aRe-elect Obama? Why? (See 1 below.)
Maybe the 'Charlottans' know the answer? (See 1a below.)
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This Saturday, September 8 @ 8 am:
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Mr. Fleming will cover all aspects of the issue-
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Bret Stephens has a lot of maybe's to wrestle with regarding Israel's back. (See 3 below.)
Netanyahu and Arad just made it clearer. (See 3a below.)
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Randall Hoven counts the ways! (See 4 below.)
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Dick
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1a)
Matters not to me what party you identify with, cause the party is over. These figures tell a compelling story and should challenge everyone to think beyond partisan politics and finger pointing and get a grasp of reality before it is too late. Socialism is here.... Question is, what are we going to do about it?
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The Charlotte Democrats
Hope and change have given way to a grim determination
The Democrats gathering in Charlotte this week are united behind President Obama but more than a little nervous about their November prospects. The thrill of 2008 is gone, replaced by an almost grim determination. The party of hope and change has become the party of grind-it-out, slug-it-out, and hope to win as less awful than Mitt Romney.
This isn't the way it was supposed to be. The Obama Presidency was going to usher in a new era of long-term Democratic dominance, and the circumstances to make it happen were on their side. Democrats took power in a recession they could pin on Republicans, knowing they could take credit for the inevitable economic recovery and ride that to re-election. Young people went for them 2 to 1 and might have been loyal for decades. It all might have worked had they made the economy their priority.
But this misjudges the modern Democratic Party. Four years ago in Denver, we wrote that the country deserved to know that the Democrats who would really be running the country in 2009 would be named Henry Waxman, John Dingell, John Conyers, David Obey, George Miller, Barney Frank and James Oberstar. Those were—and mostly still are—the liberal barons of the House.
They weren't about to let a crisis go to waste, and so they went about using their accidentally large majorities to drive through a generation of pent-up liberal legislation. Mr. Obama famously let them write the stimulus and health-care bills. Republicans were helpless to stop them for two years. Liberals got nearly everything they wanted—which is what may be their ultimate undoing.
Democrats of the Obama era are united by cultural liberalism, but above all else they agree on the goal of expanding the reach of government. The Democratic Leadership Council, the centrist idea shop of the Clinton years, is moribund. The vanguard of ideas for the Obama White House is the Center for American Progress, which churns out proposals for government to mediate every sphere of economic life.
Associated Press/Jae C. Hong
A delegate shows off her President Barack Obama button in the convention hall before the Democratic National Convention.
In this view, the entire American economy is a giant market failure—except perhaps Silicon Valley. Health-care costs can be controlled by dictating prices and medical practice. The climate can be controlled by putting coal out of business and subsidizing wind, solar and ethanol. Wall Street can be controlled by more rules and hanging the occasional banker in the public square as an example.
Most important, government spending can conjure private growth by "investing" in whatever seems like a good idea. So taxes must rise and rise again to pay for these "investments."
The same priorities prevail, by the way, in the rare states where Democrats still dominate. While a wave of GOP Governors elected in 2010 have been reforming government, Democrats in Illinois, Maryland, Connecticut and California are bent on protecting every corner of government they can. The first three have raised taxes enormously, and Jerry Brown is desperate to get voter approval in November so he can raise the top income-tax rate in California to 13.3%.
There are very few Chris Christie Democrats. The closest might be Andrew Cuomo in New York, but his productive first year has given way to status-quo accommodations to unions on school and pension reform and a tax increase. This reflects today's Democratic coalition, which is dominated by affluent cultural liberals, voters who depend on government, and especially public-employee unions.
Here and there in the hinterlands, you can see a glimpse of new Democratic thinking. Gloria Romero in California wants to reduce the power of teachers unions, and treasurer Gina Raimondo dared to rein in public pension benefits in Rhode Island. Even President Obama sometimes sounds like a reformer on education, until election years when he resorts to proposing more federal spending to hire more teachers.
But those reform voices won't be anywhere in evidence in Charlotte, where the message will be four more years of more of the same. The main theme is to preserve the government that Democrats have expanded. Democrats made a generational bet in 2009-2010 that the country was ready to be yanked sharply to the left, and they know that nearly all of their grand ambitions will be undone if Mr. Obama loses.
