Category Archives: morality

On Raising the National Debt Ceiling

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Mr President, I rise today to talk about America’s debt problem.

The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure.  It is a sign that the US.   Government can’t pay its own bills.  It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies.

Over the past 5 years, our federal debt has increased by [$5.7 trillion to $16.4 trillion.] That is “trillion” with a “T.”  That is money that we have borrowed from the Social Security trust fund, borrowed from China and Japan, borrowed from American taxpayers.  And over the next [4 years, between now and 2017, the President’s budget will increase the debt by almost another $3.5 trillion].

Numbers that large are sometimes hard to understand.  Some people may wonder why they matter.  Here is why: This year, the Federal Government will spend [$483] billion on interest.  That is more money to pay interest on our national debt than we’ll spend on Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.  That is more money to pay interest on our debt this year than we will spend on education, homeland security, transportation, and veterans benefits combined.  It is more money in one year than we are likely to spend to rebuild the devastated gulf coast in a way that honors the best of America.

And the cost of our debt is one of the fastest growing expenses in the Federal budget.  This rising debt is a hidden domestic enemy, robbing our cities and States of critical investments in infrastructure like bridges, ports, and levees; robbing our families and our children of critical investments in education and health care reform; robbing our seniors of the retirement and health security they have counted on.

Every dollar we pay in interest is a dollar that is not going to investment in America’s priorities.  Instead, interest payments are a significant tax on all Americans—a debt tax that Washington doesn’t want to talk about.  If Washington were serious about honest tax relief in this country, we would see an effort to reduce our national debt by returning to responsible fiscal policies.

But we are not doing that.  Despite repeated efforts…the Senate continues to reject a return to the commonsense Pay-go rules that used to apply.  Previously, Pay-go rules applied both to increases in mandatory spending and to tax cuts.  The Senate had to abide by the commonsense budgeting principle of balancing expenses and revenues.  Unfortunately, the principle was abandoned….

As a result, tax breaks have not been paid for by reductions in Federal spending, and thus the only way to pay for them has been to increase our deficit to historically high levels and borrow more and more money.  Now we have to pay for those tax breaks plus the cost of borrowing for them.  Instead of reducing the deficit, as some people claimed, the fiscal policies of this administration and its allies in Congress will add more…debt for each of the next 5 years.  That is why I will once again cosponsor the Pay-go amendment and continue to hope that my colleagues will return to a smart rule that has worked in the past and can work again.

Our debt also matters internationally.  My friend, the ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, likes to remind us that it took 42 Presidents 224 years to run up only $1 trillion of foreign-held debt.  This administration did more than that in just 5 years.  Now, there is nothing wrong with borrowing from foreign countries.  But we must remember that the more we depend on foreign nations to lend us money, the more our economic security is tied to the whims of foreign leaders whose interests might not be aligned with ours.

Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally.  Leadership means that “the buck stops here.”  Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren.  America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership.  Americans deserve better.

I therefore intend to oppose the effort to increase America’s debt limit.

Senator Barack Obama (D, IL) 16 Mar 2006, Congressional Record Volume, 152, Number 34 (Thursday, March 16, 2006)] [Senate] [Pages S2236-S2241]

What he said.  Figures in brackets updated to 2013.

Compromise

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The Wall Street Journal also wondered a bit ago why it’s so hard for the two parties in DC to get along—”the two parties have a hard time even agreeing to disagree,” is the way they put it.

I think they’ve missed a key factor.  Here’s the basis for the WSJ‘s conjecture [emphasis in the original]:

Even when the differences between the two sides seem relatively small—whether, for example, to raise the top tax rate four percentage points for families earning more than $250,000, or whether to make that income level $450,000—compromise is difficult because both sides think important precedents would be set.  Today’s decisions will set the backdrop for broader debates on tax reform and spending later in the year.

When Republicans agreed to raise any tax rates at all, for example, they knew that they had opened the door for a new set of arguments about which rates and at what level.  The question had shifted from whether to raise rates to how—and that’s a significant shift.

It’s more than a significant shift.  It’s a complete surrender of a fundamental conservative principle: lower taxes, which benefits the economy and American citizens; don’t raise them, which achieves the opposite.

For the Democrats’ part, the WSJ says

Similarly, when Mr. Obama said he could accept the idea of reducing entitlement costs by embracing a formula for lowering cost-of-living increases for Social Security recipients, he was setting a precedent as well—a precedent saying that Democrats were willing to consider policies that reduced entitlement spending not just by holding down costs but also by reducing benefits to recipients.

But there is no precedent at all here.  The bit about Social Security was just idle chit-chat—bad faith negotiating.  There is no such thing in the actual deal; Obama accepted nothing related to entitlements, and he set no precedent at all.

Compromise requires a number of factors in order to be possible; among these are a need-driven interest in compromise.  The Republican Party has that interest—indeed, they beg for compromise, any compromise, so they can have a fig leaf of having accomplished something, and they’ve shown they’ll give away the store for the smallest trivium.  The Democrats, on the other hand, have no need of compromise, and so they have no interest in one.  They know that they can get whatever they want out of the Republicans—to the extent they need deal with them at all—because they know the Republicans will fold even on their most fundamental principles.

This is why it’s so hard for the two parties to get along—it’s a strictly one-way affair, with the dominant party having no need of it.

Too Many Laws

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Here’s an example of the over-complexity that results from too many laws on our books, and of the injustice that is inflicted as a result of that over-complexity.  Jacob Gershman, writing in The Wall Street Journal‘s Law Blog describes an instance of rape that isn’t rape.

