One of the disappointing aspects of President Obama’s speech was that the much hyped housing section was little more than a re-warmed proposal from last fall. And that was just a re-working of several earlier failed versions that failed to work. Sadly, this version is unlikely to be any more successful.
While details are lacking, the President promised to allow homeowners to refinance mortgages in a way that would reduce their payments by about $3,000 a year. Earlier, there had been speculation that he would announce a way for homeowners to have the amount of their loan reduced, but after the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) noted that such a plan would cost taxpayers an additional $100 billion in subsidies to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, that plan seems to have been dropped.
Housing remains a serious problem for our economy, but no matter what the President wishes, no federal program is likely to fix the problem.
Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your committment as a father and a husband.
Sincerely,
Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733, lowcostsqueegees@yahoo.com
President Obama says that he wants even more fraud laws and penalties on the books for financial institutions. Even putting aside all the new crimes in Dodd-Frank, there are already numerous laws prohibiting fraud on the federal books. Indeed, back in 1999 Professor Ellen Podgor counted 92 uses of some form of the word “fraud” in federal criminal law! As Paul Larkin has noted, Congress continues to pile on criminal laws regarding fraud, going as far as to propose that there should be an additional fraud law just for maple syrup. Former Attorney General Ed Meese noted this in his Congressional testimony last month, asking “Will we, as a society, not be taken seriously about fighting fraud unless we double, triple, and quadruple the number of iterations of this crime?”
For Obama, the answer is a resounding, albeit ridiculous, “Yes.”
__________________________
More laws on the bank industry is not the answer.
Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your committment as a father and a husband.
Sincerely,
Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733, lowcostsqueegees@yahoo.com
In remarks on the Senate floor today, U.S. Senator Bob Corker, R-Tenn., expressed disappointment in President Obama’s 2012 budget proposal, saying it displayed a “lack of urgency” to get federal spending under control. Corker has introduced the CAP Act to dramatically cut federal spending over the next decade.
__________________________-
We are now on a fiscally irresponsible path here in the USA with the federal government spending 25% of GDP and having 4 straight budgets with over 1 trillion dollars a year in debt. That means our debt is now almost 16 trillion instead of the 9.9 trillion just 4 years ago. Senator Boozman seems to be on the right track.
WASHINGTON D.C. – U.S. Senator John Boozman (R-AR) took to the Senate floor today to urge America to reject President Obama’s reckless budget proposal and focus on passing a fiscally responsible budget.
“When you get down to it, President Obama was never serious about his pledge to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term. Like every budget this administration has proposed, this one was written with red ink. The deficit spending proposed in the President’s FY13 budget topped a trillion once again. This is an unsustainable rate of spending,” Boozman said in his speech.
The full text of the speech can be found here:
Madam President: On Monday morning, the country was presented with President Obama’s budget proposal for the fiscal year.
If you were to only listen to the President and his surrogates, you would think this proposal is great for the nation.
The acting budget director says the President’s budget “makes the right investments.”
The head of the President’s National Economic Council used a litany of sports metaphors to make the case that “the president has very much stepped up to the plate.”
And the President himself said his budget makes “some tough choices in order to put this country back on a more sustainable fiscal path.”
The reason they are so excited about this proposal is that, they believe, in an election year, they have offered every ally something to woe their support. This budget proposal truly does try to be everything for everyone. The problem is, however, no one wins with it.
When you scratch the surface of this proposal, the shine quickly wears off.
The deficit reduction claims that the administration throws out to defend this proposal don’t hold water.
You can’t claim $1 trillion in cuts that Congress pushed through during the debt ceiling debate as new cuts.
Nor can you say with all honesty that $850 billion in war savings are real cuts. This money was never going to be spent in the first place.
When you get down to it, President Obama was never serious about his pledge to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term. Like every budget this administration has proposed, this one was written with red ink. The deficit spending proposed in the President’s FY13 budget topped a trillion once again. This is an unsustainable rate of spending.