Yet the liberals who dominate the party believe that if Mr. Obama wins, however narrowly, their gamble will have been a great success. They may have lost the House in 2010, and perhaps they'll lose the Senate this year, but those can be won back.
Meanwhile, ObamaCare won't be repealed, its subsidies will start to flow in 2014, and then another huge chunk of the private economy and voting public will be dependent on the government for decades to come. Nancy Pelosi will take her bows as an icon of the entitlement state.
Thus the frowning resolve to grind out a victory by whatever means possible. It's hardly an optimistic vision and it's far from commanding the oceans, but if Democrats win, what you've seen is what you'll get.
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2)
THREE REASONS CLINT EASTWOOD WORKED FOR REPUBLICANS
Honestly, I wasn’t sure how Clint Eastwood’s rambling appearance would play with voters, though I knew immediately how it would play with most Beltway types. For me, it was, without doubt, the most entertaining convention speech in memory — hell, maybe the most entertaining of any political event period. But let’s concede for the sake of argument that Eastwood’s performance (empty chair and all) was all the terrible things that Democrats and many in the media have been saying it was … So what?
1. It was fun. How many potential voters actually changed their minds — or made up their minds – on the basis of an ad-libbed comedy routine by a celebrity? If anything, chances are probably higher that that some mildly curious voters found the idea of an iconic actor giving a speech — one, incidentally, that didn’t adhere to Republican orthodoxy — at the RNC as evidence that the GOP wasn’t as rigid and unapproachable as everyone’s been telling them.
2. And speaking of mildly curious voters … Though many of them may enjoy and admire someone like George Clooney, they probably don’t relate to him. Clint, on the other hand, cuts through generations and fan bases. He’s about as close to universally liked as a celebrity can get. This is why Chrysler used his voice to celebrate bailouts. Eastwood’s appearance will do nothing to amuse those who take their politics too seriously, but he certainly lightened up what is by nature an artificial and highly-scripted event. No, Eastwood didn’t lay out an eloquent, bullet-point argument against Barack Obama’s economic policies; what he did was convey a prevalent sentiment in nonpartisan language that a lot of people who don’t care much about politics understand.
Take this segment, which was probably the most effective:
You, we — we own this country. We — we own it. It is not you owning it, and not politicians owning it. Politicians are employees of ours. And — so — they are just going to come around and beg for votes every few years. It is the same old deal. But I just think it is important that you realize , that you’re the best in the world. Whether you are a Democrat or Republican or whether you’re libertarian or whatever, you are the best. And we should not ever forget that. And when somebody does not do the job, we got to let them go.
3. Ed Morrissey lays this argument out well, but whatever potential damage Eastwood can do, and I doubt he did much, he can make it up with eyeballs. How many people tuned in to see Eastwood? Was his shtick worth the cost if those viewers stuck around to see strong speeches by Marco Rubioand Mitt Romney?
I’m sure Republicans had hoped for something more traditional from Clint, but really, what was the downside? I don’t see one.
2a)
New York Times Proves Clint Eastwood Correct -- Obama Is Lousy CEO
A New York Times front page story today — New York Times! — might have killed President Obama’s re-election hopes.
The story is called “The Competitor in Chief — Obama Plays To Win, In Politics and Everything Else.” It is devastating.
With such a title, and from such a friendly organ, at first I thought Jodi Kantor’s piece would be a collection of Obama’s greatest political wins: His rapid rise in Illinois, his win over Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Democratic primaries, the passage of health care, and so on.
But the NYT piece is not about any of that. Rather, it is a deep look into the two outstanding flaws in Obama’s executive leadership:
1. How he vastly overrates his capabilities:
But even those loyal to Mr. Obama say that his quest for excellence can bleed into cockiness and that he tends to overestimate his capabilities. The cloistered nature of the White House amplifies those tendencies, said Matthew Dowd, a former adviser to President George W. Bush, adding that the same thing happened to his former boss. “There’s a reinforcing quality,” he said, a tendency for presidents to think, I’m the best at this.
