US Vice President Joe Biden (L) and his granddaughter Ashley arrive in Beijing for his visit to China and Mongolia. China is the biggest foreign holder of US debt and the country’s state run media have delivered a barrage of criticism of Washington’s handling of its near-default crisis, which it has described as a “ticking time bomb”
US Vice President Joe Biden will meet the man widely expected to become China’s next leader as he begins his first official visit on Thursday under a cloud of criticism over America’s debt crisis.
Biden is under pressure to revive the image of the United States after the world’s largest economy came close to a disastrous default on its debts earlier this month and suffered a historic credit rating downgrade.
China is the biggest foreign holder of US debt and the country’s state run media have delivered a barrage of criticism of Washington’s handling of the crisis, which it has described as a “ticking time bomb”.
On Thursday Biden, 68, will attend a welcoming ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing before meeting Xi Jinping, who is expected to be named as successor to President Hu Jintao next year.
Still of Alan Alda, John Candy, Kevin Pollak, Rip Torn, Michael Moore and Rhea Perlman in Canadian Bacon
Michael Moore is a liberal movie director and his films have been pitiful. However, I did enjoy the movie “Canadian Bacon” which was very funny. Above is a clip from that movie.
On his Twitter feed Monday, the Oscar-winning film director also blamed the 2008 economic collapse on Standard & Poor’s — apparently because it and other credit-ratings agencies did not downgrade mortgage-based bonds, which encouraged the housing bubble and let it spread throughout the economy.
“Pres Obama, show some guts & arrest the CEO of Standard & Poors. These criminals brought down the economy in 2008& now they will do it again,” Mr. Moore wrote.
Standard & Poor’s, one of three key debt agencies, stripped the U.S. federal government of its AAA status Friday night and reduced it to AA+ for the first time in the nation’s history.
Now I read this story that just came out at 10:30pm CST on August 17th that evidently President Obama thinks that he better get to marching to Michael Moore’s orders!!!!
The Justice Department is investigating whether the Standard & Poor’s credit ratings agency improperly rated dozens of mortgage securities in the years leading up to the financial crisis, The New York Times reported Wednesday.
The investigation began before Standard & Poor’s cut the United States’ AAA credit rating this month, but it’s likely to add to the political firestorm created by the downgrade, the newspaper said. Some government officials have since questioned the agency’s secretive process, its credibility and the competence of its analysts, claiming to have found an error in its debt calculations.
The Times cites two people interviewed by the government and another briefed on such interviews as its sources. According to people with knowledge of the interviews, the Justice Department has been asking about instances in which the company’s analysts wanted to award lower ratings on mortgage bonds but may have been overruled by other S&P business managers.
If the government finds enough evidence to support a case, it could undercut S&P’s longstanding claim that its analysts act independently from business concerns. The newspaper said it was unclear whether the Justice Department investigation involves the other two major ratings agencies, Moody’s and Fitch, or only S&P.
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I don’t think that Standard and Poors did anything wrong and I think they would have been wrong if they did not act because of all the political pressure they were receiving from the Obama administration. My views are much closer to those below.
The elder Paul, a longtime lawmaker, staunch libertarian, and presidential candidate, decried the allegations as an “attempt to scapegoat” Tea Party lawmakers. He pinned the downgrade on the Washington establishment.
“This attempt to scapegoat folks who recognize that our debt is out of control and that we must change course should not be tolerated,” he said in a Monday statement. “They are simply demanding that Washington do its job.”
He continued: “We were downgraded because of years of reckless spending, not because concerned Americans demanded we get our finances in order.
The Washington establishment has spent us into near default and now a downgrade, and here they are again trying to escape responsibility for their negligence in handling the economy.”
In a Sunday appearance on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod pinned responsibility for America’s recent downgrade – arguing that the group’s political “brinksmanship” during debt ceiling negotiations “brought us to the brink of a default.”
“The fact of the matter is that this is essentially a Tea Party downgrade,” Axelrod declared.
Former presidential candidate Howard Dean, also speaking on “Face the Nation,” argued that the “radical right” had essentially scared mainstream Republicans off of voting for a debt limit package that could have included tax increases – and staved off the ratings dip.
