Archive for the ‘Budgets’ Category

By Russell Berman and Alicia M. Cohn

President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) clashed during a White House meeting on Wednesday, with the Speaker telling the president that he was “not going to allow a debt-ceiling increase without doing something serious about the debt,” Boehner’s office said.

The president convened the meeting of the bipartisan congressional leadership to discuss his “to-do list” for Congress, but an aide to the Speaker said the bulk of the meeting was spent on other issues, including a pile-up of expiring tax provisions and the next increase in the federal debt limit.

According to a readout of the meeting from the Speaker’s office, Boehner asked Obama if he was proposing that Congress increase the debt limit without corresponding spending cuts. The president replied, “Yes,” the Boehner aide said. At that point, Boehner told Obama, “As long as I’m around here, I’m not going to allow a debt-ceiling increase without doing something serious about the debt.”
Shortly after the meeting, White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters that the president warned the leadership that he would not allow a repeat of last August’s debt-ceiling “debacle,” which led to a downgrade in the U.S. credit rating.

“You have to ask the Speaker of the House whether or not he intends or he believes that it is the right thing to do for the American people or the American economy to play chicken with the full faith and credit of the United States of America,” Carney said at his daily press briefing.

The meeting came one day after Boehner delivered a speech to a fiscal summit in Washington in which he said he would once again demand spending cuts and reforms that exceed any increase in the nation’s borrowing limit that Congress approves. Boehner also called out Obama in that address for showing a lack of “courage” in last summer’s debt talks.

Before Wednesday’s meeting, Boehner told reporters he planned to ask in the meeting, “Where’s the president’s plan to tackle our looming debt crisis?”

“He knows exactly where it is,” Carney shot back in the briefing, pointing to Obama’s budget proposal.

“The right thing to do to get something done is to agree that you’re not going to get everything you wanted,” Carney said, warning Republicans that their “absolute intransigence” over striking a deal on the debt ceiling would not be popular with their constituents.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) were also scheduled to attend the White House meeting.

Carney described the tone of the meeting, where the president greeted the congressional leaders with hoagies from a D.C. sandwich shop, as congenial.
“My sense was the tone was congenial, the discussion was productive, the sandwiches were delicious,” Carney said.

He downplayed that the back-and-forth centered on Boehner’s agenda, saying numerous items were raised in what was a “healthy and positive discussion” between the president and congressional leaders.

The readout from Boehner’s office suggested a more confrontational meeting. It said the Speaker also pressed the president to approve the complete Keystone oil sands pipeline and to encourage Attorney General Eric Holder to provide information that congressional investigators have sought on the “Fast and Furious” gun-running operation.

It concluded with the note that the Speaker “was very pleased with the sandwiches served.”

President Obama’s budget suffered a second embarrassing defeat Wednesday, when senators voted 99-0 to reject it.

Coupled with the House’s rejection in March, 414-0, that means Mr. Obama’s budget has failed to win a single vote in support this year.

Republicans forced the vote by offering the president’s plan on the Senate floor.

Democrats disputed that it was actually the president’s plan, arguing that the slim amendment didn’t actually match Mr. Obama’s budget document, which ran thousands of pages. But Republicans said they used all of the president’s numbers in the proposal, so it faithfully represented his plan.

Sen. Jeff Sessions, Alabama Republican, even challenged Democrats to point out any errors in the numbers and he would correct them — a challenge no Democrats took up.

“A stunning development for the president of the United States in his fourth year in office,” Mr. Sessions said of the unanimous opposition.

The White House has held its proposal out as a “balanced approach” to beginning to rein in deficits. It calls for tax increases to begin to offset higher spending, and would begin to level off debt as a percentage of the economy by 2022. It would produce $6.4 trillion in new deficits over that time.

By contrast the chief Republican alternative from the House GOP would notch just $3.1 trillion in deficits, and three Senate Republican alternatives would all come in below $2 trillion.

The Senate is holding votes Wednesday on Mr. Obama’s budget, the House GOP’s budget and the three Senate Republican alternatives. None was expected to gain the 50 votes needed to pass the chamber.

