Category Archives: President Obama

Federal spending continues to skyrocket

June 20, 2012 – 8:26 am

Government Spending Doesn’t Create Jobs

Uploaded by on Sep 7, 2011

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In the debate of job creation and how best to pursue it as a policy goal, one point is forgotten: Government doesn’t create jobs. Government only diverts resources from one use to another, which doesn’t create new employment.

Video produced by Caleb Brown and Austin Bragg.

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I have a lot of respect for Tea Party heroes like Tim Huelskamp , Idaho First District Congressman Raúl R. Labrador, and Justin Amash who are willing to vote against proposals that increase our spending. They all favor balancing the budget.   

It is a fact that we must balance the budget soon. I do not believe that we can wait to balance the budget at some distant time in the future. The financial markets will not allow us a long time to get our house in order. Look at how things have been going the last four years and no matter how anyone tries to spin it, we are going down the financial drain fast.

Brian Darling

May 24, 2012 at 2:51 pm

Spending has skyrocketed under President Obama, but of late some are claiming that the opposite is true. Case in point: MarketWatch columnist Rex Nutting wrote, “Obama spending binge never happened,” and Politifact rated this statement “mostly true.”

But Mitt Romney this week said that “Since President Obama assumed office three years ago, federal spending has accelrated at a pace without precedent in recent history.” So who has it right? Mitt Romney.

What Politifact must have missed is a very important data point: President Obama signed most of the spending attributed to President George W. Bush’s last year in office, which was assigned wrongly to Bush in Nutting’s piece. (Heritage’s Emily Goff and Alison Fraser set the record straight on The Foundry.)

Nutting argues that President G.W. Bush’s second term spending bills from Fiscal Year 2006-2009 averaged 8.1% and President Obama’s annualized growth averaged 1.4%.  The reason why Nutting included FY 2009 is because it was “the last of George W. Bush’s presidency — federal spending rose by 17.9% from $2.98 trillion to $3.52 trillion.”  This assumption is incorrect and dishonest.  This flaw in Nutting’s analysis is the reason why the Obama numbers are wrong and Nutting’s whole piece is based on flawed data.

Nutting operates under the flawed assumption that President Obama is not responsible for FY 2009 spending.  Under normal circumstances Nutting would be correct.  If Congress were a functioning body that passed appropriations bills on time, then this analysis would be correct.  The fact of the matter is that in recent history Congress has not done appropriations bills on time and in FY 2009, President Obama signed these spending bills into law that President Bush would have under different circumstances.

Usually, the president in office prior to a new president would have helped craft and sign into law government spending bills applied to the first 9 months of spending the next year and a president’s new term.  A fiscal year starts on October 1 of the year prior to the calendar year to September 30th of the calendar year.  In other words the fiscal year starts three months early.

In FY2009, Congress did not complete work by September 30, 2008.  President Bush did sign some appropriations bills and a continuing resolution to keep the government running into President Obama’s first term, yet a Democrat controlled Congress purposely held off on the big spending portions of the appropriations bills until Obama took office.  They did so for the purposes of jacking up spending.  President Obama signed the final FY2009 spending bills on March 11, 2009.

Congressional Quarterly (subscription required) maps out a history of the FY 2009 final appropriations bills (H.R. 1105 and PL 111-8), that would lead one to attribute most of the accelerated spending in FY 2009 to President Obama in a piece titled “2009 Legislative Summary: Fiscal 2009 Omnibus.” From CQ, “the omnibus provided a total of $1.05 trillion — $410 billion of it for discretionary programs — and included many of the domestic spending increases Democrats were unable to get enacted while George W. Bush was president.”  If accepted as true, this statement alone undercuts Nutting’s whole premise that FY 2009 is wholly Bush spending.

President Bush signed only three of the twelve appropriations bills for FY 2009:  Defense; Military Construction/Veterans Affairs; and, Homeland Security.  President Bush also signed a continuing resolution that kept the government running until March 6, 2009 that level of funding the remaining nine appropriations bills at FY 2008 levels.  President Bush and his spending should only be judged on these three appropriations bills and FY 2008 levels of funding for the remaining nine appropriations bills.  Bush never consented to the dramatic increase in spending for FY 2009 and he should not be blamed for that spending spree.

The Democrats purposely held off on the appropriations process because they hoped they could come into 2009 with a new Democrat-friendly Congress and a President who would sign bloated spending bills.  Remember, President Obama was in the Senate when these bills were crafted and he was part of this process to craft bloated spending bills.  CQ reported that “in delaying the nine remaining bills until 2009, Democrats gambled that they would come out of the November 2008 elections with bigger majorities in both chambers and a Democrat in the White House who would support more funding for domestic programs.”  And they did.

If you trust CQ’s reporting, and I do, then this is damning.  Democrats in Congress purposely held off on pushing bloated appropriations bills because they knew President Bush would not sign the bill and Republicans in the Senate would block consideration of it.  You have to remember that the Senate went from 51-49 Democrat control under President Bush’s last year to 59-41 in the early days of President Obama.  On April 28, 2009, Senator Arlen Specter switched parties from Republican to Democrat to give the Democrats a 60 vote filibuster proof majority in the Senate.  The House had a similar conversion from a 233-202 Democrat majority to 257-178 Democrat majority. Democrats were banking on a big enough majorities in the Senate and House that they could pass the bloated spending bill and they got it.