Here are two cases.  In one, a man has sexual intercourse with a woman by tricking her into believing he was, in fact, her boyfriend.  In another, a man has sexual intercourse with a woman by tricking her into believing he was, in fact, her husband.

A lower court convicted the man in the first case of rape, and an appellate court reversed—no rape had occurred.  Here’s the law on that, as described by that appellate court:

…a victim of a crime is deemed “unconscious” when he or she is “not aware, knowing, perceiving, or cognizant of the essential characteristics of the act due to the perpetrator’s fraud in fact.

But pretending to be someone else is a fraud of “inducement” not “fact.” That means that the jury couldn’t convict [the…man] on that basis[.]

A married woman, similarly tricked (differing only by the…man…pretending to be husband rather than boyfriend), would get the rape conviction, as the appellate court also pointed out in its ruling in the first case.

…California’s penal code “provides that rape includes an act of sexual intercourse ‘[w]here a person submits under the belief that the person committing the act is the victim’s spouse, and this belief is induced by any artifice, pretense, or concealment practiced by the accused, with intent to induce the belief.'”

California’s Attorney General Kamala Harris is on the case, though.

The evidence is clear that this case involved a nonconsensual assault that fits within the general understanding of what constitutes rape.  This law is arcane, and I will work with the Legislature to fix it.

Look for yet another law on the books, rather than a merging of these two laws into a single one with a unified definition of rape.

What He Said

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Senator Ted Cruz (R, TX) has some thoughts in a Washington Post op-ed on the needed direction of the Republican Party, if it’s to recover its roots, and the mechanics of achieving that new direction.

Herewith, some excerpts.  RTWT.

Free-market policies expand opportunity, produce prosperity and improve lives, especially for those working to climb the economic ladder.

And

On the flip side, widespread economic redistribution places enormous burdens on small businesses, kills jobs and rarely helps the recipients of government largess.

Dependency is corrosive. Ask any abuela if she wants her grandchildren dependent on government. Dependency saps spirit and diminishes self-respect.

And

Americans want to stand on their own feet, and Republicans need to champion policies that enable us to do so: ownership, choice and individual responsibility.

And some mechanics for achieving that:

Republicans shouldn’t just assail excessive financial and environmental regulations; we should explain how those regulations kill jobs and restrict Americans’ ability to buy their first home.

Don’t just say no to new taxes—fundamentally reform the tax code so that every American can file his taxes on a postcard.  Eliminate the corporate welfare and complexity that enrich only accountants and lawyers.

Don’t just criticize union bosses; explain how closed shops confiscate wages and make it harder for low-skilled workers to get jobs.

Don’t talk generically about education; advocate school choice to empower parents and expand opportunity for children struggling to get ahead.

Don’t just dwell on the long-term solvency of Social Security; promote personal accounts to allow low-income Americans to accumulate wealth and pass it on to future generations.

Republicans ought to view, and explain, every policy through the lens of economic mobility.  Conservative policies help those struggling to climb the economic ladder, and liberal policies hurt them.

What he said.

Children and Gun Control

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In the aftermath of the Newtown shootings, the Left cynically is using children as weapons in their charge against weapons.  Here’s an example.  And the six-year-old miscreant Had Been Warned, too.

At Silver Spring, MD’s, Roscoe Nix Elementary School, Assistant Principle Renee Garraway sent a six-year-old boy’s parents “a letter” alleging that he’d

“threatened to shoot a student” and that he had been spoken to earlier about similar behavior.

The “threat,” it turns out, came in the middle of a game a boy and a girl classmate had been playing.  He pointed his finger at her and said “Pow.”

In the letter, according to The Washington Post,

an assistant principal had warned one parent that the child’s behavior could lead to a suspension.  At school, a counselor “had an extended conversation” with the child to emphasize “the inappropriateness of using objects to make shooting gestures[.]”

Because today it’s inappropriate for children to play games that children have been playing harmlessly for thousands of years.  And

an assistant principal had talked to the boy about the “seriousness” of the issue[.]

Despite that, according to the school district’s lawyer, Judith S Bresler,

…after the meeting with the counselor and assistant principal, [the boy] chose to point his finger at a female classmate and say “Pow.”

Why, the heinous, disobedient, little six-year-old monster.  We’ll show him.  And they suspended the little hand-totinggun-toting criminal for a day.

Montgomery County schools spokesman Dana Tofig chimed in:

[S]uspending a student is a serious matter, and that is especially true of a student who is in our early grades.

So, it’s an especially serious matter for a child to play Cowboys and Indians.  Oh, wait—there’s one of the Left’s code words.  Prolly ought to suspend him for his next move, playing Unarmed Settlers and Indians, too.  Or would an extended arm, with the other hand back by one’s ear, also be an illegal weapon?  Probably not.  Too bad, too; the school would miss out on two-fer in that game.  Or a triple play, if the child playing the role of the Indigenous American also weren’t actually one.

All of this actually happened in mid-December, shortly after the Newtown shootings (it’s only coming to light now because the family has been forced to file a formal appeal with the school, the first move in bringing the matter to court, over the school’s intransigence), so a measure of hysteria might be expected, as the family’s lawyer, Robin Ficker, noted.  But these school officials are grown, rational, trained adults.  They know better.

That’s what makes it especially appalling that these folks are using children in their war on weapons.