I’ve Got Your Deficit Commission Right Here!

by Joseph C. Phillips at Townhall.com

Even as a bloodbath looms in the November distance, the Obama administration continues to push healthcare because they know that Americans love their entitlements like winos love wine. They are betting the farm that once that fiery warmth begins running through the National body we will not only love national health care, but will fight to defend it. We will also be too glassy eyed to notice that we have suddenly signed away our liberty, becoming slaves to those that serve us. But I digress.

Like wine, entitlements cost money. Sadly the more addicted we become the less money we have to spend on more important and often essential things. The wino lacks food, housing and clothing; the entitlement addict lacks employment, savings and luxury.

Consider that today our national debt stands at roughly $12 trillion or roughly 70% of our gross domestic product or GDP. But wait. We have promised today’s workers Social Security and Medicare benefits totaling another $41 trillion. Toss in another trillion for miscellaneous expenses, and suddenly our debt skyrockets to $54 trillion. In layman’s terms it means in order to pay our future obligations we would need $54 trillion dollars invested today. How much of that money does this nation have sitting around? Zip! Zero! Zilch!

…More

Tea Party Power to Solve the Debt Problem

by Larry Kudlow at Townhall.com

The New York Times ran a front-page story this week called “Party Gridlock in Washington Feeds New Fear of a Debt Crisis.” As usual, they got it wrong. Instead, the headline should have read, “After Scott Brown’s Astonishing Senate Win in Massachusetts, New Political Gridlock in Washington Could Spell the End of the Liberal Crack-Up We Have Witnessed over the Past Year.”

In fact, gridlock in Washington is good, since it will stop the assault of big government until the end of the year when Congress could be overturned by independents, tea partiers, Republicans, and probably some Democrats as well. Just take a look at the high spirits at the CPAC convention, where tea partiers are reinvigorating conservatives and Republicans.

So let’s take this momentum forward by using it to drain any remaining power from the extravagant spending-and-borrowing assault in Democratic Washington. And let’s especially use this tea-party power to stop Democratic plans for another round of broad-based tax increases.

Take, for example, Obama’s new deficit commission. It’s a bad idea. This commission is a fig leaf to cover up President Obama’s out-of-control budget. It’s a Trojan horse for tax hikes, especially a VAT that would engulf the middle class with up to a 15 percent tax rate on the sale of goods and services. Obama is getting ready to move his lips on the pledge not to raise middle-class taxes. Congressional Republicans must not let him do this.

Here’s the real problem: The Obama budget would take federal spending as a fraction of the economy to 25 percent, roughly a $1 trillion additional spending increase in the out-years. Publicly held federal debt would climb about $18.5 trillion by 2020, more than double what Mr. Obama inherited, rising to almost 80 percent of the economy.

Rather than tax hikes, I say stop the spending. Outside of defense and entitlements, why not roll back the discretionary budget to 2008?

…More

“Chains” We Can Believe In

Here’s a little parody about Obama’s broken promises and failed policies we came up with set to the music from Poison’s “Something to believe in.”

Lyrics

Well I see him on the TV
Preachin’ bout the promised land
He tells me to believe what he has to say
And steals the money from my hand.

Some folks still believe him
But I can’t understand why

One long year of failed policies
And longer lines of the unemployed
Who thought they’d voted to bring jobs back
But learned he was only making noise

His stimulus bill spent all our cash
Cap & Trade made unemployment spike
Harry Reid held votes on Obamacare
Way on up into the night.

People back home, they cried out
“Stop this isn’t what we want”

He gave us chains we can believe in
Chains that bind our souls
Chains we can believe in
Chains that bind forevermore.

He promised us transparency
We’d see everything and more
But he got in the White House
And did everything behind closed doors.

He promised he’d cooperate
He’d change the way things are done
But he got off the train in DC
And continued as a partisan

He said he’d have no lobbyists
And then he brought them in

He gave us chains we can believe in
Chains that bind our souls
Chains we can believe in
Chains that bind forevermore.

Sometimes I wish we didn’t know now
The things we didn’t know then

I drive by empty homes on my street
Homes that were foreclosed on
He promised he would save them
But now the neighbors are gone.