Dean said the American people are there, the Democrats are there, a lot of reasonable Republicans are there, but they are terrified of these right wing splinter groups, the radical right, because they are so powerful in the primaries.”
Rand Paul, the first-term Kentucky Senator who was elected in 2010 with the support of the Tea Party, argued that blaming the movement for America’s economic woes was like “blaming the fireman for fires “he said in a statement. “The Tea Party has been fighting for a serious solution that would rescue our finances through immediate spending cuts, spending caps and most importantly, a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution.”
“While Democrats would like to lay blame on the Tea Party for the current economic failure, it is their President who has failed in leadership, failed to lower unemployment, failed to rescue our economy, failed to prevent a downgrade of our debt, and failed to control spending,” he added.
The Dow Jones industrial fell 634.76 points on Monday, as anxiety plagued Wall Street on the first trading day since Standard & Poor’s downgraded American debt. The drop is the sixth worst point decline for the Dow in the last 112 years. Every stock in the S&P’s 500 index declined Monday.
Ron Paul: S&P Downgraded US Credit Rating… The Day Of Reckoning Is Coming
If the riots in Britain have taught us anything, it is that when government fails in its most basic function — protecting persons and property — civil society ends, and warfare begins. The rise of the welfare state has eroded respect for private property rights and fostered a socialist mentality that dulls individual responsibility.
The welfare state in the USA is almost as big as it is in Europe. Therefore, we may be in for some riots here soon. Take a look at the Founding Fathers had to say about the purpose of government and then compare to what it is doing today.
The U.S. is quickly catching up with European welfare states. Entitlement spending has skyrocketed since the Great Society programs of the mid-1960s, especially Medicare and Medicaid. Those two programs along with Social Security now account for more than 40 percent of federal spending, which itself has risen to 25 percent of GDP, or nearly $4 trillion. If all entitlement spending is included, payments to individuals account for 66 percent of federal spending.
The transformation from limited government (true liberalism) to the welfare state has no constitutional basis. The three branches of government have failed in their solemn duty to uphold the Framers’ Constitution, or what F. A. Hayek called “the constitution of liberty.”
The lesson from the British riots is that when government overextends itself, it will fail to do what it is supposed to do: protect persons and property.
It is not free enterprise and limited government that led to the riots in Britain; it is rather their demise. The U.S. should wake up and recognize the danger the welfare state poses to property — broadly understood as rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
The most fundamental question facing any society is the role and scope of government. The Framers of the Constitution accepted the idea that the primary role of government is to safeguard private property. In 1792, James Madison, the chief architect of the Constitution, wrote, “Government is instituted to protect property of every sort. … This being the end of government, that alone is a just government, which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own.”
The Preamble to the Constitution states that the purpose of the charter is to “establish justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty.” To “establish justice” means to prevent the violation of an individual’s natural rights or property rights; it does not give the federal government an unlimited power to take private property and interfere with freedom of contract.
Madison and the other framers would not have enumerated — and therefore limited — the powers of the federal government in Article 1, section 8, if they thought a redistributive state was just. Nor would they have added a Bill of Rights.
James A. Dorn is vice president for academic affairs with the Washington, D.C.-based Cato Institute and editor of theCato Journal.
Amendments to the Constitution — notably the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth — further strengthened property rights. But the Progressive Movement (1890s–1920s) began to erode the Framers’ Constitution. Today, the broad interpretation of the General Welfare Clause, the Commerce Clause, and other clauses have expanded the powers of the federal government far beyond that envisioned by the Framers. In doing so, the meaning of justice has been turned on its head: from its legitimate meaning of safeguarding property to its modern meaning of using taxes, regulation, and laws to redistribute income and wealth to achieve “social justice.”
The problem is that when government is seen as an instrument for “doing good” rather than a force for preventing harm, there is no end to government mischief. By its very nature government operates by coercion, not consent; and as Milton Friedman liked to remind us, when government spends other people’s money, it will naturally want to do more and more.