NEARLY 300 NEVER DRIVEN PRIUS’S FOUND

What would you do if you stumbled into a secret warehouse full of brand new cars? Well, step into the shoes of Miami-Dade County officials to find out.

A fleet of 298 never-before-used cars, most of which are Priuses, were recently discovered by Miami-Wade officials, after having learned of them though a Spanish language newspaper. Most of the car warranties have expired with little to no miles on the odometer. The cars were purchased in 2006 and cost the taxpayers $4 million.

The county, aware of the political ramifications, immediately rushed 123 of the cars into circulation.

The Toyota warranty insures some hybrid parts for up to eight years or 100,000 miles. That doesn’t do much good when you consider the cars were parked in a hot and humid car lot, rusting away. The autoblog.com suggests there could be unknown damage done to the unused hybrid powertrain.

So how does one just simply lose 298 brand new cars?

An investigation is being done to determine exactly how this taxpayer funded debacle happened. It is believed that the cars got “lost” during the recall and eventual ousting of then Mayor Carlos Alvarez. Not surprisingly, he was removed from office after voters “felt, among other reasons, that he had been behind multiple acts of misappropriation of funds.”

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/04/26/miami%e2%80%99s-vice-nearly-300-never-driven-priuses-found/#ixzz1tGxvJbIPRIUS

by Amanda Carey
A new study on the United States Postal Service shows the mail network is having a hard time keeping up with slimming down as more people turn to texting and email.
Released by the Government Accountability Office, the April study highlights the amount of excess in the mail system.
For example, the GAO says the Postal Service has 461 processing centers, but 223 of those centers are no longer needed.
It operates 8,000 mail processing machines, but the amount of mail has dwindled so much that they no longer need 3,000 of those machines.
Of the 154,000 postal employees, up to 35,000 could be let go because there is not enough mail for them to handle, the study concluded.
This excess is a result of the decline in areas such as First-Class mail volume and automation improvements in mail sorting.
The USPS has saved $2.4 billion since 2006 after starting their initiative to eliminate excess facilities and operations. However, in the same year the gap between USPS expenses and revenues has grown. It was predicted in February that net losses will reach $21 billion by 2016 despite actions to reduce excess cost.
The December 2011 proposal by the USPS to change overnight delivery service and move to a five day delivery schedule is currently being reviewed by the Postal Regulatory Commission. The USPS hopes to save $22.5 billion by 2016 if the proposal is approved.
The report stated the USPS had no comment on the findings.
Half of U.S. Mail Facilities No Longer Needed, Study Says

BY KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ

Paul Ryan has been taking fire on the topic of the morality of his budget, including from some Catholic bishops. He ably discusses how his budget tries to apply the principles of subsidiarity and solidarity, as he did in an exchange of letters with now-Cardinal Dolan last year.

“One in six Americans are in poverty today,” Congressman Ryan told Raymond Arroyo on EWTN’s The World Over in an interview Thursday, “yet we’ve thrown so much money at these programs. Why don’t we fix these programs so that they actually work to break the cycle of poverty?”

“If we keep growing government in debt,” Ryan continued, “we will crowd out the civil society — those charities, those churches, those institutions in our local communities that do the most to actually have a human touch to help people in need. That’s what we want to empower. That’s what we want to improve on.”

Of course, the current administration seeks to even more directly crowd out some of those charities and churches, by telling them they have to violate their consciences in order to serve people.

Which is a Ryan point too: These budgetary debates “are matters for prudential judgment. . . . People of good will can have differences of opinion on these kinds of issues — there’s plenty of room to disagree about how to advance the common good, advance these principles.” That’s what the laity in public life are called to do. Ryan is not presenting himself as the poster boy for Catholic social thought, but as a Catholic in public life taking Catholic moral principles seriously. “I cannot claim exclusive justification for my political philosophy and point of view on economics using the social magisterium any more than a liberal can for theirs,” Ryan said. “We have difference of opinions about how to use these principles to the problems and policies of the day. It’s not as if we are talking about violating a core principle like life or religious liberty here.”

