I responded as follows: "I was not there but I get and have seen similar scenes. That said, though I understand your analogy, it is a bit subjective and perhaps you have imputed too much of your own interpretation. Nevertheless, I can summarize my own thoughts by saying much of the genesis of our societal problems are based on the immorality of slavery. By this I mean 'we should have picked our own cotton.' We enslaved a developed culture not suited for ours though well adapted and structured for the demands of their own life and environment. We then freed them only to segregate and continue to exploit them. Many have broken through and become educated and fully integrated etc. but far too many, due to misguided and guilty so called 'affirmative action' liberal policies, have been turned into emotional cripples and they have infected our own culture with their challenged, anti-social and criminal values.
I believe America is sinking as if it had been forced to walk over a swamp of laws , policies and PC thinking that have corrupted our values, destroying what culture and work ethic we had developed, supplanting it with characteristics that do not equate with what it means to be an American, ie. independent tough spirit, a 'can doitness' and charitableness that made us the great nation and people we once were .
Some of our problems are the consequence of coming through relatively unscathed while other nations were defeated and destroyed by WW 2 . We did not seek to lead the world. It was thrust upon us and we assumed the role at a very high financial cost. In the process, we defended Democracy against the scourge of Communism and engaged in some crippling wars . Perhaps some justified , some not.
Our dependence on energy from the Middle East also harmed and sapped us and president Obama has turned this dependency and the growing influence of Islamism into an even greater disaster.
Furthermore, this current president is an angry man, a bitter man, a man with a warped sense of self importance, a man with a chip on his shoulder and arrogance unworthy of the position he holds. I do not recognize him as a president but simply as a mal-content accident.
We were already headed in this direction but Obama has accelerated matters. We no longer seem to possess the emotional strength to resist because government dependency, envy and greed are sapping our vitality.
Obama's game plan has been to pit American against American, create petty jealousies and crush the spirit of entrepreneurship all the while building constituents whose dependence upon government largess locks them in as voters for his cause - the downsizing of America.
From an economic standpoint, we seem destined to become a second rate power incapable of getting out from under the terrible debt burden we have allowed our politicians to impose upon us. We face a fiscal burden which will continue to stifle our ability to re-employ, to compete and innovate and which will ultimately destroy the remaining value of our currency through , I fear, hyper inflation.
Furthermore, our social problems mount as demographic disparity widens.
Furthermore, our social problems mount as demographic disparity widens.
Our tax system is retrogressive and our government has become punitive under the subtle guise of being protective and re-distributive.
Mine is a somber view and, I hope, could prove entirely wrong. However, I see and fear the trends and realize they are not my nation's friend.
The greatest tragedy of all is that we have become a humorless society.
POGO was right - "the enemy is us! " (See 1 and 1a below.)
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Krauthammer deciphers the potential and subtle meaning and implications of Hagel. (See 2 below.)
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For all its faults the Israelis gave peace a chance. What were the results? (See 4 below.)
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13 new taxes. (See 5 below.)
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13 new taxes. (See 5 below.)
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Dick
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1)You Can't Call a Pretty Girl Pretty; What Kind of Country Are We Becoming?
Before examining the ridiculous controversy stemming from Monday night’s college football championship broadcast, let us stipulate that there are more urgent and scary ways to describe the current changes in America.
We are becoming a culture of dependency. We are becoming a neo-socialist experiment. We are becoming a dumbed-down nation unappreciative of its founders. We are losing touch with the Constitution and the very concept of liberty.
I do not argue that today’s essay is our most pressing problem. But as scores of fine writers address the various angles of our republic’s dangle from a precarious thread, I thought I’d venture to the periphery to lament another type of change which accrues to our societal detriment.
We are becoming a nation that caves to humorless, scolding bullies on matters of little or no consequence.
Not exactly a fiscal cliff or an Islamist-friendly CIA director, but a problem nonetheless.
If you didn’t see it live, you surely have by now. The iconic Brent Musburger took a moment between plays to comment on the images from ESPN cameras dwelling on Alabama quarterback A.J. McCarron’s girlfriend in the stands.
Turning to colleague Kirk Herbstreit, he playfully nudged: “You quarterbacks, you get all the good looking women. What a beautiful woman. Wow!”
Herbstreit, quarterback at Ohio State just over 20 years ago, added: “A.J.’s doing some things right down in Tuscaloosa.”
