Select Committee that will spring from the debt deal may generate some good news amid these shadows. As it seeks at least $1.5 trillion in spending cuts by November 23, it should act boldly to improve America’s fiscal outlook:

•A staggering $703 billion in allocated but unspent revenues languish in federal accounts. Several Republicans have sponsored bills to shift this K2 of cash from dust collection to debt reduction. I have addressed these forgotten funds so often that my computer keyboard hurts. Will the Select Committee finally listen?

•The Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance includes the People’s Garden Grant Program, Appalachian Development Highway System, and 2,182 other federal subsidy programs. Many of these should be terminated rather than trimmed, so they never return to menace taxpayers.

•The Select Committee should padlock entire departments (Agriculture, Education, and Housing, for starters), privatize other agencies (FAA, National Weather Service, NPR), and devolve many more to the states via block grants (Medicaid, Food Stamps).

•The Select Committee should raise and index the Social Security eligibility age from 67 to 68 for those born in the 1960s, 69 for children of the ’70s, etc. Medicare’s age-65 threshold similarly should be modernized for these cohorts. Old-age benefits should reflect life expectancy today, not in the 1930s and ’60s, when they were concocted.

“We are less than three years away from where Greece had its debt crisis as to where they were from debt to GDP,” former U.S. Comptroller General David Walker told CNBC Tuesday. “We are not exempt from a debt crisis,” he added. “We have serious interest rate risk. We have serious currency risk. We have serious inflation risk over time. If it happens, it will be sudden, and it will be very painful.”

Mr. Murdock, a New York-based commentator to HUMAN EVENTS, is a columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

Standard & Poor’s downgrades US credit rating

August 6, 2011 – 11:32 am

Over and over conservatives have warned that a US default was not the main thing we needed to fear but not cutting our budget enough to avoid a downgrade of the US credit rating. Now it has happened just as we feared!!!

Standard & Poor’s downgrades US credit rating

Standard & Poor’s has downgraded the credit rating for the US from AAA for the first time in US history.

By MARTIN CRUTSINGER, Associated Press / August 5, 2011

Credit rating agency Standard & Poor‘s on Friday downgraded the United States‘ credit rating for the first time in the history of the ratings.The credit rating agency said that it is cutting the country’s top AAA rating by one notch to AA-plus. The credit agency said that it is making the move because the deficit reduction plan passed by Congress on Tuesday did not go far enough to stabilize the country’s debt situation.

A source familiar with the discussions said that the Obama administration feels the S&P’s analysis contained “deep and fundamental flaws.”

S&P said that in addition to the downgrade, it is issuing a negative outlook, meaning that there was a chance it will lower the rating further within the next two years. It said such a downgrade to AA would occur if the agency sees less reductions in spending than Congress and the administration have agreed to make, higher interest rates or new fiscal pressures during this period.

S&P first put the government on notice in April that a downgrade was possible unless Congress and the administration came up with a credible long-term deficit reduction plan and avoided a default on the country’s debt.

After months of wrangling and negotiations with the administration, Congress passed this week a debt reduction package at the 11th-hour that averted a possible default.

In its statement, S&P said that it had changed its view “of the difficulties of bridging the gulf between the political parties” over a credible deficit reduction plan.

S&P said it was now “pessimistic about the capacity of Congress and the administration to be able to leverage their agreement this week into a broader fiscal consolidation plan that stabilizes the government’s debt dynamics anytime soon.”

Despite Dow ending the day up, it was a roller coaster all day at one point down 170 points. With the S&P downgrade, the release of the jobs report, and the roller coaster week on Wall Street, many are just holding their breath to see how the markets flesh out.

Debt Deal: Politicians Win, Middle Class Loses

by Daniel J. Mitchell

Daniel J. Mitchell is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank based in Washington.

Added to cato.org on August 2, 2011

This article appeared on CNN.com on August 2, 2011.

America is on a path to becoming a Greek-style welfare state. Thanks to the Bush-Obama spending binge, the burden of federal spending has climbed to about 25% of national economic output, up from only 18.2% of GDP when Bill Clinton left office.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Because of a combination of demographic forces and poorly designed entitlement programs, federal spending could consume as much as 50% of economic output by the time the baby boom generation is fully retired.