2. How he spends extraordinary amounts of time and energy to compete in — trivialities.
For someone dealing with the world’s weightiest matters, Mr. Obama spends surprising energy perfecting even less consequential pursuits. He has played golf 104 times since becoming president, according to Mark Knoller of CBS News, who monitors his outings, and he asks superior players for tips that have helped lower his scores. He decompresses with card games on Air Force One, but players who do not concentrate risk a reprimand (“You’re not playing, you’re just gambling,” he once told Arun Chaudhary, his former videographer).His idea of birthday relaxation is competing in an Olympic-style athletic tournament with friends, keeping close score. The 2009 version ended with a bowling event. Guess who won, despite his history of embarrassingly low scores? The president, it turned out, had been practicing in the White House alley.
Kantor’s piece is full of examples of Obama’s odd need to (a) dominate his peers in everything from bowling, cards, golf, basketball, and golf (104 times in his presidency). Bear in mind, Obama doesn’t just robustly compete. The leader of the free world spends many hours practicing these trivial pursuits behind the scenes. Combine this weirdly wasted time with a consistent overestimation of his capabilities, and the result is, according to NYT’s Kantor:
He may not always be as good at everything as he thinks, including politics. While Mr. Obama has given himself high grades for his tenure in the White House — including a “solid B-plus” for his first year — many voters don’t agree, citing everything from his handling of the economy to his unfulfilled pledge that he would be able to uniteWashington to his claim that he would achieve Israeli-Palestinian peace.Those were not the only times Mr. Obama may have overestimated himself: he has also had a habit of warning new hires that he would be able to do their jobs better than they could.“I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters,” Mr. Obama told Patrick Gaspard, his political director, at the start of the 2008 campaign, according to The New Yorker. “I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m going to think I’m a better political director than my political director.”
Though he never ran a large organization before becoming president, he initially dismissed internal concerns about management and ended up with a factionalized White House and a fuzzier decision-making process than many top aides wanted.
Kantor’s portrait of Obama is stunning. It paints a picture of a CEO who is unfocused and lost.
Kantor’s portrait of Obama is stunning. It paints a picture of a CEO who is unfocused and lost.
Imagine, for a minute, that you are on the board of directors of a company. You have a CEO who is not meeting his numbers and who is suffering a declining popularity with his customers. You want to help this CEO recover, but then you learn he doesn’t want your help. He is smarter than you and eager to tell you this. Confidence or misplaced arrogance? You’re not sure at first. If the company was performing well, you’d ignore it. But the company is performing poorly, so you can’t.
With some digging, you learn, to your horror, that the troubled CEO spends a lot of time on — what the hell? — bowling? Golf? Three point shots? While the company is going south?
What do you do? You fire that CEO. Clint Eastwood was right. You let the guy go.
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3)Maybe Obama Has Israel's Back
Or maybe it's time to realize that Israel is on its own.
By Bret Stephens
Maybe Martin Dempsey chose his words poorly.
Maybe the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff didn't mean to imply Israel would be committing a crime when he told reporters last week that the U.S. would not be "complicit" with an Israeli attack on Iran. Maybe he hadn't yet read the latest report from the International Atomic Energy Agency, noting that Iran continued to enrich, continued to obstruct, continued to deceive. Maybe Gen. Dempsey wasn't speaking for the president at all, just offering opinions above his pay grade.
Or maybe he was speaking directly for a president who, politics being what they are, can't yet say such things himself.
Maybe it isn't true, as the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot reported yesterday, that the U.S. has told Iran via European channels that it would not back an Israeli strike provided Iran did not retaliate against U.S. assets in the Persian Gulf. Maybe it's a slur to suggest this administration would ever broach, much less cut, a deal with Tehran at the expense of Jerusalem.
Or maybe it would cut that deal in a heartbeat.
Maybe it's no big deal that the U.S. is walking away from a joint U.S.-Israeli military exercise scheduled for October and cited last year by the State Department as evidence of the "new heights" to which Mr. Obama had carried America's "unwavering commitment to Israel's security." Maybe "slashing by more than two-thirds the number of American troops going to Israel and reducing both the number and potency of missile interception systems at the core of the joint exercise," as Time magazine reports, was merely the result of ordinary budgetary pressures.