On Monday, the President’s team was doing a full-scale PR push for this budget. At one point during the rollout, a reporter asked the President’s top economic aides whatever happened to that pledge the President had made to the American people.
Gone from their answers was the tough talk of making “difficult decisions” and facing “challenges we’ve long neglected.” Instead, his advisors were left to pull out the old standby excuse that the President and his team simply “didn’t realize how bad” the economy actually is when they first took over.
Clearly, they still don’t realize it now.
Not only does the President’s budget ignore the very real disarray our fiscal house is in, it makes the mess worse.
Since President Obama took office, our national debt has shot up 42%. Under President Obama’s watch, the national debt has jumped to a jaw-dropping $15.1 trillion.
This is the fourth year in a row that the budget would run a deficit above $1.29 trillion. When it comes to fiscal responsibility, this is not a record to be proud of.
America deserves better than a collection of tax hikes, phony savings and additional debt.
The President’s budget proposal is bad for seniors as it takes no steps to protect and strengthen Medicare and Social Security, will hurt chances of an economic recovery through tax hikes and will add $11 trillion more to our already staggering national debt in a 10-year period.
We cannot continue to keep going down this road. America’s fiscal health is at stake. We’ve got to stop spending more than we take in. If not, we risk going the direction of Greece, Portugal, Italy and other European countries that have spent their way to the brink of default.
As we head into the final year of President Obama’s first term, we have already witnessed the most rapid increase in debt under any U.S. President. With our national debt already the size of our entire economy, the President has proposed a budget that calls for hundreds of billions of dollars in new spending.
If we followed through with this budget, deficit spending would exceed $600 billion every year but one over the next decade. Our national debt would grow to $18.7 trillion.
President Obama would like you to believe that if we simply raise taxes we can solve all of our fiscal problems. A recent CBO report shows that spending is the primary cause of our fiscal crisis and supports spending cuts rather than tax increases to reverse this trend. But the President is holding steadfast to his desire to raise taxes as an answer.
The President’s failed policy of borrowing, spending and taxing is just what the CBO is warning us to avoid. It hasn’t worked in the past and it won’t work in the future.
Washington does not have a revenue problem, it has a spending problem. The fact that President Obama still believes we can tax our way out of the problem reveals a huge disconnect with the American people.
Madam President, when it comes to our country’s budget, Americans have a right to expect accountability, honesty and responsibility. This proposal has none of those.
If President Obama refuses to acknowledge and address the very real economic crisis facing our country, let’s show America that we will. We can do so by rejecting the White House’s proposal and passing a responsible budget that puts our nation back on a fiscally responsible path.
A Clean Energy Standard Would Throttle Economy – Romina Boccia
During last year’s SOTU, the President set a target for a Clean Energy Standard of 80 percent by 2035. This year, the President once again called for a CES, only this time, less ambitiously.
[…] there’s no reason why Congress shouldn’t at least set a clean energy standard that creates a market for innovation.
The issue is that a clean energy standard would throttle economic growth, and that is why Congress has rightly not put one in place. One way of converting existing shares of “dirty energy” into clean energy is by cutting energy from conventional sources. Environmental Protection Agency regulations are already well on their way to cut existing coal capacity by forcing the premature shutdown of older plants with burdensome compliance rules. No matter how many times the President lauds the supposed benefits of clean energy investments and green jobs, the truth remains that government-forced cuts in conventional energy use throttle economic growth and green jobs are a fallacy.
Instead of wasting taxpayer dollars by lavishing subsidies on select renewable energy sources and driving up energy prices by mandating their usage, Congress should reduce artificial barriers to domestic energy production and create a level playing field so that energy providers compete on their merits.