One symptom of all this excessive spending is that Washington is awash in red ink. We’re now in our third consecutive year of trillion-dollar deficits and the politicians just had to increase the nation’s $14.3 trillion debt limit.

Daniel J. Mitchell is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank based in Washington.

 

More by Daniel J. Mitchell

But it wasn’t easy getting there. Just as happened with the “government shutdown” debate in March, Republicans and Democrats had fierce disagreements over the right approach. They bickered until the last minute and then finally agreed to more than $900 billion of supposed spending cuts and the creation of a “supercommittee” charged with proposing another $1.5 trillion of deficit reduction.

So which side won this fight? Republicans are bragging that they got spending cuts today, a promise of spending cuts in the future, and no tax increases. Democrats, meanwhile, are chortling that they took the debt issue off the table until after the 2012 elections, protected their favorite programs and created a supercommittee that will seduce the GOP into a tax increase.

Ignore that bragging. The easy answer is that politicians of both parties were the victors and taxpayers are the ones left in the cold.

In other words, the budget deal was a victory for the political establishment.

Here’s why Republicans are winners. They get to tell their tea party activists that they forced Obama to cut spending. It doesn’t matter that federal spending will actually be higher every year and that the cuts were based on Washington math (a spending increase becomes a spending cut if outlays don’t climb as fast as some artificial benchmark).

They also get to tell their anti-tax activists that they held the line. Perhaps most important, the supercommittee must use the “current law” baseline, which assumes that the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts expire at the end of 2012. But why are GOPers happy about this, considering they want those tax cuts extended? For the simple reason that Democrats on the supercommittee therefore can’t use repeal of the “Bush tax cuts for the rich” as a revenue raiser.

This means that most Republican incumbents are well-positioned to win re-election.

Here’s why Democrats are winners. Thanks to the magic of government math, despite all the talk of budget cuts, discretionary spending will be more than $100 billion higher in 2021 than it is this year. And since defense spending in Iraq and Afghanistan presumably is winding down, this means even more money will be available for domestic programs.

In addition to telling the pro-spending lobbies that the gravy train is still on the tracks, they also get to tell the class-warfare crowd that there’s an improved likelihood of higher taxes for corporate jet owners and other “rich” people. Notwithstanding GOP assertions, nothing in the agreement precludes the supercommittee from meeting its $1.5 trillion target with tax revenue. The 2001 and 2003 tax legislation is not an option, but everything else is on the table.

This means that most Democratic incumbents are well-positioned to win re-election.

It’s worth pointing out that this doesn’t mean all Republicans and all Democrats are happy about the deal. The hard-core conservatives are upset that the deal is mostly smoke and mirrors on the spending side and that there may be a tax-increase trap on the revenue side.

The hard-core liberals, by contrast, are angry that there are any spending cuts, even ones based on Washington math. Moreover, they want higher tax rates on upper-income taxpayers today, not a supercommittee that may or may not follow through on soak-the-rich policies in the future.

One group of people, however, unambiguously got the short end of the stick in this budget deal. Ordinary Americans are caught in the middle. They’re not poor enough to benefit from the federal government’s plethora of income-redistribution programs. But they’re not rich enough to have the clever lobbyists and insider connections needed to benefit from the high-dollar handouts like ethanol subsidies and bank bailouts.

Instead, middle-class Americans play by the rules, pay ever-higher taxes, and struggle to make ends meet while the establishment of both parties engages in posturing as America slowly drifts toward a Greek-style fiscal meltdown.

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Cato Institute, Current Events, spending out of control | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

US Navy Seals killed in Afghanistan this morning

August 6, 2011 – 11:12 am
 

It’s a sad day for America.

In the largest single loss of U.S. troops since the war in Afghanistan started, the Taliban shot down a helicopter early this morning carrying 25 Navy SEALS and other special operations forces, killing total of 31 Americans.

A total of 38 people were on board the Chinook helicopter when it crashed overnight in the eastern Afghan province of Wardak.

Initial reports indicate up to 25 Navy SEALs were on the aircraft at the time.