The lesson from the British riots is that when government overextends itself, it will fail to do what it is supposed to do: protect persons and property. If an anti-market and socialist mentality replace an ethos of liberty and responsibility, then the harmony that results from limited government and free markets will disappear — and hooligans will gain the upper hand.
The massive U.S. debt is a reflection of the rapid growth of entitlements and a do-good vision of government. Next year’s elections will be a referendum on the size and scope of government. If Americans return to the Madisonian principle of justice that underlies the Constitution — and is the foundation of morality — the future of peace and prosperity will be bright. If they adhere to the illiberal principle of “doing good with other people’s money,” the welfare state will grow and eventually put out the light of liberty.
An interesting New York Times op-ed reviews the plunging poll approval numbers for the Tea Party and delves into the numbers for some insight into who TPers are.
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My response is very simple. The 2010 election brought the Tea Party representatives to the national stage and if their numbers grow in 2012 then Brantley’s observation is inaccurate. If their numbers go down then it was a fine piece of journalism. WE WILL HAVE TO WAIT AND SEE.
For my part, I am posting today “The Sixty Six who resisted “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal (Part 14),” and I plan to keep on posting this series till I get to number 66.
This post today is a part of a series I am doing on the 66 Republican Tea Party favorites that resisted eating the “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal. Actually that name did not originate from a representative who agrees with the Tea Party, but from a liberal.
Rep. Emanuel Clever (D-Mo.) called the newly agreed-upon bipartisan compromise deal to raise the debt limit “a sugar-coated satan sandwich.”
“This deal is a sugar-coated satan sandwich. If you lift the bun, you will not like what you see,” Clever tweeted on August 1, 2011.
Southerland: Cuts and Caps Will Help Us Conquer the Debt Crisis
Steve Southerland, II (published by The Tallahassee Democrat)
By the time you finish reading this sentence, Washington will add another $360,000 to our national debt. With each day of delay, we dig our economic hole $4 billion deeper.
Make no mistake about it — we’re gazing into an economic abyss. Incredibly, some in Washington believe the best way to get back on track is to move the guardrail closer to the cliff’s edge. I refuse to join the agents of inaction who would rather bankrupt this great nation than make the tough, forward-thinking decisions necessary to fix our fiscal future.
Since 1962, Washington has raised the debt ceiling a mind-boggling 74 times. Yet with every increase, our elected officials failed to implement cost controls on future spending, choosing instead to shift responsibility onto the shoulders of future generations.
We simply cannot afford to continue down this path to economic ruin. The buck stops here and accountability begins now.
There’s an adage that says success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan.
Those words could fittingly be the official motto of Washington, D.C.
The time has come for Republicans and Democrats alike to take ownership of this massive failure of governance. Short-sighted neglect from both parties helped create our $14.3 trillion debt. Both parties have, at one time or another, been more concerned with maintaining their grip on power than with empowering a change of culture in Washington.
I’ve heard loud and clear from citizens across North and Northwest Florida: You’ve had enough. You want Washington to reflect the challenges you face every day in meeting a family budget or keeping a small business afloat. You rightly expect the federal government to do more with less.
Nearly 100 days ago, I publicly announced my support for a common-sense plan of cuts and caps to conquer our debt crisis. I am pleased that a bipartisan majorityof the House joined me in committing to this effort by approving last week the Cut, Cap, and Balance Act of 2011.
This responsible plan would ensure that Washington cuts its spending immediately while enforcing caps on future spending and sending a federal balanced budget amendment to the states.
If you are a senior or a veteran, your benefits are protected under this plan. Wasteful spending will be weeded out, but your Medicare, Social Security and veterans benefits absolutely will not change.
If you are a small-business owner, lifting our crushing burden of debt will restore certainty and stability to the marketplace, allowing you to expand operations and create jobs.
And if you are a parent, you can take comfort in knowing that your children and grandchildren have hope for a day when they won’t be saddled with the consequences of poor economic decisions from the past.
The House has acted boldly to approve a concrete, measurable strategy to cut the debt.