But the CEOs on Wall Street
Got their bonuses again this year
And the poor guy who built their houses
He can’t afford to even dry his tears

And it just makes me wonder
How he chooses who loses and wins

He gave us chains we can believe in
Chains that bind our souls
Chains we can believe in
Chains that bind forevermore.

He’s taken away the high road
And now we’re only left the low

Sometimes I wish I didn’t know now
The things I didn’t then

He gave us chains we can believe in.

More “Chains you can believe in”

Last week we told you about the drastic increase in individual tax receipts included in President Obama’s proposed budget. This week we dug a little deeper and found more interesting numbers the President isn’t mentioning in his rhetoric.

The following charts relate data from the White House Office of Management and Budget’s Summary Tables for Obama’s proposed budget.

Last month, Democrats in the US Senate voted to raise the national debt limit to $14.3 TRILLION–a 15% increase over the current $12.4 TRILLION. But the following two charts show President Obama plans on many more such increases over the next 10 years. In fact, his budget anticipates the national debt will grow to almost $25 TRILLION by the year 2020. Even worse, his plans include taking on more debt than the total output of the economy by 2013! The debt to GDP ratio stood at 83% last year, but the economic genius residing in the White House intends to take it to 105% by the end of the next decade!

It’s also obvious from the preceding charts that President Obama’s talk of cutting the deficit is nothing more than hollow rhetoric. President Bush’s last deficit was around $450 billion. Obama is projecting the smallest deficit over the next 10 years to be more than $700 billion. And his budget predicts a return to TRILLION DOLLAR DEFICITS by 2020!

What’s worse, his projections depend on drastic increases in taxes and extremely optimistic growth in GDP. So the actual numbers are very likely to be worse than he’s predicting.

Another great graphic that points out just how dishonest the President’s rhetoric is comes via The Heritage Foundation. They’ve put together the following chart that shows the difference in OMB’s projections and the Congressional Budget Office’s baseline. The most interesting thing about this comparison is the fact the CBO’s baseline projections are based on current policies and laws, while the President’s projections take into effect his proposed changes in those policies and laws.

In other words, if Obama would leave things as they are, we could expect the CBO’s numbers to be right. But the chart below shows his proposed changes will actually INCREASE the deficit in every one of the next 10 years!

For the President to attempt to sell his budget as one that cuts the deficit is nothing less than outright deceit! The yoke of debt each and every one of us is burdened with becomes heavier with every word Obama reads off his teleprompter.

The National Debt Clock estimates every man, woman and child in the US currently shoulders a share of the National Debt equal to $40,128.80. Assuming the Debt Clock’s estimate of the current US population is accurate, and an annual population growth rate of 3% over the next 10 years, each citizen’s share of the National Debt will grow to $64,182.19 under Obamanomics by 2020.

Obama promised “Hope & Change” on the campaign trail. But his changes are destroying hope and binding us with chains of debt!

Race to Raise the Debt Ceiling

President Obama continues to SAY he will demand deficit neutral legislation from Congress. He continues to PREACH a message of fiscal responsibility. BHO continues to BLAME the Bush administration for every bad piece of economic news released in the wake of Democrats’ unprecedented socialization of the American economy in 2009.

For the first six months of his term, Obama got almost 100% of everything he demanded of his Democrat dominated Congress.

• He demanded his $787 billion “porkulus” bill be passed to avoid 10% unemployment and the loss of millions more jobs.
  • It passed along party lines and now we have 10% unemployment and millions more lost jobs.
• He demanded his record budget be passed.
  • Democrats voted for it, Republicans against, and we now have record deficits.
• He seized control of General Motors and Chrysler claiming it was necessary to make them profitable again.
  • Now the US government and the UAW own the two behemoths. They both remain unprofitable, but their American competitor that DID NOT take a government bailout posted a profit last year.
• He demanded TARP be expanded so banks would lend money to get the economy moving again.
  • Democrats agreed, the banks got our money, and the credit markets largely remain frozen.
• He demanded new legislation to stem the flow of home foreclosures.
  • Democrats obliged and now we continue to see record numbers of people losing their homes.

Though President Barack Hussein Obama continues to blame former President George Bush for all the evils in the world, the current President’s solutions have been implemented and solved absolutely nothing!