It was also carrying seven Afghan Special Forces troops, one interpreter, five member helicopter crew and one dog.

Troops were apparently involved in a raid at the time.

“We are aware of an incident involving a helicopter in eastern Afghanistan,” U.S. Air Force Capt. Justin Brockhoff, a NATO spokesman, told the Associated Press. “We are in the process of accessing the facts.”

Although the Taliban have claimed to have shot the helicopter down, the exact cause of the crash is still under investigation.

God bless their souls, their families and may they rest in peace.

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

W. Hatcher v. E. Hatcher top ten soccer videos (Part 3)

August 6, 2011 – 10:30 am

This is Wilson’s 4th pick

cristiano ronaldo

bad music, great video!

This is Wilson’s 3rd pick

Diego Maradona vs England ’86

The music fits it very well!

This is Wilson’s 2nd pick

The politics of the World Cup

It’s very funny!

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This is Everette’s #4 pick:

George Best- ‘The Best Tribute’!

George Best is great.

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Everette’s #3 pick:

Young Lionel Messi – Rare Clips HD

Only Ronaldo is better than Messi!!!

Lionel Messi 2011 – This is my life story

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Landon Donovan Fantastic Goal 2-0 – USA vs Brazil – Confederations Cup Final 2009

Everette’s number two is:

USA MEXICO 1_8 FINAL WORLD CUP 2002

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Comments (0)

The Sixty Six who resisted “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal (Part 3)

August 6, 2011 – 6:06 am

The Sixty Six who resisted “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal (Part 3)

Will Rogers has a great quote that I love. He noted, “Lord, the money we do spend on Government and it’s not one bit better than the government we got for one-third the money twenty years ago”(Paula McSpadden Love, The Will Rogers Book, (1972) p. 20.)

This post today is a part of a series I am doing on the 66 Republican Tea Party favorites that resisted eating the “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal. Actually that name did not originate from a representative who agrees with the Tea Party, but from a liberal.

Rep. Emanuel Clever (D-Mo.) called the newly agreed-upon bipartisan compromise deal to raise the  debt limit “a sugar-coated satan sandwich.”

“This deal is a sugar-coated satan sandwich. If you lift the bun, you will not like what you see,” Clever tweeted on August 1, 2011.

Congressman Flake Votes Against Debt Deal
Greater Congressional Spending Restraints Needed
Washington, D.C. , Aug 1 –

Republican Congressman Jeff Flake, who represents Arizona’s Sixth District, today voted against the revised version of the Budget Control Act of 2011.

“I don’t think that this deal takes into account the severity of the budget crisis we face.  The age-old trick in Washington is to produce a ten-year budget with serious cuts only taking effect in later years.  This deal continues that practice.  Additionally, the requirement for a balanced budget amendment, which was included in the Boehner bill, was excluded from the final legislation.”

Congressman Flake: So Just How Broke Are We?

 

Mesa, Arizona, Aug 2 – Republican Congressman Jeff Flake, who represents Arizona’s Sixth District, today illustrated the size and scope of the growing national debt.          The Washington Times reports that Vice President Joe Biden collects rent from the Secret Service for use of a cottage on a property he owns in a Wilmington, Delaware suburb. The Secret Service pays the vice president $2,200 each month in rent.

The U.S. is so broke that Vice President Biden would have to rent his cottage to the Secret Service for 545.8 million years – long after he’s left office – to have the money to pay down our debt of more than $14.4 trillion.

“Biden’ our time clearly isn’t solving the debt problem,” said Flake.

Along with Senators McCain and Rubio, Congressman Flake introduced in the 112th Congress the Debt Buy-Down Act, which allows taxpayers to designate up to 10 percent of their federal income tax liability to reduce the national debt.  The bill then requires Congress to reduce federal spending by that amount.  More information on the Debt Buy-Down Act can be found here.

Print version of this document

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in spending out of control | Comments (0)

Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 2 “The Middle Ages”

August 6, 2011 – 12:50 am

How Should We Then Live 2-1

I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970’s and I wanted to share it with you. Schaeffer points out that during this time period unfortunately we have the “Church’s deviation from early church’s teaching in regard to authority and the approach to God.” In my view we see a move from more conservative evangelicalism of the early church to the Catholic Church.