Bush issued a veto threat on the bloated spending bills pending in Congress in late 2008.  CQ estimated that the final spending bill “provided about $31 billion more in discretionary funding than was included in the fiscal 2008 versions of the nine bills” which is “about $19 billion more than Bush sought.”  I would argue that Obama gets credit for the whole $31 billion in new spending.  The most damning fact from the CQ piece is that “Bush had threatened to veto spending bills that exceeded his request.”

Now one can argue that even $31 billion is a drop in the bucket when one considers that spending went from $2.98 trillion to $3.52 trillion.  Much of the spike in increased spending is on the mandatory spending side, and much of it can be attributed to President Obama.  Look at OMB Tables on FY 2008 spending versus FY 2009 spending and you can see why the numbers spiked between those two years.

Overall spending, mandatory and discretionary spending went from $2.98 trillion in FY 2008 to $3.52 trillion in FY 2009.  There were two of the big spikes in spending from FY’08 to ’09.  One was in Federal Payments for Individuals not including Social Security and Medicare from $758 billion in FY’08 to 918 billion in FY’09.  President Obama’s Stimulus spending bill included an increase in food stamps and an extension of unemployment benefits that should not be attributable to President Bush.  Also, the category of “Other Federal” spending spiked from $261 billion to $540 billion.  This includes TARP spending that was recovered on the back end by President Obama further distorting the Nutting analysis.

So how can Nutting attribute spending to President Bush that he expressly vowed to veto?  Also, some of the mandatory spending has been wrongly attributed to President Bush in Nutting’s analysis.  Finally, TARP spending under Bush and the recovery of TARP money under Obama further distorts these numbers.

This is unethical and fuzzy math.  The Truth-O-Meter may want to consider these facts when further analyzing the complications and distortions in analysis used by Nutting to argue that Obama is more fiscally responsible than his predecessors.

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

Lowering taxes is the way to generate jobs

June 20, 2012 – 8:24 am

“Raise taxes now!” Thom has a rumble w/ JD Foster of the Heritage Foundation

The flat tax is the way to get the job creators in our nations geared up. Is there any better way to get job creation started?

Curtis Dubay

May 10, 2012 at 2:30 pm

There he goes again. It seems that President Obama just can’t help himself. He keeps pushing Congress to pass policies it has rejected in the past or has foolishly passed to little beneficial effect.

The latest recycling of policies comes from the President’s Post-It note to-do list for Congress. If only Congress’s actual to-do list was so small.

Besides leaving out the most pressing issues facing the country—reforming entitlement programs and full-scale tax reform—the President’s to-do list for Congress curiously leaves off the most urgent issue it needs to tackle right now. That would be Taxmageddon and the $494 billion tax hike that will slam the economy on January 1, 2013, unless Congress and President Obama act soon to stop it.

In addition to calling for an extension of the Wind Production Tax Credit and an expansion of the 30 percent tax credit for investments in clean energy manufacturing, the tax polices the to-do list contains are a credit for small businesses that hire new workers and the President’s misguided “insourcing” agenda.

Really? Again with this hiring tax credit stuff? We’ve been there, done that, and have no jobs to show for it. In 2010, Congress passed and President Obama signed into law a tax credit for businesses that added new workers. It failed to create jobs then, and repeating it will fail to create jobs now.

Hiring tax credits do not work, because businesses add new workers when those additional employees will increase profitability over the duration of their tenure. A temporary one-year credit does little to tip this basic calculation in favor of adding new positions, because most businesses expect to retain workers for longer than a year.

The President first proposed his insourcing plan earlier this year. It would take away tax deductions for businesses that supposedly move jobs overseas and reward businesses that move jobs here. The whole premise of the idea is fatally flawed, and his pushing this plan shows that President Obama fundamentally misunderstands how the global economy works.

U.S. businesses rarely pack up their operations here and move them overseas. Instead, they open new operations in other countries as a way to chase growing demand for their goods or services in new, emerging markets. This is nothing but good news for the U.S. An American business finding a new market for its product means more jobs created at the business’s U.S. headquarters and more income flowing back to America. Why would President Obama want to discourage this?

By punishing companies that seek opportunity abroad and rewarding those that happen to bring jobs back, Obama assumes that those businesses doing the latter are better for the economy and are creating more jobs. But he cannot possibly know which businesses are better or which create more jobs.

The government can never know which businesses are better at creating jobs, because it does not have access to the broad range of information available to the diffuse network of individuals and businesses that comprise the free market.

It is time for President Obama to stop rehashing and recycling old, failed tax policies for perceived narrow political benefit and focus on the tax policies that would be broadly beneficial to the economy. First, stop Taxmageddon right now. Second, implement fundamental tax reform along the lines of the New Flat Tax.

Now that fits neatly on a Post-It note.