Musburger then filled the remaining seconds before the next play: “So if you’re a youngster at Alabama, start getting the football out and throw it around with Pop.”
Somewhere, a shriek rang out.
This is the only theory that can possibly lead to the sheer idiocy of ESPN apologizing for a completely innocent 30 seconds of broadcaster banter.
Somewhere, a phone rang. Or a hundred phones. An email, or a hundred emails, were sent. The sliver of America that found those moments offensive was going to get its pound of flesh.
Surely ESPN did not buckle on its own. Surely a network that will show you cheerleaders twenty times a game did not suddenly recoil in the production truck. No one wearing headphones said at the time, “Oh, dang, that was terrible, we should apologize for that.”
But the pathetic thing is, someone at ESPN may well have tensed up at the time-- not because the event was truly bad, but because every TV and radio operation knows that countless humorless scolders with empty lives stand poised to pounce on any turn of a word or phrase that jostles their fragile sensibilities.
Genuine offenses deserve genuine apologies. If Musburger had growled lasciviously about a wish to be 50 years younger while Herbstreit egged him on with his own prurient patter, I’d be leading the call for displays of contrition.
But it is vital to understand that neither Ms. Webb nor her parents nor her national champion boyfriend were offended in the least.
But if a needed apology undelivered is an etiquette violation, it is an outright attack on our social order to make-- and tolerate-- demands for apology that are wholly without basis.
A culture filled with contrived offense erodes our measurements of which affronts are deserving of actual repentance. And the heartfelt regret of actual transgressors is devalued when surrounded by the din of phony apologies offered merely to stem a wave of phone calls and emails from troublemakers with time on their hands.
But if there is anything worse than an unnecessary apology crafted to reduce heat, it is an apology of that type that seeks to hose the public in the process.
“We always try to capture interesting storylines and the relationship between an Auburn grad who is Miss Alabama and the current Alabama quarterback certainly met that test,” said the ESPN statement.
Sure, guys, it’s all about her being from Auburn. Please.
If Katherine Webb were somewhat plain, she would not have been on camera as much. Conversely, blessed as she is, she would have been on camera as much if her degree were from Delaware State.
The statement went on to express regret that the commentary “went too far and Brent understands that.”
I hope not. I hope Brent thinks this whole thing is as stupid as it actually is.
If ESPN’s phone lines did indeed blow up with outraged viewers the moment Musburger and Herbstreit finished calling a pretty girl pretty, I would have wanted a very different statement from the network:
“ESPN welcomes input from all viewers on the commentary of our announcers. However, after reviewing the words spoken in this instance, we find that the only occurrence was a compliment to Ms. Webb and accompanying upbeat banter that also related to her in a completely positive way.
“We note, and recommend that others do as well, that no one involved was offended, and as such, we see no reason whatsoever for an apology from Brent or anyone else.”
We should always be vigilant about broadcast comments that truly hurt or offend people. But the flip side of that responsibility coin is to stand guard against contrived offense meant to stoke political fires, in this case, perhaps a feminist agenda that it is somehow inappropriate to observe that a beautiful young lady is a beautiful young lady.
Is this a case of stereotype, perpetuating some notion that the quarterback will always get the pretty girl, or that having a plainer girlfriend is somehow a lesser blessing?
Just asking that question takes the whole matter into the muddled world of overanalysis. Some people need to learn to let a compliment be a compliment, and in a sports broadcast booth, if there is no harm done, to let guys be guys
1a)
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2)The meaning of Hagel
The puzzle of the Chuck Hagel nomination for defense secretary is that you normally choose someone of the other party for your Cabinet to indicate a move to the center, but, as The Post’s editorial board pointed out, Hagel’s foreign policy views are to theleft of Barack Obama’s, let alone the GOP’s. Indeed, they are at the fringe of the entire Senate.
So what’s going on? Message-sending. Obama won reelection. He no longer has to trim, to appear more moderate than his true instincts. He has the “flexibility” to be authentically Obama.
Hence the Hagel choice: Under the guise of centrist bipartisanship, it allows the president to leave the constrained first-term Obama behind and follow his natural Hagel-like foreign policy inclinations. On three pressing issues, in particular:
(1) Military Spending
Current Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said in August 2011 that the scheduled automatic $600 billion defense cuts (”sequestration”) would result in “hollowing out the force,” which would be “devastating.” And he strongly hinted that he might resign rather than enact them.