Costly New Regulations –James Gattuso
President Obama tonight made the startling claim that he had ”approved fewer regulations in the first three years of my presidency than my Republican predecessor did in his.” This claim is more than a little bit misleading. According to the Government Accountability Office, it is true that fewer total rules were issued during this Administration than during that of George W. Bush. But that counts many administrative actions of no real significance. When you look at major rules – those with $100 million or more in economic impact, a very different picture emerges. Some 189 of these costly rules have been adopted in the past three years, compared to 153 during George Bush’s first three years. That’s a 23 percent increase in red tape. So much for regulatory restraint.
This by the way, isn’t the first time that the Obama Administration has been caught playing with the numbers on regulation. As reported by FactCheck.org last year, Cass Sunstein, the president’s “regulatory czar,” presented a “distorted view” of this president’s regulatory record compared to his predecessor. In fact, the organization’s report concluded (citing research by Heritage among others) the Obama Administration has imposed far more in costs on the country than his precedessor had at the same point in his tenure.
The President also cited efforts to reduce unnecessary regulation, claiming some 500 reforms under his belt. That would be welcome news, if true, but the relief provided by these moves is only a small sliver of the new costs imposed. Virtually none are even considered “major.”
No one wants to abolish all regulation. But, as the president said again tonight, many are unnecessary and too costly. But the president has added to, not reduced, the problem.
Obama’s Policies Must Not Sting the Economy into Lethargy – J.D. Foster
The story goes that a scorpion once needed to cross a river, but had no way across. Along came a fox who was going to swim across and the scorpion asked if he could ride on the fox’s back. The fox said no, because the scorpion would sting him and they’d both die. The scorpion answered that he didn’t want to die, and so the fox was safe. Sufficiently assured, the fox let the scorpion on her back and she began to swim across.
At first, everything went well. But then, as they reached the midpoint of the stream, the scorpion suddenly tensed up and stung the fox on her back, just as she had feared. As she began to black out the fox cried out, “Why did you do that? Now we’re both going to die.” The scorpion sighed, “I know, but a scorpion’s got to do what a scorpion’s got to do”.
In listening to President Obama talk about the need for a stronger economy and more jobs in one breathe, and the need to raise taxes on saving, on investment, on job creators, and others of higher incomes, in his next breathe, one is reminded of the scorpion.
It is a simple and inescapable truth that one does not get more saving, more investment, more new businesses, more entrepreneurship, more economic growth, by taxing these things more. But this simple truth seems to lie outside the permissible realm of the President’s ideology. Fortunately, the economy is better protected against President Obama’s proclivity to sting the economy into sustained lethargy than was the poor fox. The President was largely unsuccessful in 2011 in pushing his job destroying agenda through the Congress, and all indications are he will be no more successful in 2012.
______________________
Excessive regulations will hurt our businesses. Instead of bragging about the slow growth of regulations you should cut regulations to allow our companies to thrive.
Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your committment as a father and a husband.
Sincerely,
Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733, lowcostsqueegees@yahoo.com
Michael Tanner is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and author of Leviathan on the Right: How Big-Government Conservatism Brought Down the Republican Revolution.
In a town where bipartisan budget chicanery has been raised to an art form, President Obama’s latest budget proposal should be hailed as the da Vinci of fiscal obfuscation.
The president claims that his budget proposal reduces debt by $4 trillion over the next 10 years, combining $2.4 trillion in spending cuts with $1.6 trillion in tax hikes. Almost none of that is true.
Let’s start with the idea that the president’s budget would reduce the debt. That is true only using Washington math, under which a smaller increase is actually a decrease. In reality, the president’s budget adds $6.7 trillion to the national debt over the next 10 years, bringing it to nearly $25.5 trillion by 2022. That would be more than 100 percent of our GDP.
The president’s budget is dishonest and irresponsible.