That last point is an important one. While these criticisms are not new, it’s hard not to see some of the attacks on the Ryan budget as a distraction from the religious-liberty battle, to make sure the bishops’ conference doesn’t look like “the Tea Party at prayer,” as one columnist coined a convenient phrase earlier this year. And it’s hard not to miss that the most prominent Catholic politician taking aim at Ryan, Connecticut congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, is a regular at abortion-rights rallies who voted against prohibiting partial-birth abortion; given that, her accusation that people will be “eviscerated” by his budget suggests a certain moral blindness.
The Arroyo interview is worth watching:The Arroyo interview is worth watching:

Ryan was also on Catholic radio this week talking budget and morality. And expect more next week from Representative Ryan on these moral matters when he speaks at Georgetown.

Defying a White House veto threat, the House on Wednesday passed legislation that extends transportation program funding through September and mandates construction of a controversial oil pipeline from Canada to the Gulf Coast.

All but 14 Republicans, with support from 69 Democrats, voted 293-127 for legislation that falls far short of Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) earlier plan to move a sweeping five-year, $260 billion package.

But Boehner’s retreat serves two crucial tactical and political purposes for the Speaker. It sets up talks with the Senate on the highway bill and keeps the Keystone pipeline — a centerpiece of GOP attacks on White House energy policy — front and center ahead of the November election.

The chairman of the Senate Budget Committee said Sunday that the two parties probably will not be able to agree on a budget plan before the election, even as his panel prepares to hammer out a fiscal 2013 blueprint.

Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., speaking on “Fox News Sunday,” made clear that he is at peace with Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid’s position that the chamber does not need to bring a budget to the floor.

“I think Senator Reid has made the judgment, probably quite correctly, that there is very little chance that we’re going to get the two sides together before the election,” Conrad said.

The committee chairman said Congress can simply defer to the agreement from last summer’s debt-ceiling debate, which set spending caps for 2013 and beyond.

House Republicans, though, are trying to lower those caps further and make sweeping changes to federal entitlement programs with the budget that passed out of their chamber late last month.

by Daniel Halper

The latest chart from the Republican side of the Senate Budget Committee, showing that under President Obama’s budget plan, debt would be $73,000 per American in 2022:

Late News – The House has defeated that Obama Budget 414 to 0 – not one democrat voted for Obama

By a margin of 414-0, the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly voted down an ‘alternate budget proposal based’ on President Obama’s 2013 budget. This speaks volumns to the disastrous tax hiking and deficit increasing budget President Obama has put forward. Interestingly enough, and somewhat shocking, Obama’s Cheerleader-in-Chief, DNC Chair/Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz was present for the vote, and voted a resounding ‘Nay’ to the measure.

Senate Tea Party Caucus members have put together a plan to balance the budget in five years, which they presented Thursday. The proposal, “A Platform to Revitalize America,” would cut government spending by almost $11 trillion from President Barack Obama’s budget, The Hill reports. A $111 billion surplus would result by fiscal year 2017 under the plan.

The plan’s authors weren’t afraid to go after sacred cows, urging a restructuring of Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security to cut costs. They want to shift Medicare to a premium support plan that would offer seniors the same healthcare plan that congressmen receive. That change would save an estimated $1 trillion over 10 years, the plan says, according to The Hill.

The tea partyers realize that their package won’t be passed by a Democratic-controlled Senate. “The whole point here is to show we can reasonably balance the budget within a five-year period,” Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., one of the proposal’s sponsors, told The Hill.

“This idea that we have to look 30 years out to balance the budget is not only unnecessary, but it’s improbable. We cannot continue to spend at our current rate for 10 more years, much less 20 or 30 more years. This is an urgent matter.”

Other key backers of the plan include Sens. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Mike Lee, R-Utah.

Read more on Newsmax.com: Senate Tea Party Caucus Wants $11 Trillion in Budget Cuts
Important: Do You Support Pres. Obama’s Re-Election? Vote Here Now!

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on the Obama Administration’s definition of leadership.

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner spar over debt. Transcript below:

Ryan: Here’s the point, if you’ll allow me. This is your time, so we’ll just take a long time. Here’s the point. Leaders are supposed to fix problems. We have a $99.4 trillion unfunded liability. Our government is making promises to Americans that it has no way of accounting for them. And so you’re saying yeah, we’re stabilizing it but we’re not fixing it in the long run. That means we’re just going to keep lying to people. We’re going to keep all these empty promises going.