Asked about Panetta’s remarks, Hagel called the Pentagon “bloated” and needing “to be pared down.” Just the man you’d want to carry out a U.S. disarmament that will shrink America to what Obama thinks is its proper size on the world stage; i.e., smaller. The overweening superpower that Obama promiscuously chided in his global we-have-sinned tour is poised for reduction, not only to fund the bulging welfare state — like Europe’s postwar choice of social spending over international relevance — but to recalibrate America’s proper role in the world.
(2) Israel
The issue is not Hagel’s alleged hostility but his public pronouncements. His refusal to make moral distinctions, for example. At the height of the second intifada, a relentless campaign of indiscriminate massacre of Israelis, Hagel found innocence abounding: “Both Israelis and Palestinians are trapped in a war not of their making.”
This pass at evenhandedness is nothing but pernicious blindness. Just last month, Yasser Arafat’s widow admitted on Dubai TV what everyone has long known — that Arafat deliberately launched the intifada after the collapse of the Camp David peace talks in July 2000. He told his wife to stay in the safety of Paris. Why, she asked? Because I’m going to start an intifada.
In July 2002, with the terror still raging, Hagel offered further exquisite evenhandedness: “Israel must take steps to show its commitment to peace.” Good God. Exactly two years earlier Israel had proposed an astonishingly generous peace that offered Arafat a Palestinian state — and half of Jerusalem, a previously unimaginable Israeli concession. Arafat said no, made no counteroffer, walked away and started his terror war. Did no one tell Hagel?
(3) Iran
Hagel doesn’t just oppose military action, a problematic option with serious arguments on both sides. He actually opposed any unilateral sanctions. You can’t get more out of the mainstream than that.
He believes in diplomacy instead, as if talk alone will deter the mullahs. He even voted against designating Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization at a time when they were supplying and supporting attacks on U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Most tellingly, he has indicated that he is prepared to contain a nuclear Iran, a position diametrically opposed to Obama’s first-term, ostensibly unalterable opposition to containment. What message do you think this sends the mullahs?
And that’s the point. Hagel himself doesn’t matter. He won’t make foreign policy. Obama will run it out of the White House even more tightly than he did in the first term. Hagel’s importance is the message his nomination sends about where Obama wants to go. The lessons are being duly drawn. Iran’s official media have already cheered the choice of what they call this “anti-Israel” nominee. And they fully understand what his nomination signals regarding administration resolve about stopping them from going nuclear.
The rest of the world can see coming the Pentagon downsizing — and the inevitable, commensurate decline of U.S. power. Pacific Rim countries will have to rethink reliance on the counterbalance of the U.S. Navy and consider acquiescence to Chinese regional hegemony. Arab countries will understand that the current rapid decline of post-Kissinger U.S. dominance in the region is not cyclical but intended to become permanent.
Hagel is a man of no independent stature. He’s no George Marshall or Henry Kissinger. A fringe senator who left no trace behind, Hagel matters only because of what his nomination says about Obama.
However the Senate votes on confirmation, the signal has already been sent. Before Election Day, Obama could only whisper it to his friend Dmitry. Now, with Hagel, he’s told the world.
2a)Hagel: U.S. should give up nukes before rogue nations
By AARON KLEIN
Before dealing with the nuclear arsenals of rogue nations, the U.S. and Russia must first lead the effort by phasing out their own nuclear weapons, argued Chuck Hagel in largely unreported remarks during a 2009 Al Jazeera interview.
Al Jazeera host Riz Khan asked Hagel to address the disarmament of “rogue” states – referring to Iran and North Korea.
Hagel replied: “Let’s begin with the two nuclear powers that now are responsible for ninety-six percent of the nuclear weapons in the world. Russia and the United States have a particular obligation. We must join in some unison here to lead the rest of the world.”
Hagel spent the interview arguing for a nuclear-free world, with the U.S and Russia to take the first steps.
“That’s the point behind having American leadership as well as Russian leadership out front on eliminating nuclear weapons,” he said.
Hagel continued: “How can we preach to other countries that you can’t have nuclear weapons but we can and our allies can? There is no credibility, there’s no logic to that argument. And we have been losing on that argument.