Now, Democrats in the US Senate have voted to increase the federal debt ceiling by $1.9 trillion to $14.3 trillion from the current $12.4 trillion. The US House will soon vote to do likewise. And today we have yet another reminder of the utter failure of Obama’s economic policies.

According to the US Treasury Department, the federal debt will reach the current debt ceiling of $12.3 trillion by month’s end! No wonder Obama’s in a hurry to raise the limit.

If Congress refuses to allow the President to borrow more, BHO will run out of OUR money to spend! He’ll no longer be able to mortgage our children’s future to buy a few votes. He’ll no longer be able to fund his goon squads at ACORN, SEIU, and the New Black Panther Party! He might even have to slow down his jet setting around in Air Force 1 if the US line of credit becomes maxed out.

Write, call, and email your US Representatives and demand they NOT increase the debt limit. If the President won’t voluntarily cut spending, if he’s going to keep saying one thing and doing another, let’s cut up his credit card and send him the message that it’s time he learn to get by the way ordinary Americans do when times are tough.

We’ve been tightening our belts! It’s time Uncle Sam pulled his a couple of notches tighter.

Suddenly, Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) remembers her constituents

For the past year, Senator Lincoln has sucked up to President Obama and Harry Reid, voting for Obama’s $787 trillion “Porkulus” bill, his budget that set a record $1.4 trillion deficit (TRIPLING THE OLD RECORD!), and casting several yea votes in the dead of night and even on Christmas Eve to help the Senate pass Harry Reid’s version of Obamacare. Lincoln’s Arkansas constituents wanted none of these, and let the Senator know it.

She ignored them. Lincoln even went so far as to not answer phones on days when important votes were taking place. It took intense negative pressure for the Senator to agree to meet with constituents during the Senate’s August recess last year, and then she made every effort to meet with the few handpicked supporters of the health care legislation and leave out any who opposed her desire for the government run health care system.

By November, she had chosen to stand on the fence for a while to appear deliberative and responsive to the chorus of criticism being leveled from every corner of Arkansas. In the end, she proved that she had always had her mind made up to vote with Obama and Reid. In the face of uncountable calls, emails, and faxes from constituents demanding she vote against Reid’s version of Obamacare, Lincoln cast her vote with the tyrannical Democrats running the White House and Capitol instead of voting for those she supposedly represents.

Now that it’s an election year, she suddenly remembers that she represents folks back home, especially Arkansas’ farmers. Here’s the text of her latest mass email to constituents:

Earlier today, President Obama released his budget proposal for Fiscal Year 2011. As Chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, I am opposed to cuts to programs important to agriculture and rural communities. Throughout my Senate career, I have been a strong, independent voice for Arkansas’s agricultural producers. Now, as Chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee, I am standing up for farmers and ranchers and all of rural America once again by opposing cuts that will harm the hard-working men and women who are the backbone of our rural economy. Put simply, the President’s proposal picks winners and losers. By targeting policies that rural America relies upon, this proposal places a disproportionate burden on the backs of farmers and rural communities. While I too believe we must reduce the federal deficit, we must all share in this responsibility. In 2008, I worked hard to pass a five-year farm bill that was fiscally responsible. This bill contained over $4 billion worth of cuts to farm programs, was completely paid for and did not contribute to the deficit. The Farm Bill is a contract with our farmers that they depend on to make business decisions. Changing the rules in the middle of the game would be detrimental to their operations and would cost us even more jobs in rural America. I thank the President for his recommendations, but Congress writes the budget. I intend to support measures to reduce the deficit but fight many of the President’s proposed cuts that will harm farmers, ranchers and rural communities.

What Lincoln means is now that it’s an election year, I have to stand up for my constituents or I’m guaranteed to lose the election. She’s banking on the long-standing assumption of DC politicians that constituents have short memories. The Senator believes her constituents won’t remember her giving them the finger throughout 2009, if she strokes them behind the ears for the next 9 months.

She’s right the President’s budget picks winners and losers. Just like the “Porkulus” bill, his takeovers of private industry, and his last year’s budget that Lincoln voted for. Now that it’s an election year she can’t bring herself to support his obvious bias that benefits blue states and punishes red states.

Only because it’s an election year!