I am hopeful that ongoing negotiations between President Obama and congressional leaders will build upon this momentum to achieve an agreement in line with the House-passed plan.
As I have consistently stated, I am firmly opposed to increasing the debt limit unless there is a serious, game-changing plan to cut, cap and balance Washington’s checkbook. We will never digest this mountain of debt by simply nibbling around the edges.
With the president’s self-imposed Aug. 2 deadline fast approaching, many Americans are understandably concerned about what will happen if a debt-ceiling agreement proves elusive.
Whether there is an agreement in the next 10 days or not, revenue will continue to come in to the federal treasury. The president will continue to have the constitutional responsibility to prioritize federal spending. His administration will continue to set the timetable by which Social Security, Medicare and veteran benefits are paid.
In an effort to reassure those who have earned federal benefits, I introduced legislation that would ensure our seniors, veterans and active duty troops come first, receiving their full pay and benefits even if there is no debt limit agreement in place by Aug. 2. Your government made a promise to you, and you deserve to know that promise will be honored.
Great nations have fallen throughout history when they grew too bloated and careless to prepare for their economic future. We must not repeat those same mistakes.
When our children and grandchildren look back on the debates of today, do we want them to mark these times as the moment when the American Dream slipped away? Or do we want them to be thankful that we finally stood up, fought for their future and changed the culture in Washington?
“If Wal-Mart charged you $100 to enter its stores and then told you what you were going to get for the money, it would not be a satisfying experience, yet, this is precisely how the U.S. government operates.”
Sadly that has been the way our government has been operating for years and now we all have over 46,000 dollars of debt for each member of our household and we still don’t feel satisfied with what we are getting.
Can an amendment to the U.S. Constitution fix the deficit problem? Polls show most Americans think we need a balanced-budget amendment. Yet serious scholars of the issue understand that the deficit is merely a symptom of the problem; people want more benefits from government than they wish to pay for.
Various forms of balanced-budget and tax-and-spending-limitation amendments have been proposed. Almost everyone realizes that an amendment must be flexible enough to deal with national emergencies, such as a major war. But if the amendment is too flexible, politicians will quickly find ways around whatever limitations on spending, taxing and deficits are imposed. The more tightly drawn any proposed amendment is, the more difficult it will be to pass it because an effective amendment will limit the powers of the very people who are required to vote for it. As the country considers what type of structural fix is doable, the observations of some leading scholars are worth pondering.
Political economist Lawrence Hunter, who has held senior policy positions both in and out of government, has been working on the issue for a couple of decades. Mr. Hunter just wrote inForbes, “The Father of the U.S. Constitution, James Madison, understood that any constitutional provision without self-enforcing mechanisms attached to it constitutes a mere ‘parchment barrier’ and simply would be ignored and discarded by [the political class]. … Madison laid out a framework in Federalist No. 51 for competition among political and legal actors with the national government as a means of checking and balancing the exercise of power by the various branches: ‘Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.'” Mr. Hunter thinks it is an open question when, if ever, the political class will get to the point where it will pass an effective, self-enforcing limitation on taxing, spending and debt.
Without a clear amendment, overspending will continue…
John McClaughry, who was a senior policy adviser in the Reagan White House, has come up with an interesting idea, which was published in the AmericanThinkerin May, that he calls Proposition 20. Mr. McClaughry would limit the total amount of federal debt to $20 trillion. Setting an absolute amount makes the calculation unambiguous, unlike most other proposals that refer to some percentage of gross domestic product or other less precise numbers. The United States has a gross debt of about $15 trillion, so the proposal would give Congress several years to get its house in order and give adequate time for the states to ratify it. Mr. McClaughry would allow the issuance of additional debt if, and only if, Congress formally declared war, and only while the armed forces were engaged in combat.
Maurice P. McTigue, a former New Zealand Cabinet minister who is a distinguished visiting scholar at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, has been working on improving government accountability around the world ever since he was a key player in New Zealand’s economic reforms of two decades ago. He has spent considerable time identifying which reforms have worked in various countries and how their successes might be transferred elsewhere. Mr. McTigue notes that a major part of the problem of lack of government fiscal responsibility is the fact that virtually no one knows how much the various government services actually cost. Thus, a key to improving government accountability is to work on ways of ensuring that the public knows what it is getting for each dollar spent on various programs.