“… I think and many people in the United States of America and Russia and in other parts of the world believe it has to go and that it is the elimination, the phasing out of nuclear weapons.”
Hagel argued that once nuclear weapons are eliminated “we can then, all leaders of all mankind, can start to concentrate more deliberately on the needs of the men and women and the children of their countries.”
“Eradicating poverty, and hunger and a sense of despair that so overtakes societies,” he added.
Hagel’s thesis was reiterated in a 2012 report that he co-authored entitled “Global Zero: U.S. Nuclear Policy Commission.”
The report called for an 80 percent reduction in the U.S. nuclear-weapons to about 900 weapons, with only half of those being deployed. It further called for the eventual phasing out of short-range nuclear weapons and the elimination of ICBMs and B-52 bombers.
The report was the initiative of the Global Zero advocacy group, which works for a nuclear-free world.
Hagel co-authored the commission with former U.S. diplomat Thomas Pickering, who reportedly previously held clandestine meetings with Hamas aiming to open U.S. dialogue with the terrorist group.
See the comments, Part 1:
Part 2:
Pickering is a member of the small board of the International Crisis Group, or ICG, one of the main proponents of the international “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine.
That doctrine is the military protocol used to justify the NATO campaign that disposed Moammar Gadhafi’s regime in Libya.
Billionaire George Soros is on the ICG’s executive board.
Hagel pushed UN wealth redistribution scheme
Hagel, meanwhile, has a long history of introducing legislation aimed at massive U.S. funding for the Third World, even pushing a de facto global tax, as WND reported.
With Obama, Hagel co-sponsored the Global Poverty Act, which would have imposed a new “tax” on the U.S. requiring the country to add 0.7 percent of the gross national product to its overall spending on humanitarian aid.
For fiscal 2009, for example, the bill would have translated into up to $98 billion in required new aid.
The bill passed reading in the Foreign Affairs Committee in July 2008 but was never scheduled for a vote on the Senate floor.
A key section of the bill would have required the U.S. president to develop and implement a comprehensive strategy to achieve the United Nations Millennium Development Goal. The U.N. project purportedly aims to reduce by one-half the proportion of people worldwide who live on less than $1 per day.
The U.N. Millennium Development Goal has demanded the imposition of international taxes as part of a stated effort of “eradicating extreme poverty, reducing child mortality rates, fighting disease epidemics such as AIDS and developing a global partnership for development.”
Investor’s Business Daily reported the Millennium goal called for a “currency transfer tax,” a “tax on the rental value of land and natural resources” and a “royalty on worldwide fossil energy projection – oil, natural gas, coal.” It also called for “fees for the commercial use of the oceans, fees for airplane use of the skies, fees for use of the electromagnetic spectrum, fees on foreign exchange transactions, and a tax on the carbon content of fuels.”
Indeed, in September 2010, a group of 60 nations, including France, Britain and Japan, proposed at the U.N. summit on the Millennium Development Goals that a tax be introduced on international currency transactions to raise funds for development aid.
WND previously reported, the Millennium Goal started off as the Millennium Promise Alliance, a nonprofit organization funded heavily by Soros.
The project’s stated aim is to end extreme poverty and hunger. It was founded by economist Jeffrey Sachs, who is also a leader at the Soros-funded Institute for New Economic Thinking, or INET.
INET holds an annual summit in the mountains of Bretton Woods, N.H., aimed openly at remaking the world economy.
Sachs served as director of the U.N.’s Millennium Goal from 2002 to 2006.
Meanwhile, Hagel has pushed other bills seeking the transfer of massive U.S. funds for the Third World.
With then-Democratic Sen. Joe Biden, Hagel sponsored the Social Investment and Economic Development for the Americas Act of 2007.
The act sought to establish a Social Investment and Economic Development Fund for the Americas to provide assistance to “reduce poverty, expand the middle class and foster increased economic opportunity in the countries of the Western Hemisphere.”
The estimated cost of the act would have been $50 million for fiscal year 2008; $75 million for fiscal year 2009; $100 million for fiscal year 2010; $125 million for fiscal year 2011; $150 million for fiscal year 2012.
Together with Biden, Hagel in 2008 introduced S. 3169, a bill to authorize appropriations for the U.S. contribution to the eleventh replenishment of the resources of the African Development Fund.
The bill sought an annual contribution of $468 million to the African fund.