E P I S O D E 2

T h e

MIDDLE AGES 

I. Introduction: The Post-Roman World

A. Social, political, and intellectual uncertainty.

B. General decline in learning, but monasteries were a depository for classical and Christian documents.

C. The original pristine Christianity of the New Testament gradually became distorted.

D. Decline of vital naturalism in art parallels decline of vital Christianity: positive and negative aspects of Byzantine art.

E. Music at time of Ambrose, later Gregorian chants.

II. The Church in the World: Economic, Social, Political.

How to be in the world but not of it.

A. Generosity of early church.

B. Ambivalence in Middle Ages about material goods; asceticism and luxury.

C. Economic controls to protect the weak.

D. Emphasis on work well done.

E. Care for social needs: e.g. hospitals.

F. Meaning of Christendom; attendant problems. Lorenzetti’s Allegory of Good and Bad Government.

III. Artistic Achievements

A. Close relation between church and society in art and life: e.g. reign of Charlemagne.

B. Basis of unified European culture laid by Charlemagne.

C. Birth and flowering of Romanesque architecture.

D. Birth and flowering of Gothic architecture.

IV. Links Between Philosophical, Theological, and Spiritual Developments on Eve of Renaissance

A. Aquinas’ emphasis on Aristotle.

1. Negative aspect: individual things, the particulars, tended to be made independent, autonomous.

2. With this came the loss of adequate meaning for the individual things, including Man, morals, values, and law.

B. Church’s deviation from early church’s teaching in regard to authority and the approach to God.

C. Reaction of Wycliffe and Hus to theological distortions is prophetic of Reformation.

Questions

1. Summarize the negative and positive aspects of church influence in the Middle Ages.

2. “To speak of distortions of belief in the Middle Ages is to pretend that the church should have stood still when the apostles died. But we have to adapt to new circumstances and ideas. The medieval church did.” Comment.

3. Apply the particulars-universals discussion to modern circumstances. How do people repeat the same mistakes nowadays? Be specific.

Key Events and Persons

Aristotle: 384-322 B.C.

Ambrose: 339-397

Alcuin of York: 735-804

Charlemagne reign: c. 768-814

Crowned Emperor: 800

Romanesque style: 1000-1150

Gothic style: 1150-1250

St. Denis: 1140-

St. Francis: c. 1181-1226

Chartres: 1194-

Aquinas: 1225-1274

John Wycliffe: c. 1320-1384

John Hus: 1369-1415

Further Study

H. Fichtenau, The Carolingian Empire (1954).

Gordon Leff, Medieval Thought (1958).

C.S. Lewis, The Discarded Image (1964).

E.K. Rand, Founders of the Middle Ages (1954).

O. vonSimson, The Gothic Cathedral (1964).

R.W. Southern, The Making of the Middle Ages (1953).

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Comments (0)

The Penny Plan: How to balance the budget in 8 years

August 5, 2011 – 9:08 am

If our country is at a crisis point with this huge federal deficit, why can’t we freeze spending until we get it under control? Below is a good proposal.

Now that the national debt ceiling deal is done — and liberals like me are unhappy and conservatives deservedly have more to cheer about — Thanksgiving 2011 will be more than about good turkeys. This is the deadline for the so-called “super” congressional committee of six Democrats and six Republicans from the House and Senate to cut at least $1.2 trillion in the projected budget deficit for the next 10 years.

I favor at least one-half of this $1.2 trillion to be funded by a combination of tax reform – closing tax loopholes — and increases in marginal tax rates of upper income taxpayers (including me).

But if you are an anti-tax conservative who sincerely believes that you have to cut spending and not “feed the beast” with more revenues, then one approach on spending cuts for the super committee to consider is the simple and creative “Penny Plan” introduced by Rep. Connie Mack (R.-Fla.).