And those spending cuts? The president actually counts $681 billion in cuts that were agreed to last year as part of the deal to raise the debt ceiling. Shouldn’t there be some sort of statute of limitations for how long you can claim credit for cuts that you have already made? And it should probably be shorter for cuts that you fought against every step of the way. The president also counts as a cut the $741 billion we will save from not occupying Iraq over the next 10 years, and from not being in Afghanistan a decade from now. Considering that we were never going to spend that money in the first place, that seems like slightly dishonest accounting. After all, think of all the savings we can claim by not invading Syria. And, finally, $595 billion of the claimed budget cuts is actually interest savings resulting from not having to borrow for the other phony cuts.
On the other hand, the president’s budget does include plenty of new spending. For example, there is $476 billion in new spending over 10 years for transportation projects, including the president’s favorite boondoggle, “high-speed rail.” There are also the usual bailouts for profligate state governments and teachers’ unions, including $30 billion to build more schools and $30 billion to hire teachers. Another stimulus anyone?
Overall, the president would increase federal spending from $3.8 trillion in 2013 to $5.82 trillion in 2022. That might not be as big an increase there might otherwise be, but in no way can it be called a cut.
The president isn’t even honest about his tax proposals. In the speech announcing his budget plan, President Obama devoted several paragraphs to a renewed push for the so-called Buffett rule, a new 30 percent minimum tax on the rich, based on the misleading claim that Warren Buffett pays a lower tax rate than his secretary. There is only one small problem: The president’s budget does not actually include any revenue from the Buffett rule. In fact, the budget provides no clue as to when or how such a tax might be implemented. The Buffett Rule isn’t even listed in the document’s summary of revenues and outlays. A cynic might believe that the Buffett Rule has more to do with campaign rhetoric than an actual budget plan.
Instead, what the budget does contain is a renewed call for tax increases on people and small businesses making as little as $200,000 per year. In addition, there’s the usual panoply of tax hikes on energy products, businesses, investment, and pretty much anything else the president can think of. The budget also helpfully points out that 2013 is the year in which most of the new taxes under Obamacare will take effect. Overall, the president would increase tax revenue to 20.1 percent of GDP. That’s a huge increase from the current 15.4 percent, and higher than the post–World War II average of 18.0 percent. Tax increases of that magnitude cannot help but slow economic growth and job creation.
But even if the president were to get every penny of the tax hikes he wants, his budget would never balance. The closest he would ever come would be in 2018, when the deficit would be only $575 billion. After that, deficits begin rising again, reaching $704 billion by 2022.
Fortunately for the president, he stops counting after 2022, about the time that the costs of entitlements such as Medicare and Social Security really begin to kick in, and his proposed budget does almost nothing to reform these troubled programs. One only has to look at the upward trajectory of both spending and taxes at the end of the budget window to see that president’s budget leaves us on the road to future bankruptcy.
Appearing last Sunday on Meet the Press, the president’s chief of staff — and former budget director — Jack Lew, declared that “The time for austerity is not now.” Judging by the president’s budget proposal, it’s not ever.
As discussed yesterday, the most important number in Obama’s budget is that the burden of government spending will be at least $2 trillion higher in 10 years if the President’s plan is enacted.
But there are also some very unsightly warts in the revenue portion of the President’s budget. Americans for Tax Reform has a good summary of the various tax hikes, most of which are based on punitive, class-warfare ideology.
In this post, I want to focus on the President’s proposals to increase both the capital gains tax rate and the tax rate on dividends.
Most of the discussion is focusing on the big increase in tax rates for 2013, particularly when you include the 3.8 tax on investment income that was part of Obamacare. If the President is successful, the tax on capital gains will climb from 15 percent this year to 23.8 percent next year, and the tax on dividends will skyrocket from 15 percent to 43.4 percent.
But these numbers understate the true burden because they don’t include the impact of double taxation, which exists when the government cycles some income through the tax code more than one time. As this chart illustrates, this means a much higher tax burden on income that is saved and invested.
The accounting firm of Ernst and Young just produced a report looking at actual tax rates on capital gains and dividends, once other layers of tax are included. The results are very sobering. The United States already has one of the most punitive tax regimes for saving and investment.