By Everette Hatcher III | Also posted in Taxes | Comments (0)

Pro-life hero: Chen Guangcheng

June 20, 2012 – 8:00 am

Jane Roe’s prolife commercial

Uploaded by on Jun 18, 2008

“Jane Roe” or Roe v Wade is now a prolife Christian. She’s recently done a commercial about it.

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I sincerely hope that the world will continue to look upon Chen as the hero that he is. He has taken up for the ladies of China and their right to have their children.

Did you know that many in China when given the chance would abort unborn girls in order to have boys. This has created a huge problem.

Fox News reported, “Twenty-five million men in China currently can’t find brides because there is a shortage of women,” said Steven Mosher, president of the Population Research Institute in Washington, D.C. “The young men emigrate overseas to find brides.”

Of course, the real problem is the one child restriction that started this to begin with. I wish you would join me speak out in favor of China’s women’s rights.

Sarah Torre

May 16, 2012 at 3:00 pm

Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng called into a congressional hearing again yesterday, detailing reported abuse of his relatives and friends in the wake of his escape.

When lauded for his courage and tireless advocacy for victims of forced abortion and involuntary sterilization, Chen simply remarked, through translation: “I am not a hero. I’m just doing what my conscience asks me to do. I cannot be silent when facing these evils against women and children.”

Chen described to the committee how, shortly after his escape from house arrest last month, local government officials allegedly stormed a family member’s house, beating relatives and arresting Chen’s brother. When Chen’s nephew attempted to defend himself and his family, officials arrested him on what Chen calls “trumped up” charges of “homicide with intent.”

Reggie Littlejohn, president of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, testified on the status of He Peirong, the woman who drove the rescue car for Chen. He, also known as “Pearl,” endured a week of confinement and interrogation in a hotel room by Chinese officials because of her involvement in Chen’s escape. Likewise, Jiang Tianyong, a human rights lawyer in China, was beaten to the point of possibly losing hearing in one ear after attempting to see Chen at the Beijing hospital, according to Littlejohn.

The actions reportedly taken against Chen’s supporters and family are just an extension of the coercive tactics used to enforce the country’s one-child policy. As panelists at yesterday’s hearing detailed, forced abortions, coerced sterilizations, and fines or physical abuse for neighbors and family members of women with unauthorized pregnancies remain a daily reality in China.

Mei Shunping, a victim of five forced abortions, described her time as a factory worker in China, where routine checkups for women were used to guard against unlawful pregnancy: “When discovered, pregnant women would be dragged to undergo forced abortions—there was no other choice. We had no dignity as potential child-bearers.”

Chai Ling, founder of All Girls Allowed, detailed just a few horrific stories of child abandonment, bride trafficking and prostitution, and forced abortions that have occurred because of the one-child policy. Just this past October, explained Ling, a woman reportedly died after a late-term, forced abortion procedure when she was discovered to be pregnant with an unauthorized child. Similar atrocities have been documented in U.S. congressional reports as well.

“I wish I could tell you that these stories were rare, but they are not,” remarked Ling. “They are mere glimpses into the dark environment that the One-Child Policy creates for women. This is the darkness into which Chen Guangcheng tried to shine a light.”

That light of respect for human dignity and individual liberty should be supported by the U.S. and other international leaders who claim to defend human rights. As Heritage’s director of domestic policy Jennifer Marshall writes in commentary this week:

U.S. policymakers have long expressed concern over China’s security and economic challenges to global stability. They ought to be equally concerned about the chilling long-term consequences of gross abuse of human dignity and the destruction of civil society. It’s time for China to end the barbarism of its One-Child Policy.

Denouncing the unjust treatment of Chen Guangcheng, his family, and fellow activists is important. But so too is condemning the coercive population control policies that strip women and men of fundamental rights and prohibit China from becoming a truly free and flourishing society.

By Everette Hatcher III | Also posted in Prolife | Comments (0)

Rude Rob Boston favored Notre Dame giving Obama honorary degree but what came of that?

June 19, 2012 – 8:22 am

Uploaded by on May 13, 2009

Rob Boston of AU debates and defeats Bill Donahue on Obama’s invitation to speak at Notre Dame University.

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Rude Rob Boston favored President Obama speaking at Notre Dame but it turned out that after President Obama got the honorary degree he went out and now is going to force the catholic institutions to provide free abortions under Obamacare. (By the way we have seen rudeness from Rob Boston before and he spread misinformation too before.)

Max Brantley of the Arkansas Times Blog and his liberal friends believe “Cries of religious discrimination are drowning out the facts, law and reality…”, but that is not the way that I see it.

Al  Mohler’s excellent article takes on President Obama:

R. Albert Mohler Jr.

Posted on Feb 6, 2012

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (BP) — In 1808, President Thomas Jefferson stated the matter bluntly: “I consider the government of the United States as interdicted by the Constitution from intermeddling with religious institutions, their doctrines, discipline, or exercises.”

Fast forward 204 years and President Barack Obama has reversed that logic, ordering religious institutions to provide insurance coverage for employees that must include contraceptives, including those that may induce an abortion.