With Biden again, Hagel sponsored the International Development Association Replenishment Act of 2008. The act authorized a U.S. contribution of $3.7 billion to the development association, subject to obtaining the necessary appropriations.
With research by Joshua Klein and Brenda J. Elliott
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3)We Gave Peace a Chance
By Daniel Gordis
“What was the hardest thing about making aliya?” people still ask me.
They expect, I imagine, that I’ll say something about our kids going to the army. Or about living in less than half the space we had when we lived in the States. Or, if they knew, they might imagine that I’d mention having one car for four drivers, rather than two cars for two drivers.
For me, though, it’s not that. What’s been hardest has been watching the worldview on which I was raised crash and break like a ship washed violently against a forbidding shore. I was raised in one of those (then-) classic American Jewish suburban families. Democratic voting, opposed to the Vietnam War, passionate advocates for civil rights, my parents taught their kids that most people were reasonable and that all conflicts were solvable. When it came to the Middle East, the prescription for resolution of the conflict was clear – we would give land, and we would get peace. The only question was when.
We were not the only ones who believed that, of course. A significant portion of Israeli society believed the same thing – until the Palestinian Terror War (mistakenly called the second intifada) – that is. Those four years destroyed the Israeli political Left because they washed away any illusions Israelis might have had that the Palestinian leadership was interested in a deal. And, to be fair, why should the Palestinians be interested in a deal? Their position gets stronger with each passing year. No longer pariahs, they are now the darlings of the international community. They have seen the world shift from denying the existence of a Palestinian people to giving them observer status at the UN. If you were the leader of the Palestinian Authority, would you make a deal now? Of course not. With the terms bound to get sweeter in years to come, only a fool would sign now.
Our enemies are not fools. But they are consistent. Hamas’s Mahmoud al- Zahar, in a much-quoted statement, said last year that the Jews have no place among the nations of the world and are headed for annihilation. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas declared to Egyptian TV that he would never, in a thousand years, recognize a Jewish state. Bibi gave the Bar-Ilan speech, but Abbas refused to return to the table; he still insists on the refugees’ right of return, which he knows would spell death for the idea of a Jewish state. Egypt’s Mohamed Morsi makes no bones about the fact that he would like to annul the treaty between Israel and Egypt. In videos recently posted by MEMRI (which were recorded in 2010, before he was worried about being closely watched), he openly described Jews as descendants of pigs, called Zionists “bloodsuckers” and said that Jews “must not stand on any Arab or Islamic land.They must be driven out of our countries.”
When Bashar Assad falls, will the Syrian victors be more likely to accept Israel’s existence? When Jordan follows, will the quiet on the Jordanian border persist?
ISRAELIS LIVE in a world of utter cognitive dissonance. On the one hand, our region is becoming ever more dangerous and our foes ever more honest about their desire to destroy the Jewish state. And on the other hand, much of the world insists that “land for peace” simply must work; some American Jewish leaders actually urged Israel, even in the midst of the Gaza conflict, to return to the negotiating table. It would be funny were it not so sad and so dangerous.
That is why the upcoming election, sobering though it is, may actually prove important. Israelis across the spectrum are acknowledging what they used to only whisper: the old paradigm is dying.
Naftali Bennett of the Bayit Yehudi party explicitly states that “land for peace” is dead and advocates annexing the portion of the West Bank known as Area C. Yair Shamir of Yisrael Beytenu says that regardless of Netanyahu’s Bar- Ilan speech, the Likud never endorsed a Palestinian state. Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid party’s website makes no mention of going back to the negotiating table.
Neither does the Labor Party platform.
Even Meretz recently acknowledged that Oslo is dead.
To give up hope for peace is not to choose war. Egypt’s present and Jordan’s future indicate how little is guaranteed by a treaty; the Palestinian present shows that we can have quiet even in the face of stalemate. What Israelis now want is quiet, and a future. Nothing more, nothing less. And most importantly, no more illusions.
The demise of the peace addiction is no cause for celebration; it is merely cause for relief. There is something exhausting about living a life of pretense; with the death of illusion comes the possibility of shaping a future. After a new government is formed, a genuine leader could actually lead Israelis into a “what next” conversation. Deciding what comes next, now that we sadly know that the idea of “land for peace” is dead, will not be easy. Israel could make wise decisions or terrible mistakes.