Looking at this first chart, it seems quite certain that we would have the worst system for dividends if Obama’s budget is enacted.
The good news, so to speak, is that we probably wouldn’t have the worst capital gains tax system if the President’s plan is enacted. I’m just guessing, but it looks like Italy (gee, what a role model) would still be higher.
Let’s now contemplate the potential impact of the President’s tax plan. I am dumbfounded that anybody could look at these charts and decide that America will be in better shape with higher tax rates on dividends and capital gains.
This isn’t just some abstract issue about competitiveness. As I explain in this video, every single economic theory — even Marxism and socialism — agrees that saving and investment are key for long-run growth and higher living standards.
_________
Six Reasons Why the Capital Gains Tax Should Be Abolished
The correct capital gains tax rate is zero because there should be no double taxation of income that is saved and invested. This is why all pro-growth tax reform plans, such as the flat tax and national sales tax, eliminate the capital gains tax. Unfortunately, the President wants to boost the official capital gains tax rate to 20 percent, and that is in addition to the higher tax rate on capital gains included in the government-run healthcare legislation. www.freedomandprosperity.org
_________
So why is he doing this? I periodically run into people who are convinced that the President is deliberately trying to ruin the nation. I tell them this is nonsense and that there’s no reason to believe elaborate conspiracies.
President Obama is simply doing the same thing that President Bush did: Making bad decisions because of perceived short-run political advantage.
Rep. James Lankford (R-OK) responded to President Obama’s FY 2013 budget proposal that fails to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term as promised. The budget also delayed the tough decisions to cut spending and reform entitlements that are needed to avoid a debt crisis.
_______________________
Senator Blunt Participates in Press Conference in Response to President Obama’s Budget 2/13/2012
U.S. Senator Roy Blunt (Mo.) participated in a press conference with GOP Senators in response to President Obama’s budget proposal on February 13, 2012.
_________________________
Corker Says President’s 2012 Budget Proposal Shows “Lack of Urgency” on Spending
In remarks on the Senate floor today, U.S. Senator Bob Corker, R-Tenn., expressed disappointment in President Obama’s 2012 budget proposal, saying it displayed a “lack of urgency” to get federal spending under control. Corker has introduced the CAP Act to dramatically cut federal spending over the next decade.
President Obama c/o The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
Below is a portion of an article from the group “Americans for Prosperity” and I wanted to share it with you since it agrees with the principles that I believe in.
President Obama’s Fiscal Year 2013 Budget Just another Tax-and-Spend Proposal
On February 13, President Obama released his budget proposal for the fiscal year starting October 1, 2012. Just like every budget he has offered, this proposal spends too much, taxes too much, uses budget and accounting gimmicks, and fails to address the nation’s biggest challenges. Last year, the President’s budget was so unserious that the Senate rejected it 97-0; not even a single member of his own party supported the plan. This year he hasn’t done much better.
Spends Too Much, Taxes Too Much: Once again the President produced a budget that never balances, creates trillion-dollar yearly deficits and uses campaign rhetoric instead of pro-growth tax policy.
The President’s budget envisions over $3.8 trillion in federal spending in 2013. Over the next five years, his budget runs up $20.6 trillion in government spending.
The budget calls for $1.9 trillion in higher taxes while the economy struggles to regain its footing. Economists of all stripes agree that raising taxes during a recession is bad policy, but the President is more concerned with campaign rhetoric about taxing the rich than using proven policies to restore economic growth. What’s more, raising taxes only gives politicians more money to spend; it will only undermine efforts to control federal spending.
Even with all these new taxes, the President foresees a $1.3 trillion deficit for this year; the forth straight year with a trillion-dollar deficit. For 2013, Obama’s budget projects a deficit of $901 billion, but if we strip out the budget’s unrealistic assumptions, yet another trillion-dollar-plus deficit is nearly certain.