Don’t be fooled Arkansas. Senator Lincoln will try to appear to address your concerns from now until November. If she’s re-elected, she’ll be right back in the laps of Obama and Reid.

Our Children are Going to Pay

by Curtis Coleman, Arkansas GOP candidate for US Senate

Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) voted to borrow another $1.9 TRILLION this past week…and our children are going to pay. What kind of immorality is this that we are recklessly throwing away our children’s future? What happened to us that we care more about our comfort than their freedom?

Of course, Sen. Lincoln had little choice since she and her cohorts in Congress have been consistently spending more than is coming in. It’s called deficit spending. If it continues, it inevitably leads to bankruptcy. Which is where the U.S. is headed on a high-speed train.

There is a very important distinction between a deficit and the debt. Deficit spending means we’re spending more than we’re taking in. Debt is what results from deficit spending. The deficit is how much we are borrowing. The debt is how much we have already borrowed from lenders like China.

So, as a country we have already borrowed $12,400,000,000,000 to finance our deficit spending. That’s our debt. President Obama is now asking us to spend $1,700,000,000,000 more in 2010 than the federal government’s projected income. That amount will be our deficit this year. The result? We’ll have a new total debt of $14,100,000,000,000 at the end of year. Let me bring this closer to home. This debt is not the money somebody else owes. This is the money you owe. The only money the government has is your money.

Your portion is $45,000. Pay up, please! Don’t have it? Well, then we’ll have to borrow it from somebody (probably the Chinese if they’ll still lend it to us). So our children will have to pay it back – plus interest.

Is this really okay with you?

The POLR (Pelosi/Obama/Lincoln/Reid) Administration is now talking about reducing the deficit starting next year. (That’s kind of like me starting a diet- tomorrow.) All that means is that we’ll slow how fast we’re still borrowing money! We must stop deficit spending, but we must also attack the debt. Our country’s debt is a clear and present danger, an urgent matter of national security, and it must be attacked as our worst enemy.

What is the solution?

Well, let’s start with the profoundly obvious: Spend less than we have. When our outgo exceeds our income, our overhead will be our downfall. So, we can either increase our income or decrease our outgo. Or do both!

First, how do we increase our income? The liberals believe we do that by increasing taxes. That approach seems to make sense – but it doesn’t. Our economic history has consistently shown that when we increase taxes, we suppress growth in our economy and discourage initiative and achievement in our people. The government ends up taking a bigger piece of a shrinking pie. This process is a death spiral – and one the U.S. is on today.

What we must do is allow U.S. businesses and individuals to generate more income by (1) reducing taxes and (2) getting a stifling, smothering, anti-business bureaucracy out of our faces, out of our offices, and out of our pocketbooks. Our economic history has consistently shown that reducing taxes creates economic growth. The result is government can take a smaller piece of a much bigger pie and still increase its income. When Americans discover that they get to keep more of the income they generate, they’ll generate a lot more income – and the pie gets even bigger! But government’s intrusion into every aspect of our economy creates huge inefficiencies as businesses and individuals must deal with the demands placed upon them.

Increasing income is only ½ of the solution. We must also decrease our outgo. How do we do that?

The cost of government has gotten too big because the size of government has gotten too big. We reduce the cost of government by reducing the size of government. Easier said than done? You bet!

So where do we start? Well, you can poke the federal government just about anywhere and hit fat, so our choices are almost endless. Let’s start with eliminating some of these bloated, competitive, and duplicative bureaucracies. (I’ve been in the food safety business for the last decade. I’ve been told that there are as many as 17 different federal agencies that regulate food safety. That over-regulation could explain why we don’t have safer food – and a budget deficit!)

We must rein in some terribly out-of-bounds if not out-of-control federal agencies such as the EPA, which has become something like a 21st century American Gestapo. It recently told Congress that it will do by regulation what Congress refuses to do by legislation. When a federal agency blackmails Congress, it is time for that bureaucracy to have its wings clipped and its chain dramatically shortened.

But more fundamentally and much more importantly, we must make a multi-generational commitment to return and reshape the federal government to the original prescription of the Constitution.