Secretary Kathleen Sebelius of the Department of Health and Human Services made the announcement Jan. 20, stating: “Today the department is announcing that the final rule on preventive health services will ensure that women with health insurance coverage will have access to the full range of the Institute of Medicine’s recommended preventive services, including all FDA-approved forms of contraception.”

The ruling had been much anticipated as a consequence of President Obama’s health care reform. The new law required the administration to determine what elements would be included in the mandated coverage. The administration first determined that the preventative care provision would include coverage of contraceptives. The second step was determining that this contraceptive coverage would include, as Secretary Sebelius restated it, “all FDA-approved forms of contraception.” These include drugs known as Plan B, which is taken after the possibility of fertilization, thus functioning as an inducer of abortion. The plans must also provide sterilization procedures for women without deductibles or co-payments.

The final step in the process was the decision to require all employers to provide this coverage, including church-affiliated institutions and organizations. The only exemption is offered to churches and religious bodies that neither employ nor serve any significant number of people who do not share their faith. As one church leader commented, this would not allow an exemption even for the ministry of Jesus and his disciples, who ministered to those outside the faith.

Nonetheless, Secretary Sebelius had the temerity to claim, in her statement: “This decision was made after very careful consideration, including the important concerns some have raised about religious liberty. I believe this proposal strikes the appropriate balance between respecting religious freedom and increasing access to important preventive services. The administration remains fully committed to its partnerships with faith-based organizations, which promote healthy communities and serve the common good.”

In actuality, the Obama administration trampled religious liberty under the feet of the leviathan state, forcing religious employers to do what conscience will not allow. Religious organizations such as schools, colleges and hospitals will be required to pay for services that they believe to be immoral and disobedient to God.

In a final insult, the administration allowed that religious employers could, if qualified, have an extra year to comply with the decision. As Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah made clear, this intentionally evades the point. “The problem is not that religious institutions do not have time enough to comply,” he said, “It’s that they are forced to comply at all.”

Roman Catholic authorities were among the first to respond with outrage. Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan of New York City, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, who had personally made the case to President Obama for a broader exemption, said simply: “We are unable to live with this.”

This last Sunday, Catholics around the nation heard letters from their local bishops with the same message. The bishop of Marquette, for example, put the matter with severe simplicity: “We cannot — we will not — comply with this unjust law.”

In other words, the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops have signaled their clear intention to defy the law rather than to violate their conscience. Will evangelical Christians demonstrate the same courage and conviction?

The Roman Catholic Church teaches against the use of any artificial birth control and considers these to be assaults upon the dignity of all human life. In more recent years, evangelicals have had to rethink the contraception issue. At the very least, the issue of abortion has required evangelicals to realize that any form of birth control is a matter of great moral significance and thus of moral conscience.

The inclusion of Plan B and other forms of “emergency contraception” raises the stakes considerably, since the issue of abortion is now unavoidable. Will evangelical colleges and institutions now comply with a law we know to be both unjust and unconscionable?

The National Association of Evangelicals made a statement that described the situation well, but promised no particular action: “Employers with religious objections to contraception will be forced to pay for services and procedures they believe are morally wrong.”

The Obama administration knew exactly what it was doing. It had received no shortage of advice on this question, and advocates for a broader exemption were vocal even within the administration. Members of the President’s own party shared the disappointment in the decision. Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania lamented the administration’s “bad decision.”

Others wondered aloud why President Obama had, in the words of Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne, thrown those with religious objections “under the bus.” The editors of that paper made their own disappointment clear as well:

“The best approach would have been for HHS to stick to its original conclusion that contraception coverage should generally be required but to expand the scope of its proposed exemption for religiously affiliated employers who claim covering contraception would violate their religious views. The administration’s feint at a compromise — giving such employers another year to figure out how to comply with the requirement — is unproductive can-kicking that fails to address the fundamental problem of requiring religiously affiliated entities to spend their own money in a way that contradicts the tenets of their faith.”

The one-year extension is indeed “unproductive can-kicking,” but the far larger issue is “the fundamental problem of requiring religiously affiliated entities to spend their own money in a way that contradicts the tenets of their faith.”

Every president faces decisions that test his character and principles. President Obama has failed this test, and the results will be tragic. He has trampled religious liberty underfoot and has announced his intention to force religious institutions to violate their consciences or go out of business.

This decision will lead to nothing less than the secularization of the good work undertaken by these religious institutions. Faith-based adoption agencies, hospitals and educational institutions are being forced to secularize or cease operations already. This decision will add tragic momentum to that process.

Religious organizations are being told to comply with the government’s order, or face the consequences. A Roman Catholic college in North Carolina has challenged the Obama administration in court, an action now also taken by Colorado Christian University, an evangelical college. Concerted calls for a legislative rescue from Congress are being made.

And yet, the decision of the Obama administration is clear. The edict from President Obama to religious institutions is this — violate conscience and bend the knee to the government, or face the consequences.