Or maybe that's another piece of Gen. Dempsey's non-complicity policy.
Maybe the president is serious when he says he will prevent Iran from getting a bomb in the first place, rather than try to contain a nuclear Iran after the fact. Maybe the elaborate antimissile systems the U.S. is racing to set up in the region—so that, according to the New York Times, "even if [Iran] developed a nuclear weapon and mounted it atop its growing fleet of missiles, it could be countered by antimissile systems"—is not about containment at all.
Or maybe the administration thinks containment is a viable option after all, or at least a better one than military strikes, which is why it's now spending its money on it.
Maybe the administration thinks that it can pursue an effective covert strategy against Iran while also telling the media that it is pursuing such a strategy. Maybe someone forgot to tell whoever is leaking the details of this strategy that "covert" is another word for "secret."
Or maybe the Obama administration is happy to brag about its covert accomplishments, even when the bragging betrays Israel's secrets as well.
Maybe the administration knows that diplomacy has run its course with a regime that has rejected one overture after another.
Or maybe the administration really thinks it can still tempt the mullahs with a grand bargain in which they give up their nukes in exchange for a U.S. embassy in Tehran (they loved the last one) along with spare parts for their airplanes.
Maybe President Obama is, as some senior Israeli decision makers claim, a sincere and fabulous friend of Israel.
Or maybe such statements are simply a matter of being polite about an administration that knows it has a problem with disenchanted Jewish voters and distrustful donors.
Maybe Mr. Obama has privately offered Israel realistic assurances that the U.S. is prepared to use force to stop Iran as soon as the election is behind him. Maybe the near-hysteria that has gripped the Israeli government is an ingenious head fake designed to make the Iranians think they can exploit the discord between the two Satans.
Or maybe the only head fake is the president's attempt to woo skeptical voters that he really has Israel's back.
Maybe, dear Western reader, you think the administration is right to stay Israel's hand—because you'd rather have the U.S. do the job cleanly, after exhausting whatever other options remain, rather than risk having Israel do the job messily. Maybe you have a fair and defensible point.
Or maybe you think that the mullahs nuclear ambitions are their own business and they'll leave us alone if only we leave them. Maybe you're Ron Paul.
Maybe, dear Israeli reader, you think it oughtn't be the responsibility of a small power to confront Iran alone, especially when Iran's threat goes well beyond Israel alone. Maybe you, too, have a fair and defensible point.
Or maybe you think that, whatever the merits of that argument, Israel will not find its security on the strength of its debating points. Maybe you think, too, that Israel puts its sovereignty and security at risk when it allows any other nation to seek a veto over its actions.
Maybe the risks of Israeli inaction—not least to its reputation and deterrent power—are greater than the risks of action, real as they surely are. Maybe it's true that those who dare, win. Maybe it's time to stop letting the Iranians do all the daring.
3a)
| Observation: Just in time for Democratic Convention – Israel makes do list for Obama clear |
The timing could not be better. For months friends of Israel in the United States had to contend with what might have been interpreted as contradictory messages emanating from various Israeli sources. But now, as the Democratic Party convenes to nominate President Obama as their candidate for the 2012 elections, Israel has come forward with a clear message as to what it needs President Obama to do. And that’s do now. Not in 2014. Not in 2013. Now. First we had Prime Minister Netanyahu introduce the concept that Mr. Obama needs to set explicit red lines. Today this was followed up by an interview by Prof. Uzi Arad, a former national security adviser, broadcast live on the Israel Radio Reshet Bet noon news program 4 September 2012 A recording of the “do list” is available at http://youtu.be/uHn2wN9x4jY and IMRA’s translation appears below. This “do list” is a list that can be embraced by all friends of Israel be they Democrats or Republicans. It is a “do list” that can be endorsed by the entire spectrum of groups interested in Israel, from J Street and the Israel Policy Forum to ZOA and AFSI. And it’s a do list that both President Obama and candidate Romney should be urged and encouraged by their supporters to publicly embrace. The fog has lifted. The time for secondary and tertiary considerations and calculations is behind us. And now, with a “do list” that cuts across the entire spectrum, all supporters and friends of Israel can join to insure its implementation. This is a moment that transcends sectoral politics. This is an opportunity for each and every friend and supporter of Israel to make a critical difference. ============================================= Prof. Uzi Arad, a former national security adviser, broadcast live on the Israel Radio Reshet Bet noon news program 4 September 2012 Translated excerpt: Let's start in terms of goals. Until today the U.S. used terms that were not the most categorical that clearly indicated its determination. 