The President uses rosy estimates to make his budget look better than it really is. The past three years the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office issued an analysis of the President’s budget. They found the deficits were actually 20 percent higher than the President claimed.
Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your committment as a father and a husband.
Sincerely,
Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733, lowcostsqueegees@yahoo.com
Rep. James Lankford (R-OK) responded to President Obama’s FY 2013 budget proposal that fails to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term as promised. The budget also delayed the tough decisions to cut spending and reform entitlements that are needed to avoid a debt crisis.
_______________________
Senator Blunt Participates in Press Conference in Response to President Obama’s Budget 2/13/2012
U.S. Senator Roy Blunt (Mo.) participated in a press conference with GOP Senators in response to President Obama’s budget proposal on February 13, 2012.
_________________________
Corker Says President’s 2012 Budget Proposal Shows “Lack of Urgency” on Spending
In remarks on the Senate floor today, U.S. Senator Bob Corker, R-Tenn., expressed disappointment in President Obama’s 2012 budget proposal, saying it displayed a “lack of urgency” to get federal spending under control. Corker has introduced the CAP Act to dramatically cut federal spending over the next decade.
http://blog.heritage.org | Today marks the 1,000th day since the United States Senate has passed a budget. While the House has put forth (and passed) its own budget, the Senate has failed to do the same. To help illustrate how extraordinary this failure has been, our new video highlights a few of impressive feats in history that have been accomplished in less time.
_______________________
President Obama c/o The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
The Heritage Foundation website (www.heritage.org ) has lots of good articles and one that caught my attention was concerning the budget you released on Feb 13, 2012 and it concerned the incorrect opinion out there in the USA that you can not pass a budget in the Senate because of the Republicans. Here in Little Rock we have liberal bloggers that have been saying this too.
The process blockers in the Senate, your heroes, won’t allow anything to come to the floor for a vote. Take it up with McConnell.
I responded with this:
I am afraid that President Obama does not need any Republicans help to get his budget passed. There are 53 Democrats in the Senate and it only takes 51 votes to get the budget passed. You may have seen President Obama’s White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew on “Meet the Press” but he was incorrect.
“You can’t pass a budget in the Senate of the United States without 60 votes, and you can’t get 60 votes without bipartisan support,” Lew said on CNN’s State of the Union. “So unless… unless Republicans are willing to work with Democrats in the Senate, [Majority Leader] Harry Reid is not going to be able to get a budget passed.” Lew repeated the claim in a slightly different form on NBC’s Meet the Press, saying “One of the things about the United States Senate that I think the American people have realized is that it takes 60, not 50, votes to pass something.”
If you have the majority in the Senate then why can’t you get a budget passed? Is it true that the Republicans are holding up getting a budget passed in the Senate?
Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your committment as a father and a husband.
Sincerely,
Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733, lowcostsqueegees@yahoo.com
http://blog.heritage.org | Today marks the 1,000th day since the United States Senate has passed a budget. While the House has put forth (and passed) its own budget, the Senate has failed to do the same. To help illustrate how extraordinary this failure has been, our new video highlights a few of impressive feats in history that have been accomplished in less time.
___________________________________
I have to be frank and it seems that this budget proposal presented on 2-13-2012 to Congress was just an attempt by a President to get himself re-elected by promising a lot of free lunches to a lot of special interest groups.
In his recent State of the Union address, President Obama said that he wanted an American economy that is “built to last.” Today’s release of his fiscal 2013 budget proposal shows that the president still thinks he can build economic prosperity with more spending, taxes, and debt. Those are the building materials for an economic time-bomb that will explode on future generations.
The following charts show that federal spending and debt as a share of the economy would remain at elevated levels under the president’s budget proposal:
Given that policymakers always seem to find an excuse to spend more money than was planned – and that there are virtually no limits on what the government can spend money on – these figures could prove to be optimistic.