We will soon learn just how much faith is left in faith-based institutions.
–30–
R. Albert Mohler Jr. is president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky. This column first appeared at AlbertMohler.com. Get Baptist Press headlines and breaking news on Twitter (@BaptistPress), Facebook (Facebook.com/BaptistPress) and in your email(baptistpress.com/SubscribeBP.asp).

1 Of 5 / The Bible’s Influence In America / American Heritage Series / David Barton

2 Of 5 / The Bible’s Influence In America / American Heritage Series / David Barton

3 Of 5 / The Bible’s Influence In America / American

Heritage Series / David Barton

4 Of 5 / The Bible’s Influence In America / American Heritage Series / David Barton

5 Of 5 / The Bible’s Influence In America / American Heritage Series / David Barton

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3 Of 3 / Faith Of The Founding Fathers / American Heritage Series / David Barton

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David Barton on Glenn Beck – Part 1 of 5

Uploaded by on Apr 9, 2010

Wallbuilders’ Founder and President David Barton joins Glenn Beck on the Fox News Channel for the full hour to discuss our Godly heritage and how faith was the foundational principle upon which America was built.

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David Barton on Glenn Beck – Part 2 of 5

Uploaded by on Apr 9, 2010

Wallbuilders’ Founder and President David Barton joins Glenn Beck on the Fox News Channel for the full hour to discuss our Godly heritage and how faith was the foundational principle upon which America was built.

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David Barton on Glenn Beck – Part 3 of 5

Uploaded by on Apr 9, 2010

Wallbuilders’ Founder and President David Barton joins Glenn Beck on the Fox News Channel for the full hour to discuss our Godly heritage and how faith was the foundational principle upon which America was built.

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David Barton on Glenn Beck – Part 4 of 5

Uploaded by on Apr 9, 2010

Wallbuilders’ Founder and President David Barton joins Glenn Beck on the Fox News Channel for the full hour to discuss our Godly heritage and how faith was the foundational principle upon which America was built.

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David Barton on Glenn Beck – Part 5 of 5

Uploaded by on Apr 9, 2010

Wallbuilders’ Founder and President David Barton joins Glenn Beck on the Fox News Channel for the full hour to discuss our Godly heritage and how faith was the foundational principle upon which America was built.

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Did David Barton fabricate quotes and attribute them to the founding fathers?

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Rob Boston is not very courteous while being interviewed on CNN

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What the Sam Hill is going on? (Phrase came out of Hatfield-McCoy feud)

  Wikipedia informs us that probably

By Everette Hatcher III | Also posted in Prolife | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Obama going to win in November or will economy sink him?

June 19, 2012 – 7:48 am

I wonder what is going to happen in November with Obama?

At the start of the year, I predicted Obama would be reelected, largely because of my assumption that the unemployment rate would drop below 8 percent.

But my prediction on jobs is looking quite shaky, so this discussion about the economy and the election with Fox Business News is very timely.

I argued, unsurprisingly, that the economy is anemic because Obama’s been pursuing an agenda of wasteful spending and class warfare.

So if he loses, he has nobody to blame but himself.

That doesn’t mean Romney would be an improvement, especially if the warning signs are correct and he saddles the country with a value-added tax, so the American people may be tossed from one frying pan to another.

P.S. Hadley Heath may look familiar because she narrated this video about the damaging impact of welfare programs for the Center for Freedom and Prosperity.

P.P.S. On the completely separate topic of the Greek elections, I am more peeved than ever that the idiots in the media are reporting the results as a victory for the pro-bailout parties over the anti-bailout parties. That is nonsense. All the parties favored bailouts. As I wrote earlier this year, the election was a fight between parties that want no-strings bailout money and parties that at least pretend they are willing to implement reforms as a condition of getting bailout money.

By Everette Hatcher III | Also posted in Cato Institute | Tagged | Comments (0)

Open letter to President Obama (Part 89)

June 18, 2012 – 7:01 am

Sen. Paul Delivers State of the Union Response – Jan. 24, 2012

Uploaded by on Jan 24, 2012

Sen. Rand Paul delivered the following Republican response to President Barack Obama’s State of the Union Address this evening

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President Obama c/o The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President,

I know that you receive 20,000 letters a day and that you actually read 10 of them every day. I really do respect you for trying to get a pulse on what is going on out here.

The problem is not that government does not have enough money but that spends too much. What would the Founding Fathers think if they were alive today?

Mike Brownfield

March 9, 2012 at 1:00 pm

More bad news for those who want to raise taxes in order to pay for another boatload of government spending: The vast majority of Americans say that the country is taxed enough already.

According to a new Rasmussen poll, 56% of likely U.S. voters believe America is overtaxed. Those numbers follow a poll last week that shows that the vast majority of likely voters want individuals and businesses to pay lower rates.

Of course, to hear liberals tell the story, you’d think Americans are clamoring for paying even more money to Uncle Sam. Meanwhile, the President is looking to higher taxes as a way of tackling America’s debt crisis. Last summer, he traveled America campaigning for higher taxes as part of Congress’ debt deal, saying “We can’t just cut our way out of this hole.” And in his FY 2013 budget released last month, the President’s tax hike proposal topped out at a whopping $2 trillion.