1. It can be arranged for example that at the level of presidential declarations that it is said more explicitly that the U.S. will not accept and will use all of its resources in order to prevent a nuclear Iran and in no circumstances will neither accept or countenance the situation of a nuclear Iran. 2. It can act already to receive the authorization of Congress such that if the point is reached that all diplomatic measures are exhausted that it will act with force to achieve these goals (nuclear free Iran) 3. It is made clear that the military goal of the U.S. if it does launch an operation will not be to buy time but instead it will be explicitly declared by the president that the military goal is the permanent prevention of a nuclear armed Iran. ...But you asked about additional matters. If there would be operations in the field if the Iranians crossed red lines - such that if Iran were to cross those line that this would immediately cause the launching of American forces almost automatically. And you are correct. There are such instances. And they are already known. But the U.S. could state them explicitly and bring them to the attention of the Iranians. For example: 1. Any uranium enrichment beyond 20% - which they are already doing. Any enrichment beyond that that is at a military level, 60% etc., will be considered crossing a red line and will immediately lead to action. 2. Any action to undermine supervision - The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) observers are there. They have equipment. They are supervising. Any action to undermine their supervision will be considered crossing a red line and immediately mean that the Iranians are moving forward. 3. The discovery of any secret enrichment facility not yet declared by the Iranians will be considered as incontrovertible evidence that they are moving forward such that also such a discovery will be considered the crossing of the red line... |
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4)Why Blame Obama?
By Randall Hoven
Let me count the ways.
Before inauguration. Senator Obama voted for the budgets he would later blame on Bush, and for the TARP bailout. After just two months of TARP, the Bush administration said it was done -- crisis averted. In fact, President Bush was done after using about $270 billion of the $350 B that was authorized by Congress. But as a courtesy to the incoming president, Bush would request thesecond $350B from Congress if President-Elect Obama asked for it.
President-Elect Obama asked for it, and he got it. Tim Geithner, who could not do his own taxes and who, as a regulator, did nothing about the Libor scandal, would have all $700B to play with.
We usually call TARP a "bank bailout," but the banks are paying back every cent lent to them. In fact, the part of TARP that went to banks is expected to return $3B to taxpayers. And most of that was paid back quickly. The "cost" of the "bank bailout" was less than zero!
The real bailouts. When the dust clears, the CBO expects TARP to cost taxpayers $32B. Who got that money if banks didn't? General Motors, Chrysler, and "mortgage programs." But GM and Chrysler went bankrupt anyway.
The U.S. auto industry was not "saved." Going bankrupt does not have to mean going out of business. See, for example, Delta Airlines. It went bankrupt in the usual, lawful way and is operating today. On the other hand, GM could be heading into bankruptcy again, post-bailout. Oh, and since the bailout, "GM has increased its manufacturing capacity in China by 55 percent."
The government auto takeovers did not prevent bankruptcies. What they prevented was the usual rule of bankruptcy law. Instead of paying back creditors in a predictable and lawful way, the federal government simply robbed bondholders and non-UAW workers and retirees (especially at Delphi) and delivered sweet, sweet payback to the union bosses of the UAW.
The effect goes beyond the direct costs to taxpayers and specific investors and employees. Who would make investments or long-term decisions with this kind of rule-of-man uncertainty and ascendant cronyism?
The Stimulus. Obama sold the stimulus this way: it would keep the unemployment rate from going above 8%, the jobs were shovel-ready, and it would cost $787B.
Since the Stimulus was passed three and half years ago, the unemployment rate has not gone below 8%. President Obama himself said, "Shovel-ready was not as shovel-ready as we expected." And the Congressional Budget Office "estimates that the legislation will increase budget deficits by about $831 billion over the 2009-2019 period." The stimulus stimulated nothing but our debt problem.