When all government revenue (Social Security taxes, personal income taxes, corporate taxes and a never-ending list of excise taxes and fees) goes into the same pot — which is the case now — and then the money is allocated by Congress according to political considerations, any connection between what is being paid and the “service” on which it is spent becomes increasingly remote. If Wal-Mart charged you $100 to enter its stores and then told you what you were going to get for the money, it would not be a satisfying experience, yet, this is precisely how the U.S. government operates.
Richard W. Rahn is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and chairman of the Institute for Global Economic Growth.
As we struggle to try to devise a constitutional fix to the structural problem of destructive debt, spending, regulation and taxation, it would be useful to consider the following:
1. All government insurance (incorrectly called “entitlements”) and trust programs must be privatized or fully funded from specifically identified and allocated taxes and fees that cannot be diverted to pay for other government programs and must be managed by independent officials who will be legally at risk for not fulfilling their fiduciary responsibilities.
2. Every government expenditure, no matter how small, must be funded from an identifiable stream of revenue — taxes, fees, asset sales or other — and the same dollars may not be spent on more than one item.
3. No new or expanded government program or activity may be enacted into law without a specific source of funding attached to it, and the program or activity may not spend more than funds provided by the identified tax or fee.
The U.S. Constitution was written in response — after vigorous and learned debate — to the problems arising out of the original Articles of Confederation. It appears that a constitutional fix is needed to deal with ongoing fiscal problems the country faces. A vigorous debate has begun, and that is all to the good.
The Sixty Six who resisted “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal (Part 13)
This post today is a part of a series I am doing on the 66 Republican Tea Party favorites that resisted eating the “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal. Actually that name did not originate from a representative who agrees with the Tea Party, but from a liberal.
Rep. Emanuel Clever (D-Mo.) called the newly agreed-upon bipartisan compromise deal to raise the debt limit “a sugar-coated satan sandwich.”
“This deal is a sugar-coated satan sandwich. If you lift the bun, you will not like what you see,” Clever tweeted on August 1, 2011.
Press Release: Dennis Ross Statement on Debt Deal Vote Solving our Long Term Debt Crisis Will Require a Balanced Budget Amendment, Tax Reform, and a National Discussion on the Role of the Federal Government
Washington, DC – Congressman Dennis A. Ross (R-FL) released the following statement announcing his intention to vote NO on the “Debt Deal.” Congressman Ross released the following statement,
“America is nearly upside down on the national mortgage and this legislation is not a viable long term solution to put our fiscal house in order. No responsible bank would lend to a family in the financial condition our nation is in without a realistic and enforceable plan to get their spending under control. Without a Balanced Budget Amendment in place, this deal, as with dozens of others, will barely last through this election, let alone ten years. My kids and grandkids cannot afford trillions more in debt and I was not sent here to heel like a good puppy when the President or the Treasury Secretary says so. I was sent here to do what is right for my constituents and the nation, even if that makes me unpopular or costs me my seat.”
Congressman Ross continued, “The Speaker is up against the most liberal President since Jimmy Carter and a Senate that spends more time bloviating than legislating. I do not envy him that task. No one should mistake my differences with this legislation as an indication of any problem with my Speaker. Those of us who vote no on today’s legislation will send a message to the President that 75% of the American people want to tie Washington’s hands when it comes to spending with a Balanced Budget Amendment and we know our Speaker will be there when it happens.”
Dennis Ross, son of Bill and Loyola Ross, was born in 1959 and raised in Lakeland, Florida. He graduated from Auburn University and the Cumberland School of Law at Sanford University. He has served as in-house counsel to the Walt Disney Company and as an associate of the law firm of Holland & Knight. He previously served in the Florida Legislature from 2000 until being term limited in 2008. Dennis and his wife, Cindy Hartley, were married in 1983 and have two sons, Shane and Travis.
Here is another famous Arkansan.