The biggest challenge to reducing the size of the federal government is the inevitable battle over what we will be cut and what will be kept. Those decisions – though painful – are not as difficult as they are made to seem. We already have an adopted blueprint for the role of the federal government. It’s called the Constitution of the United States of America. It clearly defines what the federal government is supposed to do, and perhaps more importantly, what the federal government is not supposed to do.

We are far adrift from its prescription. If we’re going to survive this seemingly insoluble situation, we must make the commitment – an indisputable, multi-generational and solemn commitment – to reshape and restore the federal government according to the Constitution’s prescription.

This is the fundamental battle we must fight and win in Congress. We start now and we must not waver nor be deterred. We must put – not just politicians – but leaders in Congress; bulldogs instead of blue dogs; warriors who understand that nothing less than liberty and freedom for our children and their children are at stake.

If you agree that the battle to win the U.S. Senate seat in Arkansas will be nothing compared to the battle that must be fought after we win this seat, please stand with me by contributing your time and money. Please make the most generous contribution you possibly can today at www.CurtisColeman.com. This is the time to use every resource and leverage every relationship we have to carry this fight to Washington.

Thank you for standing with me in this fight for freedom!

The Spender-in-Chief’s Fiscal Freeze Follies

by Michelle Malkin at Townhall.com

There are more loopholes in President Obama’s proposed “spending freeze” than in an Olympic volleyball net. Gargantuan government entitlements (Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid) are exempt. A half-trillion in unspent stimulus money is exempt. Foreign aid is exempt. The Democrats’ proposed $154 billion jobs bill (Stimulus II) is exempt.

Pet federal education programs will be exempt (including $4 billion for the White House “Race to the Top” standards initiative and an additional $1.35 billion he just requested in the 2011 budget). Green jobs spending will be exempt. (Obama proposed $10 billion in new clean energy spending earlier this month.) Electorally driven tax-credit expansions will be exempt. The health care takeover plan is not included. As even The New York Times reported, the “estimated $250 billion in savings over 10 years would be less than 3 percent of the roughly $9 trillion in additional deficits the government is expected to accumulate over that time.”

Which amounts to a molecule in a drop of the ocean of red ink in which American taxpayers have been drowning.

The current Spender-in-Chief unveiled details of this lofty new work of political fiction on Monday with more fanfare than a new “Twilight” title. It was supposed to be the centerpiece of the State of the Union address. But by Tuesday morning, Obama’s illusion of fiscal discipline had been shredded left, right and center. By Tuesday afternoon, irritated White House spokesman Robert Gibbs was already downplaying the gimmickry. It’s just something Obama will “mention,” Gibbs bristled.

After campaign videos of Obama repeatedly deriding “hatchet”-wielding spending freezes spread like Kudzu across the Internet, official White House blogger Jared Bernstein tried to control the widespread hypocrisy charges:

“During the campaign, you may recall that John McCain touted option 1 — the hatchet approach of an across-the-board freeze.

“The President was critical of that approach then, …

…More

CBO: Reid’s bill WILL increase deficit by $170 billion

Once again, Democrats are telling bold-faced lies when they claim their legislation will reduce the deficit and extend the life of Medicare! This time they’re using Bernie Madoff/Enron style accounting tricks to camouflage their lies.

In response to a request by Senator Jeff Sessions, the CBO today released a statement correcting the misrepresentations being propagated by Senate Democrats. Reid, President Obama, and other Democrats are claiming the CBO score indicates the Senate bill will reduce the deficit by $130 billion over the next 10 years and add 9 years to the lifespan of Medicare.

But the CBO says not so fast. It appears Democrats took great care in phrasing their request to the non-partisan agency, playing a sort of shell game to fool the American people with a slight of hand. Evidently, hen Harry Reid requested the CBO score, he only asked for the impact on the Medicare trust fund balance. That doesn’t sound so bad until you understand what the CBO calls “Trustfund Accounting.”

The Medicare Trust Fund doesn’t actually hold hard assets. It’s more like a drawer full of IOUs issued by the federal government, if it’s operating in the black. The Trust Fund takes money in and pays money out. If it takes in more than it pays out, the government takes the surplus and issues the Trust Fund an IOU.

Now it’s not like the government puts that money in a savings account. Our never frugal government spends that money it collected to pay for Medicare on something else! No plan on how to pay off the IOU when it comes due either. Just pass the debt on down to future generations.