Spending overall. Obama requested $350B of TARP before his inauguration. Within weeks of inauguration, his $831-B "Stimulus" was passed. And within days of that, he signed a $410-B Omnibus spending bill.
The Omnibus bill and much of the Stimulus and TARP spending occurred in FY 2009, a year that Democrats always try to pin on Bush. Every dime spent in both FY 2008 and FY 2009 was due to budgets written by a Democrat-led Congress. And President Obama reigned for the majority of FY 2009. Democrats own FY 2009.
The result was that federal government spending shot up like a rocket in 2009, to levels unprecedented in peacetime, and stayed there. In every year of Obama's four years in office, federal spending was above 24% of GDP. Prior to Obama, it had not reached that level in even one year since World War II.
Compare federal spending in Obama's first four years to the four years that just preceded them: Obama's 24.4% of GDP compared to Bush's 20.1% of GDP. In today's dollars, that is almost $700B -- every year.
Mitt Romney gets grief from Democrats for having the goal of limiting federal spending to 20% of GDP. That simply means going back to the pre-Obama years, not the pre-FDR years. Bill Clinton spent less than 20% of GDP. George W. Bush spent less than 20% of GDP. (Eight-year averages.) Why is it considered some kind of impossible dream?
Obama did not let the financial crisis go to waste. He permanently grew the federal government under the guise of addressing a short-term problem.
Taxing. Obama gets a bit of a bad rap on taxes. Outside ObamaCare (discussed below), he hasn't really raised taxes. OK, he raised the cigarette tax his first month in office. And he's always wanting to raise taxes on "the rich," but he hasn't pulled that off just yet. In fact, he's generally cut taxes. But look at the way he does that.
Remember the big tax fight at the end of 2010, when Republicans simply wanted to keep the Bush tax rates in place? The Republican plan was scored as adding $544B to the 10-year deficit since those rates were scheduled to increase. Democrats, being so concerned about deficits suddenly, argued that that was too much. They wanted to let tax rates increase on higher incomes.
So here's how they all compromised: they kept all those tax rates in place and added yet more tax cuts to make the total bill $858B. The "compromise" was bigger deficits than either party originally proposed. Here were the tax cuts and credits added by Democrats. (By the way, a "credit" is considered a "tax cut" even if you had no taxes to cut and the government sent you a check.)
- Unemployment insurance,
- Earned income tax credit,
- American opportunity tax credit,
- Child tax credit,
- Payroll tax,
- Investment incentives,
- Ethanol and alternative fuels credits.
Let me tell you all the ways that was bad.
(1) These extra cuts and credits increased the deficit -- even more than simply doing what the Republicans had asked for, 60% more.
(2) When the goal should be to simplify the tax code, these made it incredibly more complex.
(3) When the goal should be to reduce the progressivity of the most progressive tax system in the developed world, these made it more progressive.
(4) These cuts and credits were "targeted" rather than broad-based. Politicians picked who the winners and losers were.
(5) The U.S. tax code became a temporary, two-years-at-a-time, made-up-as-we-go-along system. No one can make long-term financial decisions (investing, buying a house, hiring) based on the U.S. tax system.
(6) The changes did absolutely nothing to address the fact that the U.S. has the highest corporate tax in the developed world, which incentivizes U.S. businesses to move and hire overseas.
(7) The payroll tax cuts put the already shaky entitlements of Social Security and Medicare in even more precarious positions.
In 2007, the Bush tax rates managed to raise 18.5% of GDP, above the 1960-2000 average of 18.2%. With all the tax-tinkering in the last four years, federal revenues have stayed below 16% of GDP -- the lowest levels since 1950. (That might be a good thing, if we weren't spending at the highest levels since 1946.)
More complex, more progressive, more anti-growth, more fiscally irresponsible, and less predictable. Everything you want in a tax system, right?
Debt. All you need to know about the federal debt and Obama's plan to deal with it is contained in this chart from his own FY 2013 budget.
Look at that chart in parts. The left part is through 2007. Once we paid down our World War II debt, it never exceeded 50% of GDP. And when Republicans took over the House of Representatives in 1994, for the first time in 40 years, they brought that debt down from 49% of GDP to 36% of GDP in 2007.