Dick Powell and Ginger Rogers sing “I’ll String Along With You” in the movie “Twenty Million Sweethearts” (1934). In the beginning of the song Dick Powell’s character suffers from a case of the nerves.
(1904-1963) – Actor, director and producer was born in Mountain View. A former band vocalist and emcee, he played the male lead in a number of musicals in the 1930s, often opposite Ruby Keeler and Joan Blondell. He then made a successful transition from the boyish crooner to more serious roles as the hardboiled detective in thrillers of the 1940s. In the early 1950s, he became president of the successful Four Star television production company. Movies included: “42nd Street,” (1933) “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” (1935) “Murder My Sweet” (1944) and “The Bad and Beautiful” (1952). His television series include “Four Star Playhouse” (1952), “The Dick Powell Zane Gray Theatre” (1961), “The Rifleman,” and “Wanted, Dead or Alive.” www.imdb.com/DickPowell
Americans are disappointed. They are disappointed that the debate over our debt limit was about the needs of politicians instead of the needs of the country. They are disappointed with a broken government that refuses to fix itself. And they are disappointed that the Budget Control Act that passed the House last night and is likely to pass the Senate today does not make the transformative changes this nation requires.
There are several elements of this plan that are simply unacceptable, even when framed inside the narrow political confines that limited a better outcome (i.e., the White House and Senate are still controlled by spend-tax-and-borrow liberals).
No AAA Reassurance: This plan is insufficient to protect our nation’s AAA credit rating. On Friday, Moody’s stated that neither the Boehner nor Reid proposals would restore our solid credit footing. This plan did not improve upon those. Economists from Barclays Capital in London said of the deal: “Overall, our first impression is that the agreement by itself is unlikely to be sufficient to cause S&P to remove the U.S. from being on ratings watch for possible downgrade.” Ajay Rajadhyaksha, head of U.S. fixed-income strategy at Barclays, was blunter: “The chances of a downgrade after this deal remain substantially high.”
Irresponsible Defense Cuts: There are two rounds of defense cuts that risk our national security. If all are imposed, we will have a trillion dollars less than we need to protect our nation and defend its interests. Despite increased risks from Iran and North Korea and ongoing wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, this deal further cripples a defense budget already sized for peacetime and ignores the real problem—runaway entitlement spending.
More Tax Hikes: Yesterday, White House officials took to the airwaves to assure their liberal base that the new “special” committee would recommend tax hikes. This is one White House assurance you can take to the bank. This deal sets the conditions for a massive tax increase from expiring lower rates and committee horse-trading. Even President Obama agreed in December 2010 that raising taxes to discourage job-creating investments in the middle of a recession was a bad idea. It’s still a bad idea.
An Unclear Balanced Budget Approach: Conservatives are united behind the idea that Congress should balance its budget year-in and year-out, but the devil is in the details. The debt limit deal is a missed opportunity to drive spending down toward a balanced budget. Moreover, the debt limit deal does little to advance the cause of a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. Not all balanced budget amendments are created equal. We need an amendment with proper taxpayer protections so that Congress can’t simply hike taxes to balance the budget.
Punting Responsibility: The American people don’t send politicians to Washington in order to appoint special committees and duck responsibility. They must make tough choices to reform entitlements. We’ve had enough commissions be ignored. This half-Democrat, half-Republican committee will probably deadlock, too (or worse, push a tax hike), so we’ll get little out of it.
These are just some of the problems identified in the $2.5 trillion debt deal. There are others.
Conservatives put up a good fight for the non-defense spending cuts needed to reduce the size and cost of government. While Senate Democrats sat on their hands for 800-plus days, doing nothing, House conservatives introduced and passed the Ryan budget plan and the Cut, Cap, and Balance Act, each of which was a step in the right direction.
The debt limit deal is a disappointment, but conservatives have made a real difference. We can be proud of the progress we made changing the dialogue in Washington. Just as with the Ryan budget plan, we are talking in terms of spending cuts for a smaller, less costly government, not spending increases. Popular opinion is with the conservative philosophy of limited government.