More taxes are part and parcel with the President’s plans to expand the size and scope of government — more spending for infrastructure, Obamacare, and green energy boondoggles, among them — paired up with a refusal to undertake serious, much-needed reforms for entitlement programs.

With the debt threat and the calls for more taxes, it’s no wonder the economy is stuck in a pattern of slow-motion growth. Businesses are sitting on the side, not knowing what taxes, fees, and regulations the future will hold. Meanwhile, the American people are saying “enough is enough” — it’s time to lower the tax burden.

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Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your commitment as a father and a husband.

Sincerely,

Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733, lowcostsqueegees@yahoo.com

By Everette Hatcher III | Comments (0)

Open letter to President Obama (Part 88)

June 18, 2012 – 6:16 am

Rick Santorum’s (entire) Speech at Chattanooga Tea Party’s Liberty Forum

Uploaded by on Feb 25, 2012

http://www.tinshipproductions.com Chattanooga Tea Party’s Liberty Forum Saturday, February 25, 2012
This speech is unedited and shown in it’s entire 55 minutes.

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President Obama c/o The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President,

I know that you receive 20,000 letters a day and that you actually read 10 of them every day. I really do respect you for trying to get a pulse on what is going on out here.

This recovery is way too slow and too small.

Mike Brownfield

March 9, 2012 at 9:11 am

In the Super Tuesday primary, the economy was the number one issue on voters’ minds, be they in Massachusetts, Georgia, Ohio, or Virginia. And that wasn’t because they were happy about high unemployment and slow wage growth. Yet according to President Barack Obama, “the economy is getting stronger, and the recovery is speeding up.” Of course, these things are relative. A disappointing recovery is underway. It just hasn’t touched the millions of Americans who remain out of work, the millions more whose wages can’t keep up with inflation, and it doesn’t offset the effects of high gas prices on family budgets.

Voters’ old-fashioned common sense about the economy was backed up by the numbers in the February jobs report just released this morning. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. economy added 227,000 jobs last month. That’s the good news, and it does evidence that the recovery continues, albeit slowly. And this slow-trot recovery is why the unemployment rate remains at 8.3 percent, while the number of long-term unemployed workers remained at 5.4 million, accounting for 42.6 percent of the unemployed.

What’s more, an extraordinarily high number of Americans have dropped out of the work force, either choosing not to work, losing heart and abandoning the hunt for jobs, or accepting disability benefits. Because of the meager recovery, very few potential workers have returned to the job market to find work. With fewer people in the work force, the unemployment rate appears lower than it should as a matter of simple arithmetic. But this artificially low rate does not disguise the fact that talented, experienced, discouraged workers are choosing to sit on the sidelines instead of participating in the economy. In short, though the labor market is improving, it’s nowhere near where it should be given America’s potential.

What should the economy’s recovery look like? Take a glance at history (and the chart below). Following the 1981-1982 recession — which looked a lot like the one America saw in 2008 in both depth and duration — the economy returned to near-full employment (which is around 5.5 percent) by 1984. Today, nearly three years after the most recent recession ended, the unemployment rate remains stuck well above 8 percent. So while the economy has grown for 10 straight quarters, it’s only done so at a measly 2.4 percent rate. In fact, it’s the slowest recovery America has seen in the post-war era. No wonder millions of Americans aren’t feeling the effects of the economic rebound and are voting their displeasure. (Article continued below chart.)

Even liberal economist / columnist Paul Krugman sees the economy for what it is. In a recent column in The New York Times, he wrote, “our economy remains deeply depressed” and that “every silver lining comes with a cloud.” So what’s bringing about that cloud? Why is this economy growing, and yet growing so slowly by comparison to the 1980s recovery?

While President Obama might like to take credit for the meager growth the economy is seeing, there’s an important fact to keep in mind. It’s the natural tendency for the economy to grow — and taking credit for its meager improvement is sort of like accepting kudos for the rising and setting of the sun. In fact, the President should of course (but never will) accept some blame for the fact that the economy isn’t growing faster. The policies Obama ushered in are markedly different from those that President Ronald Reagan adopted to unleash the economic recovery in the 1980s, and the results show the difference — a powerful recovery under Reagan, and weak recovery under Obama.

For starters, President Obama says he wants to encourage job creators to ramp up their economic engines, while at the same time he has proposed $2 trillion in higher taxes, much of which would fall on small businesses — the job creators. Add onto that a discouragingly successful policy of encouraging higher gas prices by opposing domestic energy production. This policy is so unpopular that eleven Democratic Senators voted with their Republican colleagues on Thursday to overturn the Obama decision to kill the Keystone XL pipeline. Proponents failed to get the 60 votes necessary to overturn the Keystone decision, but with Democratic support it came very close. Instead of tapping proven resources, Obama puts his faith in pie-in-the-sky renewable energy projects like Solyndra. No wonder Super Tuesday’s voters were worried about the economy.