But if, as a result of this election, we begin to have a conversation about a future that we can actually have, the Jewish state will be much better off.
Israel, though, is likely to make much better choices if it is joined in its hardearned realism by forces outside the country too. Now that Israelis are getting honest, the question is whether the international community – and then American Jews – will follow suit. On the former front, there are occasional causes for optimism. The Washington Post, for example, recently acknowledged that the international community’s rhetoric has become an obstacle rather than a help. “Mr. Netanyahu’s zoning approval is hardly the ‘almost fatal blow’ to a twostate solution that UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon described… If Security Council members are really interested in progress toward Palestinian statehood, they will press Mr. Abbas to stop using settlements as an excuse for intransigence – and cool their own overheated rhetoric.”
Amen to that. But what about American Jewish leaders? They will likely find admitting that “land for peace” is dying no less difficult than anyone else. Will they listen carefully to what the Israeli electorate, across the spectrum, is saying? I hope so. Because loving someone means helping them to fashion a future that is possible, not harboring an exhausted illusion that can only yield pain and disappointment. The same is true with loving Israel.
In the midst of the cacophony and sobriety of this Israeli election, a new, mature and infinitely more realistic resignation seems to be emerging. Those who care about Israel might see it as failure, as moral weakness or as sad exhaustion. Alternatively, we could see it for what it is – the enduring Israeli desire to live, to thrive and to work not for a future that others pretend is still possible, but rather for one that we can actually build and then bequeath to our children.
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5)| What Are the 13 Tax Increases in 2013? |
Year’s Day was tough for taxpayers. Thirteen tax increases kicked in.
The deal that Congress and President Obama struck that finally—but only partially—avoided the fiscal cliff resulted in seven tax increases.
Those hikes combined with six tax increases from Obamacare that also began on New Year’s Day.
13 Tax Increases That Started January 1, 2013
Tax increases the fiscal cliff deal allowed:
1. Payroll tax: increase in the Social Security portion of the payroll tax from 4.2 percent to 6.2 percent for workers. This hits all Americans earning a paycheck—not just the “wealthy.” For example, The Wall Street Journal calculated that the “typical U.S. family earning $50,000 a year” will lose “an annual income boost of $1,000.”
2. Top marginal tax rate: increase from 35 percent to 39.6 percent for taxable incomes over $450,000 ($400,000 for single filers).
3. Phase out of personal exemptions for adjusted gross income (AGI) over $300,000 ($250,000 for single filers).
4. Phase down of itemized deductions for AGI over $300,000 ($250,000 for single filers).
5. Tax rates on investment: increase in the rate on dividends and capital gainsfrom 15 percent to 20 percent for taxable incomes over $450,000 ($400,000 for single filers).
6. Death tax: increase in the rate (on estates larger than $5 million) from 35 percent to 40 percent.
7. Taxes on business investment: expiration of full expensing—the immediatededuction of capital purchases by businesses.
Obamacare tax increases that took effect:
8. Another investment tax increase: 3.8 percent surtax on investment income for taxpayers with taxable income exceeding $250,000 ($200,000 for singles).
9. Another payroll tax hike: 0.9 percent increase in the Hospital Insurance portion of the payroll tax for incomes over $250,000 ($200,000 for single filers).
10. Medical device tax: 2.3 percent excise tax paid by medical devicemanufacturers and importers on all their sales.
11. Reducing the income tax deduction for individuals’ medical expenses.
12. Elimination of the corporate income tax deduction for expenses related to the Medicare Part D subsidy.
13. Limitation of the corporate income tax deduction for compensation thathealth insurance companies pay to their executives.
Each of these 13 tax increases will slow the economy, meaning that businesses will create fewer jobs. Fewer jobs will make it even more difficult to land a job than it already is for the more than 12 million Americans looking for work.
President Obama demanded these higher taxes. Obama’s tax increases, in Obamacare and through the fiscal cliff deal, will not curb deficits and debt, because growing spending is driving America’s budget crisis. Congress needs to immediately turn its attention to the actual cause of our deficit and debt problem: too much spending. The proper way to address this problem is through reforms to entitlement programs.
President Obama promised the American people a “balanced approach” of tax increases and spending cuts to reduce deficits and debt. He has achieved the tax increase portion of that approach. Now Congress needs to force him to follow through on the spending cuts portion.
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