But this debt increase was the highest in history. This is not surprising, given the record spending increases and deficits we’ve witnessed over the past two years. We cannot maintain this course and keep our creditworthiness or create jobs and economic growth.
Given the framework we are now living under, and the water that has passed under the proverbial bridge, it is now up to conservatives to:
Pursue Entitlement Reform:Social Security is operating in the red and faces a long-term deficit of nearly $8 trillion. Medicare is the most costly, and least efficient, federal program. Obamacare is simply an abomination that must be repealed. Congress must move to make significant reforms to entitlement programs. We can no longer accept weak recommendations and a lack of political courage. There can be no more budget-related debates in Washington that ignore this looming and preventable crisis.
Pursue Revenue-Neutral Tax Reform: The current tax system is too complex and penalizes productive work. Lawmakers see job creators and entrepreneurs as easy targets to soak so that they can spend more. It’s a terrible cycle that is costly to our economy. The committee set up by the debt framework should take up tax “reform” rather than simply tax “hikes.” Creating a simple, flatter system that protects low-income workers, encourages investment, and fuels business growth would be a major step on the road to economic recovery.
Maintain a Strong Military to Defend America: With nearly a trillion dollars in cuts to our military on the table during a period of heightened risk and global operations, it is imperative that Congress ensure that these cuts do not eliminate badly needed resources for our fighting men and women and that they have the best equipment and technology to keep America safe. As Heritage Vice President Kim Holmes stated: “America is different from other countries for a lot of reasons, but surely one of the biggest is that we are masters of our fate. We are fortunate to have an armed force that not only defends us but keeps us from being at the mercy of other countries, many of whom wish us ill.”
Get Serious About Spending and Regulation: Washington has a unique way of taking one step forward and three steps back. We must remain vigilant about preventing new spending and regulations that hinder economic growth, stifle job creation, and grow the federal government.
To drive spending down toward a balanced budget, reduce the share of the economy devoted to public debt, preserve America’s ability to protect the nation, and shift to a job-creating tax system without raising taxes, The Heritage Foundation has published “Saving the American Dream: The Heritage Plan to Fix the Debt, Cut Spending, and Restore Prosperity.” The Heritage plan does what Congress should have done and failed to do. Conservatives: Continue to fight for what is right for America.
Onward!
Edwin J. Feulner President, The Heritage Foundation
Billionaire Warren Buffett laments, again, in a New York Times op-ed how the rich don’t share the sacrifices made by others in the U.S.. He notes his effectiie tax rate of 17 percent is lower than that of many of the working people in his office on account of preferences for investment income. Candidates such as U.S. Rep. Tim Griffin believe — with election results to support them — that Americans support such a tax system.
It appears according the chart below that the rich do sacrifice more than others which contradicts Max Brantley’s statment above. Welcome back Max. We missed you!!!
The Top 10 Percent of Earners Paid 70 Percent of Federal Income Taxes
Top earners are the target for new tax increases, but the U.S. tax system is already highly progressive. The top 1 percent of income earners paid 38 percent of all federal income taxes in 2008, while the bottom 50 percent paid only 3 percent. Forty-nine percent of U.S. households paid no federal income tax at all.
The charts in this book are based primarily on data available as of March 2011 from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). The charts using OMB data display the historical growth of the federal government to 2010 while the charts using CBO data display both historical and projected growth from as early as 1940 to 2084. Projections based on OMB data are taken from the White House Fiscal Year 2012 budget. The charts provide data on an annual basis except… Read More
Authors
Emily GoffResearch Assistant
Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy StudiesKathryn NixPolicy Analyst
Center for Health Policy StudiesJohn FlemingSenior Data Graphics Editor
The Sixty Six who resisted “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal (Part 12)
This post today is a part of a series I am doing on the 66 Republican Tea Party favorites that resisted eating the “Sugar-coated Satan Sandwich” Debt Deal. Actually that name did not originate from a representative who agrees with the Tea Party, but from a liberal.
Rep. Emanuel Clever (D-Mo.) called the newly agreed-upon bipartisan compromise deal to raise the debt limit “a sugar-coated satan sandwich.”