Then Democrats won both the House and Senate. Democrats wrote the budgets for FY 2008 and '09, and then maintained those gains with continuing resolutions ever since (not real budgets). From 2007 to 2012, federal debt held by the public more than doubled as a fraction of GDP! See that sharp rise up in the chart in those years?
In those few years under Obama, we blasted through the 50% threshold we had kept for over half a century. Then, only one year later, we blasted through the Maastricht threshold of 60%. Our public debt is now over 70% of GDP.
Over half a century of reasonably responsible fiscal policy was wiped out in one president's term.
Now look at the chart and see what comes after 2012. First is a little one-decade flat period manufactured by Timothy Geithner's outlandish assumptions like real GDP growth over 4% from 2014 through 2017. After Geithner's make-believe 10-year window, we're off to the races. Our public debt goes through all levels seen by Spain, Greece, etc. and, in fact, off to infinity. It never even levels off, much less declines.
And this is Obama's plan. This chart is the best his guys could come up with, even making all the bogus assumptions they could possibly invent. His "plan" is little more than running up the most expensive restaurant bill in history and then skipping out on the check.
ObamaCare. The CBO now estimates the gross cost of ObamaCare over the next 11 years (2012-2022) as $1,683B. That is offset by various penalties and taxes of $515B, for a "net cost" of $1,168B.
So why does the CBO say that ObamaCare would reduce the deficit and repealing it would increase the deficit? Because Obamacare also cuts $711B from Medicare and raises yet more taxes by $569B over the ten years of 2013-2022.
In round numbers (because the time periods don't match exactly), ObamaCare really costs about $1.7 trillion, but it also raises taxes by about $1.1 trillion (oops, I guess Obama did raise taxes), and it cuts Medicare over $700 billion. The CBO says.
Even if you believe the numbers, it is a massive increase in spending, a massive increase in taxes, and a massive cut to Medicare. But I don't believe the numbers. Costs will go up, the revenues won't show up, and Medicare will hobble through with various accounting gimmicks and IPAB dictates. It expands entitlements at the very time we can't afford the entitlements we already have.
Energy and regulation. You might think the above litany would be enough. But Obama wasn't finished.
- He killed the Keystone pipeline. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce put that at "more than 250,000 permanent jobs in the long run" that were killed.
- He put a moratorium on drilling in the Gulf (19,000 jobs), restricted Gulf drilling overall, and outright banned drilling in the eastern Gulf for 7 years (230,000 jobs).
- And of course, no drilling in ANWR or offshore on the east or west coasts. But Obama is not against offshore drilling everywhere; he provided $2B in loans to Brazil to drill offshore there.
- The Government Accountability Office estimates that new EPA regulations will result in two to twelve percent of coal plants being closed.
- Obama is not against all energy companies -- just those that actually produce energy. You might have heard of Solyndra, a solar-panel company that received over $500 million in government funding, then went bankrupt. Other government-funded "green" companies that went bankrupt: Evergreen Solar, SpectraWatt, Mountain Plaza, and Olsen's Mills. Obama has the reverse-Midas touch when it comes to green energy. (Or maybe it has to do with his "green jobs czar" being a self-described communist.)
- If your child was having an asthma attack and you found yourself without an inhaler (they're not called breathalyzers), you could have made a quick trip to the local drug store and got one over-the-counter. Not anymore. Now you will need a prescription, and it might not work as well.
- And of course, "pro-choice" Democrats are not so pro-choice when it comes to light bulbs.
- Business regulations too numerous to mention: the EPA's climate change regulations, OSHA's "occupational noise" regulation, the EPA's new ozone regulations, Dodd-Frank, the EPA's training requirements for renovation projects, etc.
Question for the reader: if you were to pivot and focus on jobs like a laser, would you flood the country with new job-killing regulations as fast as your czars could create them?
I close with a quote.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------"If the president loses in 2012, we will lose too, and the country will once again be in the hands of rightwing extremism. There is no option to the left of President Obama." -Sam Webb, chair of the Communist Party USA, addressing the party in 2010.
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