So forget about the president’s cheap sloganeering about “investing in our future.” And ignore the double-talk about “re-establish[ing] fiscal responsibility.” The fact is the president is proposing to spend $47 trillion dollars over the next ten years – almost $6 trillion of which would go toward interest on the debt alone. This budget isn’t about creating an economy that’s built to last – it’s about keeping the president’s Democratic constituencies satisfied in November and selling voters on the impossible promise of more free lunches.
http://blog.heritage.org | Today marks the 1,000th day since the United States Senate has passed a budget. While the House has put forth (and passed) its own budget, the Senate has failed to do the same. To help illustrate how extraordinary this failure has been, our new video highlights a few of impressive feats in history that have been accomplished in less time.
_________________________
President Obama c/o The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
On Feb 13, 2012, President Barack Obama released his budget for Fiscal Year 2013. Experts from The Heritage Foundation are analyzing the President’s proposal and offer their reactions, below:
President Obama’s Budget Proposal: Running on Empty – Patrick Louis Knudsen
Coming from a President whose economic philosophy is a borrowed car company slogan, the Obama budget submitted Monday all too predictably repeats the stale and unsuccessful policies of the past three years.
The Administration has tapped all its resources and can only recycle the President’s shopworn “vision”: bigger government, more spending, higher taxes, and deeper deficits. At a time when runaway spending and swelling deficits must be reversed, he worsens both immediately but, as usual, promises to fix them later. In his first post-debt-ceiling fiscal plan—delayed a week, with no explanation—the President appears to have offered an election-year campaign document, not a credible blueprint for addressing the nation’s fiscal and economic problems.
Spending in the President’s budget rises inexorably from today’s $3.8 trillion to $5.8 trillion in 2022. Throughout the decade, outlays hold stubbornly above 22 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), 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.
In 2012, his budget results deliver a fourth consecutive annual deficit exceeding $1 trillion and then make it worse with another round of not-so-shovel-ready construction projects and government “investments” totaling $178 billion. Among these are the typical road, bridge, and school construction, but then they go alarmingly beyond the usual “infrastructure” arguments to fund teachers’ pay.
Obama’s future deficit reduction comes mainly from Budget Control Act cuts already in place, $848 billion in discredited phantom “savings” from the wind-down of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, taking credit for reductions in 2011 appropriations, and roughly $1.8 trillion in unnecessary tax increases on those earning above $250,000 and the oil and gas industry.
Yet even with the hefty tax increases and illusory savings, the President’s deficits over the next decade never fall below $575 billion (in 2018) and climb back to $704 billion (in 2022)—but again only assuming the tax increases and mystical savings cited above.
Debt held by the public in the President’s budget rises from 74.2 percent of GDP today to an economically hazardous 76.5 percent of GDP in 2022. These are historically high debt levels: the post–World War II average is just 43 percent. Moreover, the President’s debt estimates are low because of the unreal nature of much of his proposed deficit reduction.
Regarding the most critical fiscal challenge of the day—the need to restructure Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security—the President has once again taken a pass. By the middle of this century, these three programs and Obamacare will consume about 18 percent of GDP, soaking up all the historical average of federal tax revenue. The notion of “protecting” them through benign neglect only ensures their collapse, and the longer Congress and the President wait to address the problem, the more wrenching will be the consequences. But the President merely reruns previous ideas, such as more cuts to medical providers, ignoring the need for fundamental reform.
For other entitlements, the President repeats a range of mere chipping-around-the-edges proposals from last year’s budget, many of which are really tax or fee increases, not spending reductions.
In short, the President’s budget is the same worn-out collection of higher spending and higher taxes he has offered three times before—with the same inevitable result of more spending, higher taxes, and still more government debt.
_____________
More government is not the answer. We are heading in the wrong direction. Stop calling it investments and call it what it is: “Stealing our freedom!!!”
Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your committment as a father and a husband.
Sincerely,
Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733, lowcostsqueegees@yahoo.com
The Daily Hatch 