Rep Michael Burgess response

Uploaded by MichaelCBurgessMD on Jan 25, 2012

Sen. Toomey responds to State of the Union address 2012

 Here is an excellent piece from the Heritage Foundation:

 What Would Obama Do? Insights from his budget – J.D. Foster What is President Obama’s vision for America, truly? What would he intend in a second term if re-elected? We need not wait for yet another soaring presidential speech to illuminate and clarify. We now have much of the answer to these questions in black and white from his own Administration. The answer is provided in the budget he released this morning. The answer, in short, is more of the same—only more, and less. In summary, Obama’s vision for America according to his own budget is: To add about $3 trillion more in national debt to the roughly $5.5 trillion he added in his first term. To increase federal spending by half a trillion dollars between 2012 and 2016, from $3.8 trillion to $4.3 trillion. To ignore the 2012 budget deficit (projected at $1.3 trillion), allow spending to grow substantially in the years immediately following, and then take sterner measures in some distant future—read: He intends to leave the pending fiscal disaster to his successor. To step up his economy-defeating and self-delusional ideological tax hike war. To hope Congress ignores his tax policies and the economy somehow continues to strengthen on its own. Ultimately, to live up to the moniker of tax-and-spend liberal. There is more, like a tax plan to turn the ownership of America’s largest companies over to foreign ownership. Once again the President has trotted out the liberals’ favorite lines about “investment” when referring to huge jumps in infrastructure spending. The budget also includes a smattering of public-relations-oriented micro policies like a community college proposal that give the President a chance to talk about something on the campaign trail, indeed anything, except the real issues facing America. There is also some good news in the budget. While spending goes up rapidly over time, there are at least no new efforts to pump up the economy and waste taxpayer dollars with another debt-based stimulus. Has the Obama Administration learned this will never work, or is the deficit now simply too large for them to try it again? In truth, a President’s second term is rarely a time of bold initiative and action. For the most part, it’s a time of marking time and continuing and completing policies laid out in a first term. It is also an exercise of denying the opposition power. But there have been notable exceptions. In his second term, President Reagan managed to slow the growth of spending substantially and to sign into law in 1986, the last great tax reform effort. President Clinton signed the landmark welfare reform into law, somewhat begrudgingly perhaps and at the point of a Republican policy bayonet perhaps, but he signed it nevertheless. President Bush tried mightily and failed spectacularly to turn Social Security from a fiscal disaster to a sustainable program for generations to come, but at least he tried. President Obama’s budget lays bare and strips away any pretense that a second Obama term would be marked by bold leadership to address problems like high unemployment, massive budget deficits, and vital entitlement programs headed for financial disaster of Greek-like proportions. As this message sinks in, the Administration will no doubt try to establish an alternative narrative of fear-mongering leavened with promised leadership. But the true picture is painted in black and white in his own budget.

______________

I am glad there is no more efforts in this budget to try another stimulus effort like before, but the sharp cuts that are necessary to balance the budget are not in this budget. Instead of adding 5.5 trillion to the debt like we did in the last three years we will add around 8 trillion.

On Bloomberg, Sessions Discusses Astounding Gimmicks In President’s Budget

Uploaded by BudgetGOP on Feb 13, 2012

___

It is a time to cut the budget and not increase it. However, it seems we are heading the wrong direction with this budget.

Mike Brownfield

February 15, 2012 at 8:44 am

You don’t need to log on to President Barack Obama’s Facebook page to find out who his friends are, and you don’t need to read tea leaves, gaze into a crystal ball, or consult a psychic to learn where his priorities lie. No, you only have to take a look at his 2013 budget, just released on Monday, to see what kind of company the president keeps and to what extent he will go to lend his pals a helping hand.

The folks seated at the president’s head table haven’t changed much in the past few years — the only difference is how much is being served up in the taxpayer-funded buffet. As in the past, the president has plenty of handouts for his big labor buddies. His budget delivers a fourth consecutive annual deficit exceeding $1 trillion — and that spending goes to yet another round of not-so-shovel-ready construction projects and government “investments” totaling $178 billion. Heritage’s Patrick Knudsen writes that the spending includes the president’s favored road, bridge, and school construction projects, but “then they go alarmingly beyond the usual ‘infrastructure’ arguments to fund teachers’ pay.” In other words, unions representing the construction site and the classroom win big.

Other winners in the president’s budget are those who fit into the Administration’s vision of a green economy that is propelled not by the market’s demand, but by Obama’s whim. The 2013 budget proposes to spend $310 million to make solar energy cost-competitive without subsidies by 2020, $290 million to expand R&D on energy efficient manufacturing techniques, and $421 million in fossil energy research and development. Heritage energy expert Nicolas Loris writes that the budget “rejects the notion of a market-based energy industry and wastes taxpayer dollars at a time when we desperately need to curtail out-of-control spending.” In other words, he says, the president’s blueprint is all wrong.

There’s no clearer example of just how wrong the president’s blueprint is than his decision to increase subsidies for electric vehicles like the $41,000 Chevy Volt while ending funding for the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program (DCOSP), which gives low-income children in the nation’s capital a chance to escape underperforming schools. The White House intends to increase taxpayer-funded subsidies for those who purchase new-technology vehicles to $10,000 per buyer, up from $7,500. Keep in mind that the average income of a Volt buyer is $175,000 per year. That means that middle-class taxpayers are helping the rich buy pricy, politically correct cars.

With his other hand, President Obama is taking from the poor. The DCOSP provides $8,000 vouchers to 1,600 low-income children in the District of Columbia, empowering them to attend a school that they choose. The program has been a stunning success — though it has drawn criticism from the president’s teachers union allies. If the president gets his way, those children will pay the price.

They won’t be the only ones in their generation, though, who will suffer under the president’s budget. From a big picture perspective, the president’s budget rises from $3.8 trillion to $5.8 trillion in 2022. Putting that into context, that means outlays above 22 percent of gross domestic product — more than twice the New Deal’s share of the economy in its peak years. In constant dollars, outlays are more than three times the peak of World War II. With all that spending, someone will have to pay for it. Whose names will be on the bill? Those under 30 — America’s debt-paying generation. Their entire lives will be dominated by paying down today’s mountains of debt. And some of them are waking up to that fact.

“It will be my generation, rather than the retiring baby boomers, that will be paying off the national debt through higher income taxes,” says Amanda Winkler, 24, a Master’s Student at American University. Shaun Rabenius, 26, is a part-time construction worker and student. He says, “I have never followed politics much, except for when I vote. But in looking at the last decade, the presidencies, and the debt they have accumulated, I am scared out of my mind.”

They’re right to be worried. With a Senate that hasn’t passed a budget in well over 1,000 days and a president who seems intent on spending more, not less, without addressing the country’s underlying budgetary crisis, future generations will soon find that the winners today will make them losers tomorrow.

_________________