Mr. Mack’s bill, H.R. 1848, would cut one-penny-out-of-every dollar actually spent by the federal government from year-to-year for the next six years, from FY 2012-FY 2017. Beginning in FY 2018, there would be a budget cap of 18% of GDP (the average federal revenue as a percentage of GDP over the past 30 years). And by FY 2019 America would finally have a balanced budget — that is, assuming revenues naturally increase from the current 14.8% of GDP to 18% of GDP by 2019, after which the budget would be in surplus.

There is an automatic spending cut “trigger” under Mr. Mack’s plan — one he came up with well before the trigger used in the recently passed national debt ceiling bill. If congress failed to enact a budget implementing the one-percent-actual-spending cut required under Mr. Mack’s measure, then there would be automatic, across-the-board actual cuts in all federal programs to meet the one percent reduction, and that means all: in defense, Social Security, Medicare, Food Stamps, defense and national security spending, everything.

Mr. Mack’s plan may seem draconian to some. It would cut the accumulated budget deficits by an estimated $7.5 trillion over ten years — more than three times the amount achieved by the debt ceiling deal congress approved last Tuesday.

But it actually has a rather modest impact on reducing our total national debt. It won’t be until 8 years from now that the budget will be in balance and the national debt starts getting paid down.

We had $1 trillion in surplus — money in the bank — when Bill Clinton left office on January 20, 2001, just eight years after he began his presidency inheriting a $300 billion deficit. Now we are heading towards a $15 trillion debt. How did this happen? Both parties are guilty.

I am a liberal Democrat who believes that the national debt and annual deficits are the country’s greatest moral issues. We cannot continue to use credit cards to pay for wars, corporate jet write-offs, and Social Security and Medicare — and leave it to our children, grand-children, and probably great grand-children to pay our bills.

That is simply wrong. It is a moral stain on our generation if we leave this red-ink legacy for generations to come to deal with.

Mr. Mack’s Penny Plan may be imbalanced from my perspective, lacking in the revenue-raising component endorsed by the bipartisan Gang of Six and the Simpson-Bowles commission. I believe Republicans will have difficulty in the 2012 congressional and presidential elections defending the proposition that the national debt can be significantly paid down from budget cuts alone, or that the wealthier in our society shouldn’t pay more or at least stop taking advantage of tax loopholes to pay less.

But since the “balanced” solution of both increased revenues and spending cuts entitlement reform is supported in virtually ever poll by substantial majorities of all voters, including large numbers of Republicans, Democrats need to find a spending cut formula that they can live with. The Mack Penny Plan seems a good place to start — it is simple, it makes common sense, and with some adjustments protecting the poor and the unemployed, it could be seen as fair even to many of the most liberal Democrats.

Despite our philosophical differences, I am a great admirer of Rep. Mack. I respect his deeply felt conservative philosophy and values. Most of all I respect his ability to disagree agreeably.

In this time of crisis — and I believe our national debt is a genuine and historic crisis — we need members like Mr. Mack who know how to reach across the aisle, as I have seen him do many times, to find common solutions. The Mack Penny Plan deserves serious consideration – as serious as the man who proposed it.
Mr. Davis has served as a lobbyist representing the government of Honduras and the Honduran business council and in that capacity met with Rep. Mack, who was Ranking Member and then Chairman of the Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere Affairs, on many occasions.

Mr. Davis is the principal in the Washington D.C. law firm of Lanny J. Davis & Associates, which specializes in strategic crisis management. He served as President Clinton’s Special Counsel in 1996-98 and as a member of President Bush’s Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board in 2006-07. He is the author of “Scandal: How ‘Gotcha’ Politics Is Destroying America” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). He can be found on Facebook and Twitter (@LannyDavis).

This weekly blog appears in The Hill, Foxnews.com, Huffington Post and the Jakarta Globe every Thursday.

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in spending out of control | Comments (0)

The Sixty Six who resisted “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal (Part 2)

August 5, 2011 – 6:00 am

“What good is a debt limit that is always increased?”

The Sixty Six who resisted “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal (Part 2)

This post today is a part of a series I am doing on the 66 Republican Tea Party favorites that resisted eating the “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal. Actually that name did not originate from a representative who agrees with the Tea Party, but from a liberal.

Rep. Emanuel Clever (D-Mo.) called the newly agreed-upon bipartisan compromise deal to raise the  debt limit “a sugar-coated satan sandwich.”