On top of job-killing tax hikes and higher gas prices, President Obama continues to embrace the burden of untenably high spending and debt — which will of course motivate the left to call for even higher taxes — and you’re left with a mess of policies emanating from Washington signaling small businesses to hunker down instead of investing for the future. A better path for growth would be to enact a budget that curbs spending, reforms entitlements, and reforms the tax code to focus it on economic growth as proposed in Heritage’s Saving the American Dream plan — all of which would free the economy to grow at a faster rate than we’re witnessing today.

While any economic growth and job creation is welcome, a barely perceptible, incremental recovery doesn’t offer much hope for those Americans who can’t feel, see, or touch the fruits of recovery. Millions remain unemployed in the Obama economy, and Washington can and should do better for the American people.

__________

Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your commitment as a father and a husband.

Sincerely,

Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733, lowcostsqueegees@yahoo.com

By Everette Hatcher III | Also posted in spending out of control, Taxes | Comments (0)

Open letter to President Obama (Part 87)

June 18, 2012 – 6:14 am

Uploaded by on Mar 6, 2012

Learn More at http://oversight.house.gov

The Oversight Committee is examining reports of food stamp merchants previously disqualified who continue to defraud the program. According to a Scripps Howard News Service report, food stamp fraud costs taxpayers hundreds of millions every year.

Watch the Oversight hearing live tomorrow at 930 AM EST at http://oversight.house.gov. Full hearing information is available here: http://oversight.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&…

_______________________

President Obama c/o The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President,

I know that you receive 20,000 letters a day and that you actually read 10 of them every day. I really do respect you for trying to get a pulse on what is going on out here.

The Food Stamp Program is a very bad program and it is abused every day. It should be abolished.

Alison Meyer

March 9, 2012 at 4:35 pm

Food-stamp fraud and the government’s failed attempts to stop it were the focus of a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing yesterday.

Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) called the hearing in response to a Scripps Howard News Service investigative report exposing widespread abuse. The investigation revealed that retailers who lost authorization to accept food stamps were still conducting business despite their restrictions.

“[D]ozens of individuals who had been banned as food-stamp vendors nonetheless remained in the business in New York; Los Angeles; Phoenix; San Diego; Tulsa, Okla.; West Palm Beach, Fla.; Baltimore and other communities across the country,” according to the report. Scripps Howard discovered this by comparing U.S. Department of Agriculture disqualification records against documents from health-inspection reports to business filings and corporate certificates.

At yesterday’s hearing, Kevin Concannon, undersecretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service, defended the government’s efforts to combat fraud. He also cast blame on the messenger.

“As with other leads and observations we receive from the public, we took this information very seriously. We began an immediate investigation into all of the stores that were brought to our attention and we have added further layers of security to our retailer oversight process. However, our research indicates that many of the cases identified by Scripps Howard do not involve improper activity,” he said.

Scripps Howard isn’t the first to expose food-stamp fraud. Heritage’s Rachel Sheffield wrote last year on The Foundry that $2.5 billion in taxpayer money that was spent on improper food-stamp payments. Lawmakers such as Rep. Jim Jordan (R–OH) and Sen. Jim DeMint (R–SC) have proposed reforms to the program.

Issa, meanwhile, vowed to keep a watchful eye on USDA, demanding additional documents and information.

“With record numbers of Americans using food stamps, with an annual price tag of $75.3 billion, anything short of rigorous anti-fraud measures will be very costly to taxpayers,” Issa said.

The USDA should have been conducting the oversight that the Scripps Howard News Service was doing, according to Issa. “It was the government’s own databases that [Scripps] went to and discovered there was no enforcement under this administration,” he said.

The most common type of fraud is food-stamp trafficking where retailers encourage food-stamp recipients to trade their benefits for cash, alcohol or cigarettes. Once the card is swiped, the merchant takes full payment for the transaction’s stated price and pockets the difference, which can add up to $50,000 a month.

“The crime is as widespread as it is simple: Stores accept food stamps, but instead of requiring that customers walk away with wholesome groceries, they provide the customers a small amount of cash — typically 50 cents on the food stamp dollar. While taxpayers lose out — the money isn’t going toward wholesome food — food stamp recipients are receiving no-strings attached cash while stores are taking a hefty profit for serving as a moneychanger,” according to the Scripps Howard report.

This fraud comes at a high price to taxpayers. “According to Reuters, food stamp fraud accounts for just 1 percent of food stamp benefits, but equals about $750 million each year,” Issa wrote in a letter to USDA. “Since President Obama took office three years ago, the number of SNAP enrollees has dramatically increased. Today approximately 46.1 million people receive food stamps, with 14 million of those individuals enrolling since President Obama took office.  According to the Washington Times, SNAP enrolled six million new people in Fiscal Year 2011 at an increased cost of $7 billion.”

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which administers food stamps, has a mission to address hunger and poverty. The SNAP website reads like an advertisement: “Only 86% of eligible District residents, and 41% of eligible low-income working families, receive SNAP/Food Stamps. Every $1 of SNAP/Food Stamps spent in the community generates $1.85 in local economic activity. D.C. would gain millions in federal funds by signing up eligible households — funds that would stimulate the local economy. People who work sometimes assume they are not eligible for SNAP/Food Stamps, or that time-off from work is required to apply. This is not true. A family of 3 with a minimum wage earner could be eligible for over $3,000 annually in benefits, and working families can complete phone interviews rather than go to the SNAP/Food Stamps office in-person.”

