Daily Archives: 15 March 2013

Freedom and Morality

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Senator Jeff Sessions (R, AL) had a few words to say on this [emphasis added].

The Department of Agriculture proudly declares: “Each $5 in new [food stamp] benefits generates almost twice that amount in economic activity for the community.”  Our government is running food stamp promotions at foreign embassies.  One worker was given an award for overcoming “mountain pride” and getting more people to sign up.  Where I grew up in Alabama, all honest work, even the hardest, was honored.  And pride, self-respect, and a desire to be independent was valued, not a thing to be overcome.

And

People are being hurt every day by the Washington establishment the Democrats are determined to shield from accountability.  Government has never been bigger or more out of control.  They say there is no problem with waste, fraud, and abuse; they say the problem is you; they say you are not sending them enough money; they say they have wisely spent every penny.  So, you must just send them more.  And, if you don’t?  Well, they won’t stop spending, they’ll just borrow more.

Here is Sessions’ suggestion for an economically effective and morally sound budget outline:

Instead, we must act to create more jobs and better pay.  And we can do it without adding to the debt.  Here’s how:

  • Make welfare temporary and the welfare office an employment and job training office.

  • Unlock America’s vast energy resources to create millions of good-paying jobs.

  • Defend American workers from unfair foreign trade practices.

  • Reform the tax code to make America globally competitive, creating more jobs here.

  • Make government leaner, less wasteful so it produces greater results for the money you earned and sent here.

  • Enforce an immigration policy that protects legal US workers from unlawful competition.

  • Eliminate every burdensome federal rule or regulation that isn’t needed and that destroys jobs.

  • And, finally, we must balance the federal budget.

These are steps that reduce government, they allow Americans to regain responsibility for our own actions, regain our ability to work toward our own goals, and these steps leave more of our hard-earned money in our hands.  All of this enhances our—and our country’s—freedom and morality.

We saw with Wednesday’s Senate budget proposal the Democrats’…freedom and morality.

Magical Thinking

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Well, that didn’t take long.  President Barack Obama already has failed his test.

The Progressives’ idea of a budget is out of the Senate Budget Committee, now, and on the Senate floor, where Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D, NV) will do his best to thrust it home with as little debate allowed as he can achieve.  Here’s the summary table (and scroll down a bit to this table; sorry you have to crane your neck); the whole thing can be viewed, in piecemeal form, on the Senate’s site:

Notice that.  Aside from continuing to gut Defense, overall spending continues apace, President Barack ObamaSenator Patty Murray (D, WA), the Budget Committee’s Chair, demands even more taxes from working Americans than he got in January, and our national debt explodes.

The Democrats want, with an absolutely straight face, to increase spending every year–$3.6 trillion in FY 2014, $4.05 trillion in FY 2016, and so on to $5.7 trillion in FY 2023, a 62% increase over the current level for FY 2013.

Reading the fine print in one of those piecemeal parts at the Senate site, we see that the Progressives want to create a(nother) $100 billion program aimed at generating new jobs, again by funding infrastructure work.  Of course, we know Obama already tried this, repeatedly, throughout his first term.  As he’s already confessed, “Shovel-ready was not as shovel-ready as we expected,” and as those earlier programs demonstrated, the jobs aren’t there at any time in his government programs.  This is magical thinking.

And it turns out Murray lied about those taxes, too, cynically understating them at “only” an additional $975 billion.  The Weekly Standard has this table, provided by a staffer for the Senate Budget Committee’s (Murray’s committee) minority membership:

Murray cynically understated Obama’s tax demands by fully one-third.  These $1.5 trillion in new taxes, combined with the $600 billion in new taxes Obama got at the start of the year, adds up to $2.1 trillion in new taxes being demanded in just these two and a half months.

Progressives just can’t stand to not raise taxes.  Their addiction to OPM is palpable.

And that debt.  The Progressives fully intend to explode it to $24 trillion by 2023, with annual interest payments running nearly to $800 billion.  This also assumes the market would be willing to buy such risky debt at those rates.  But then Obama denies, ostrich-like, that there’s any urgency to our debt fiasco.  This is more magical thinking.

All of this is predicated, too, on Obama’s/Murray’s pipedream of a GDP annual growth rate over the next 10 years of 4.2%-6.6% each year—rates we’ve never sustained in any 10 year period in our history.  With all of this taxing and spending taking money out of the private economy—the economy in which Americans actually live, work, and die—positing such rates is…wrong.

Matched with the $975 billion in claimed spending cuts, this isn’t even the balance about which he’s been yammering.  This is more…magical thinking.

This proposal is a disaster waiting to happen.

War, Politics, and Power

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Karl von Clausewitz noted that war is an extension of politics.  President Barack Obama, with his reliance on drones and seeming decision utterly to eschew capture (with its attendant intelligence value), is making simple killing an extension of politics.

What is the impact on political power of this evolution?

After Attorney General Eric Holder’s evasive testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee about drone use, Senator Rand Paul (R, KY) filibustered John Brennan’s confirmation as Director CIA, and this finally convinced Obama to have Holder write a letter to Paul, which says in its entirety:

It has come to my attention that you have now asked an additional question: ‘Does the President have the authority to use a weaponized drone to kill an American not engaged in combat on American soil?’  The answer to that question is no.

But what does it mean to be “engaged in combat?” It means whatever the President needs it to mean.

As Richard Fernandez noted in an aptly titled post [emphasis added],

Lawyers have rarely been able to contain power.  As practical matter power is constrained only by politics, which as Clausewitz once observed can be another name for another thing….

He went on:

Power is limited by the degree to which an executive authority can enforce obedience.  It is constrained by the extent to which authority can expect an order to be followed.  It is bounded by the fear of political repercussions; by the dread of losing office and ultimately, by the apprehension that having lost office a person might face jail.

Obama has assured us through his pressman, Jay Carney, that neither he nor his Justice Department would never abuse such power.  And Obama is an honorable man; So are they all, all honorable men.

But with an expansive and expanding government, and Obama’s apparent extension of the tools of politics, our hold on government is growing tenuous.  We cannot allow this to continue.  As a man once said, elections have consequences.  We’re seeing some of those consequences.  It’s time to have different election outcomes.

Out of Touch, or Doesn’t Care?

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President Barack Obama has said about our national debt, “What, me worry?”  Actually, that’s not quite what he told Republicans when he deigned visit their caucus earlier this week; what he actually said was that there was no

immediate crisis in terms of debt.

He’s also said he’s not interested in a balanced budget.

He had this exchange with Congressmen Kevin Brady (R, TX) and Dave Camp (R, MI, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman) at that same meeting with the Republican caucus:

Brady said that Camp  asked the president  to move now on Medicare means-testing and the new inflation calculation [to which Obama had already agreed earlier], among other measures.

According to Mr. Brady, Mr. Camp said, “Look, if we agree on baby steps on Medicare and Social Security, why wait, let’s take them now.  The president gracefully declined.”  Mr Camp confirmed the exchange.

In what fantasy world is he living?