The Trust Fund Accounting system used by the CBO doesn’t account for what happens to the cash once it’s removed from the Trust Fund, or the government’s ability to repay the borrowed money. This accounting method treats Uncle Sam’s IOU the same as you and I treat our bank account. Just like the folks at the Medicare office could walk up to a teller and say “I’d like to withdraw all our money.”

The problem is, there is no money. It’s just a piece of paper that’s waiting for some future Congress to raise taxes on our children to repay the money.

In the current legislation, the CBO saw Reid’s bill would result in approximately $300 billion more being taken into the Medicare Trust Fund than it would pay out in the next. So Obama, Reid, and Pelosi will write out a professional looking IOU, hand it to the Medicare Trust Fund accountant and leave with $300 billion of taxpayers’ money. That money will be used to create new federal programs, fund abortions, pay bureaucrats, and other creative ways government finds to squander money.

“To describe the full amount of HI trust fund savings as both improving the government’s ability to pay future Medicare benefits and financing new spending outside of Medicare would essentially double-count a large share of those savings and thus overstate the improvement in the government’s fiscal position.”

But to make it look nice, Reid and his Democrat cohorts rigged it to look like $130 billion won’t be spent. So, in effect the deficit should be reduced by $130 billion. Sounds good right?

The problem is, they’re also trying to claim the entire $300 billion (of which they’ve blown $170 billion) is used to extend the viability of Medicare. Put simply, they want to spend the $170 billion now and say the $170 billion IOU they issued is going to keep Medicare going. Now, no one can be 100% sure, but it seems like doctors will probably start quitting when they begin getting government IOUs instead of greenbacks for compensation!

Obama, Reid, and other Democrats are counting that $170 billion twice. They’ve taken $300 billion from us they say we’ll get back in Medicare benefits. They’ve spent all but $130 billion of it, but continue to claim they’ve set aside the entire $300 billion for our benefit!

Here’s the real kicker. The only way we get that $170 billion in benefits we were promised is to raise taxes on our children!

This is nothing short of stealing from future generations! Harry Reid and his Democrat Senate comrades are nothing more than two-bit con artists who would sell our children’s future to satisfy our President who suffers with an “unprecedented” level of egotism and narcissism.

Tomorrow at 7:00 AM Eastern they vote to saddle our children and grandchildren with higher taxes, higher deficits, and a lower standard of living. Tomorrow morning, they will slap themselves on the back and congratulate themselves for conning us out of more of our money.

They’ll be home until the middle of January. Make a point of letting your Senators know you haven’t been fooled. Make sure they understand you know what they’re up to, and that you’ll do everything in your power to send them home when they’re next up for reelection.

Details on the newest health care bill

Received via email from Senator John Thune (R-SD)

I [Senator Thune] am writing today to update you on the latest health care news in the U.S. Senate.  Despite President Obama’s promised desire to work with Republicans on a bi-partisan reform bill, Democrats in the Senate Finance Committee are voting down common sense Republican amendments on a mostly partisan basis.

Yesterday Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee blocked proposals by Republicans to:

• Require that before the committee can vote on final passage of the health care bill the legislative language must be publicly available on the committee’s website for at least 72 hours
• Preserve the Medicare Advantage plans and benefits that millions of seniors currently enjoy and would lose under the Democrats’ plan
• Prohibit the establishment of a federal health care rationing board
• Include medical malpractice liability reform measures in the bill to reduce costs caused by the practice of defensive medicine

And that’s not all.  In Wednesday’s hearing we learned that the cost of increased taxes on businesses in the bill will be passed on to consumers.

“… we have analyzed this as largely falling on the consumer and it could happen in a couple of different ways.” – Thomas Barthold, Joint Committee on Taxation Chief of Staff.

We also learned that this legislation will raise insurance premiums.

“… our judgment is that that piece of the legislation would raise insurance premiums by roughly the amount of the money collected.”  — Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf

Read more coverage of the Congressional health care debate and learn more details about action in the Senate Finance Committee at my Health Freedom Blog.  Share your views, and sign my petition opposing government-run health care.

We should not spend a trillion dollars of taxpayer money on a health care bill that is not going to lower costs for consumers.

Thanks for your support.