Under the Obama administration, the United States has seen a dramatic increase in the welfare state, making individuals more dependent on government.

“Now, more than 67.3 million Americans depend on the federal government for everything from food stamps and college tuition to retirement services and health care,” according to Heritage’s Index of Dependence on Government, which revealed an 8.1 percent increase at a cost of roughly $2.5 trillion.

__________

Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your commitment as a father and a husband.

Sincerely,

Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733, lowcostsqueegees@yahoo.com

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

Open letter to President Obama (Part 86)

June 18, 2012 – 1:39 am

Uploaded by on Mar 5, 2012

If you listen to the media, conservatives are fading everywhere from Congress to the campaign trail. Nothing could be further from the truth; the strength of conservative principles continues to endure and thrive.

There is an awakening across the country, and the fight is on to return power to individuals and localities, empower individuals and unleash America’s entrepreneurial spirit.

Join the fight: http://heritageaction.com/join/fight-for-freedom/

______________________________

President Obama c/o The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President,

I know that you receive 20,000 letters a day and that you actually read 10 of them every day. I really do respect you for trying to get a pulse on what is going on out here.

I really think the Tea Party movement is here to stay. They have a message of cutting back on the overreach of the federal government in our lives. I named my son Wilson after my hero Ronald Wilson Reagan and he said “It is time to check and reverse the growth of government, which shows signs of having grown beyond the consent of the governed.”

Ericka Andersen

March 10, 2012 at 8:15 am

Constitutional conservatism is alive and well in America today.

From conservatives in Congress working to roll back big government spending to the backlash over Obamacare’s anti-conscience mandate, it’s clear that Americans are clinging to the foundational principles of our country.

Two years ago, the Tea Party movement launched grassroots conservative activists to the forefront of political debate, giving big-government liberals a force to be reckoned with. Reinvigorated citizens began to fight for the constitutional cornerstones of limited government, free markets, and localized empowerment.

The fight to return to a constitutional government is still raging—and it isn’t going anywhere. As Ronald Reagan said, “It is time to check and reverse the growth of government, which shows signs of having grown beyond the consent of the governed.”

America is checking and reversing, President Reagan. The fight has only begun.

Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your commitment as a father and a husband.

Sincerely,

Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733, lowcostsqueegees@yahoo.com

By Everette Hatcher III | Comments (0)

Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute takes on entitlement reform

June 13, 2012 – 6:51 am

It is the elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about. Here Dan Mitchell takes it on.

Most people have a vague understanding that America has a huge long-run fiscal problem.

They’re right, though they probably don’t realize the seriousness of that looming crisis.

Here’s what you need to know: America’s fiscal crisis is actually a spending crisis, and that spending crisis is driven by entitlements.

More specifically, the vast majority of the problem is the result of Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security, programs that are poorly designed and unsustainable.

America needs to fix these programs…or eventually become another Greece.

Fortunately, all of the problems can be solved, as these three videos demonstrate.

The first video explains how to fix Medicaid.

Promote Federalism and Replicate the Success of Welfare Reform with Medicaid Block Grants

Uploaded by on Jun 26, 2011

The Medicaid program imposes high costs while generating poor results. This Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation video explains how block grants, such as the one proposed by Congressman Paul Ryan, will save money and improve healthcare by giving states the freedom to innovate and compete.

The second video shows how to fix Medicare.

Saving Medicare: Free Market Reforms Are Better than Bureaucratic Rationing

Uploaded by on May 17, 2011

This Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation video explains how a “premium-support” plan would solve Medicare’s fiscal crisis and improve the overall healthcare system. This voucher-based system also would protect seniors from bureaucratic rationing. http://www.freedomandprosperity.org

And the final video shows how to fix Social Security.

Saving Social Security with Personal Retirement Accounts

Uploaded by on Jan 10, 2011

There are two crises facing Social Security. First the program has a gigantic unfunded liability, largely thanks to demographics. Second, the program is a very bad deal for younger workers, making them pay record amounts of tax in exchange for comparatively meager benefits. This video explains how personal accounts can solve both problems, and also notes that nations as varied as Australia, Chile, Sweden, and Hong Kong have implemented this pro-growth reform. www.freedomandprosperity.org

_______________________

Regular readers know I’m fairly gloomy about the future of liberty, but this is one area where there is a glimmer of hope.

The Chairman of the House Budget Committee actually put together a plan that addresses the two biggest problems (Medicare and Medicaid) and the House of Representatives actually adopted the proposal.

The Senate didn’t act, of course, and Obama would veto any good legislation anyhow, so I don’t want to be crazy optimistic. Depending on how things play out politically in the next six years, I’ll say there’s actually a 20 percent chance to save America.

By Everette Hatcher III | Also posted in Cato Institute, Healthcare, Social Security, spending out of control, Taxes | Tagged | Comments (0)