“This deal is a sugar-coated satan sandwich. If you lift the bun, you will not like what you see,” Clever tweeted on August 1, 2011.
Washington, Aug 1 – Congressman Bill Posey (R-Rockledge) released the following statement regarding his vote against the debt limit deal:
“Our nation is deep in debt and plummeting deeper in the red every day. The Federal government is spending way beyond its means. The credit ratings agencies have warned that the U.S. will lose its AAA credit rating unless Washington enacts a credible, long-term plan to control spending and reduce the national debt. That is what is required.
“The last minute bill put forward today does not achieve this goal. Regardless of its enactment, the U.S. will still be at serious risk of losing its AAA credit rating. To date, the only plan introduced that passes muster for the credit rating agencies is the Cut, Cap and Balance legislation which passed the House with bipartisan support last week and is purposefully being blocked in the Senate.
“Today’s legislation includes a weakened Balanced Budget Amendment option. In my view, it makes no serious effort in bringing us closer to passing-on such a popular and necessary provision to the States for consideration. A Balanced Budget Amendment is needed to ensure that Washington’s addiction to spending is broken. Washington must begin to live within its means. Somehow that principle had to be tossed-out to get the Senate and Administration on board with this deal.
“This bill grows the debt to $16.7 trillion without implementing a long-term plan to control spending. The real crisis is not the Administration’s impending arbitrary deadline to raise the limit, but the lack of a plan to ever repay this money and reverse this terrible trend of deficit spending and debt accumulation.
“Again, I thank the Speaker for his efforts in filling the leadership void and for putting ideas out on the table.”
Conservatives have become so furious with President Obama that they forget just how bad some of his predecessors were. One Jeffrey Kuhner, whose over-the-top op-eds in the Washington Times belie the sober and judicious conservatism you might expect from the president of the “Edmund Burke Institute,” writes most recently:
A possible Great Depression haunts the land. Primarily one man is to blame: President Obama.
Mr. Obama has racked up more than $4 trillion in debt.
Yes, he has. And that’s almost as much as the $5 trillion in debt rung up by his predecessor, George W. Bush. True, on an annual basis Obama is leaving Bush in the dust. But acceleration has been the name of the game: In 190 years, 39 presidents racked up a trillion dollars in debt. The next three presidents ran the debt up to about $5.73 trillion. Then Bush 43 almost doubled the total public debt, to $10.7 trillion, in eight years. And now the 44th president has added almost $4 trillion in two years and seven months. (Here’s an online video depicting each president’s debt accumulation as driving speed.) So Obama is winning the debt war, but it’s not like he caused the debt crisis or the unemployment crisis all by himself.
And then, trying to prove that Obama is even worse than Jimmy Carter — even worse than Jimmy Carter! — Kuhner makes this curious claim:
Most importantly, Mr. Carter had respect for the dignity and integrity of the presidency. He never trashed his opponents the way Mr. Obama does.
Really? Maybe Mr. Kuhner is too young to remember Carter, and didn’t bother to check his claim, or maybe he just got carried away. But I can remember October 1980, when President Carter repeatedly said that the election of Ronald Reagan would be “a catastrophe” that would mean an America
separated, black from white, Jew from Christian, North from South, rural from urban.
Liberal columnist Anthony Lewis asked in the New York Times, “Has there ever been a campaign as vacuous, as negative, as whiny? Probably so — somewhere back in the mists of the American Presidency. But it would take a good deal of research to come up with anything like Jimmy Carter’s performance in the campaign of 1980.” The venerable Hugh Sidey wrote in Time magazine, “The wrath that escapes Carter’s lips about racism and hatred when he prays and poses as the epitome of Christian charity leads even his supporters to protest his meanness.”
Obama is a big spender who portrays himself as a “beyond left and right” above-the-fray president trying to work with everyone while demonizing his opponents. But let’s not forget the meanness of Jimmy Carter and the spendthrift record of George W. Bush in seeking to establish Obama’s uniqueness.
Taxes per Household Have Risen Dramatically
Federal Revenues Have More Than Tripled Since 1965
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