“This deal is a sugar-coated satan sandwich. If you lift the bun, you will not like what you see,” Clever tweeted on August 1, 2011.

Roby Comments on Debt Limit Vote

Aug 1, 2011 Issues: Spending Cuts and Debt
 
 
 

WASHINGTON—U.S. Rep. Martha Roby (AL-02), a member of the House Committee on Armed Services, made the following comments today regarding the House of Representative’s vote to increase the statutory limit on the national debt:

                “I applaud the efforts of Speaker Boehner, Majority Leader Cantor, Majority Whip McCarthy, and Budget Chairman Ryan over the last month. Every dollar saved under the plan approved tonight is a result of their steadfast advocacy on behalf of the American People. While the final legislation is far from perfect and while many of us would prefer the more fundamental reforms found in the ‘Cut, Cap, and Balance Act,’ this compromise cuts a dollar of spending for every new dollar of debt. That is a significant accomplishment given that Democrats—who wanted new taxes and no spending reductions—outnumbered Republicans two to one at the negotiating table.

                “During this debate, I voted for two separate proposals that would significantly cut future spending, put our nation on firmer financial footing, and avoid a potentially catastrophic default. Each was killed by Senate Democrats.

                “I am pleased that a default has been avoided as a result of the vote tonight. However, I was unable to support this legislation because, after a careful reading of the bill, I fear it could ultimately result in devastating and unjustified cuts to our national security. This bill, unlike previous proposals I supported, has a weak firewall against potentially destructive defense cuts. To be sure, there are savings to be found in the Pentagon’s budget, and I have already voted this year to trim wasteful and unnecessary defense spending. But this bill goes much too far. The legislation would use our defense budget as an insurance policy to guarantee savings in the event that the special joint committee, which this legislation creates, fails to achieve cuts in other areas of the government bureaucracy.

                “Of course we lack a crystal ball to know how it will play out, but my best judgment is that the chances the special joint committee will fail are too high to risk our national defense, which is one of few legitimate government functions enumerated in the Constitution. If required, the cuts would be so deep as to affect the readiness of our troops around the world—a risk I am not willing to take. As important as deficit reduction is, what good is it for a country that is unable to adequately defend the freedom and liberty it cherishes? Certainly there are other places in the massive federal bureaucracy that are more deserving of deep cuts.

                “I reject the idea that we need not worry about these cuts because Washington will never let them happen. To make that suggestion is to say that the legislation does not actually do what we have said it does.

                “In the end, I hope that the special joint committee will find the spending cuts that it is charged to identify, and I look forward to reviewing the product of its work. Our prayer is that the special joint committee members will do their jobs, thereby ensuring that the damaging military cuts that could occur never see the light of day.

                “On the broader question of restoring fiscal responsibility, our work has just begun. This has been a long and convoluted process, but the takeaway is simple: in a short period of time, House Republicans have successfully changed the conversation in Washington from ‘how do we spend more’ to ‘how do we spend less.’ Even so, much work remains, and only a sustained, dedicated effort will truly change the spending culture in Washington.”

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NOTE: Congress debated how best to raise the debt limit for many months. Members considered numerous proposals, and the House of Representatives and the Senate each took several votes on the issue. On May 31, Rep. Martha Roby voted against President Obama’s original request for a clean debtincrease that would expand the government’s ability to borrow money without placing any restrictions on future spending. She saidthat any debt limit increase should be accompanied by “significant” spending cuts. On July 22, Roby voted in favor of the “Cut, Cap, and Balance Act,” referringto the “strong” measure as her “preference.” The Democratic Senaterejected the measure. With the debt deadline looming, Roby supported Speaker Boehner’sproposal on July 29, notingthat it was “far from perfect” but that it cut a dollar of spending for every dollar of additional debt and included no new taxes. Again, the Senaterejected that measure. On July 28, Roby opposed Sen. Reid’s proposal, which she pointed outincluded an unacceptable budget gimmick that would not result in real savings. (The Senatealso rejectedthe Reid proposal.) That vote was followed by the events described in the press release above.

 

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in President Obama, spending out of control | Comments (0)