And so what we’re saying is, in order to avert a debt crisis — you’re the Treasury Secretary — if we can’t make good on our bonds in the future, who is going to invest in our country? We do not want to have a debt crisis. And so it comes down to confidence and trajectory. Do we have confidence that we’re getting our fiscal situation under control, that we’re preventing the debt from getting at these catastrophic levels?

If we go back to the preceding chart, number 13, you’re showing that you have no plan to get this debt under control. You’re saying we’ll stabilize it but then it’s just going to shoot back up. So my argument is, that’s Europe. That is bringing us toward a European debt crisis because we’re showing the world, the credit market’s future seniors — people who are organizing their lives around the promises that are being made to them today — that we don’t have a plan to make good on this.

Geithner: Mr. Chairman, as I said, maybe we’re not disagreeing in a sense. I made it absolutely clear that what our budget does is get our deficit down to a sustainable path over the budget window.

Ryan: And then they take back off.

Geithner: Why do they take off again? Why do they do that?

Ryan: Because we have 10,000 people retiring everyday and healthcare costs going up.

Geithner: That’s right. We have millions of Americans retiring everyday, and that will drive substantial further rise in the growth of healthcare costs. We’re not coming before you to say we have a definitive solution to our long-term problem. What we do know is we don’t like yours.Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner: We have millions of Americans retiring everyday and that will drive substantial growth rates for healthcare costs. We’re not becoming before you to say we have a definitive solution to our long-term problem. What we do know is that we don’t like yours

The True Budget Picture
This is genius! Lesson # 1:

* U.S. Tax revenue: $ 2,170,000,000,000
* Fed budget: $ 3,820,000,000,000
* Amount borrowed: $ 1,650,000,000,000
* National debt: $14,271,000,000,000
* Recent budget cuts: $ 38,500,000,000

Let’s now remove 8 zeros and pretend it’s a household budget:

* Annual family income: $ 21,700
* Money the family spent: $ 38,200
* New debt on the credit card: $ 16,500
* Outstanding balance on the credit card: $142,710
* Total budget cuts: $ 385

Got It ?????

I’ve been called a fascist by communists and a communist by fascists.  I’ve been called a pagan by Christians and a Christian by pagans.  I’ve been called an optimist by pessimists and a pessimist by optimists.  All of us have been labeled by others.  We’ve all been called this by that and that by this, we’ve all had people try to insult us by how they refer to us, but when people insult our intelligence they are usually showing their ignorance. 

The actions of the second-stringers, stand-ins, and understudies from the theater of the absurd who now pass for leadership in our Republic not only insult our intelligence, they act as if the American people have the IQ of a potted plant and the attention span of someone riddled with ADD.  There is one good thing about people who insult our intelligence; they’re probably misunderestimating the true level of our understanding. 

Our President tells us that killing the Keystone Pipeline is no big deal.  Instead he tells us “However many jobs might be generated by a Keystone pipeline, they’re going to be a lot fewer than the jobs that are created by extending the payroll tax cut and extending unemployment insurance.”  Making decisions that kill the opportunity to create real jobs is offset by the jobs created by extending payments made to those who are unemployed.  That doesn’t make sense to anyone outside the beltway 

At the same time this oxymoronic newspeak pours from the White House, the valiant leaders of the loyal opposition in the House vote to deny our spendaholic President another trillion all the while knowing that they already gave him the money last year.   

You see, according to the debt increase law which was supported by all of the Republican Congressional leaders, the debt limit is automatically raised fifteen days after the president officially notifies lawmakers that the government is close to the current $15.2 trillion cap.  That is unless Congress votes to deny the borrowing increase and the President signs the bill.  This is where the Republican leaders add insult to injury by staging a symbolic vote to hold the line against an ever rising debt they already approved.  Their powerless measure passed the House with ease. Yet they knew all along it was DOA in Harry Reid’s Democratic-controlled Senate.  And even if by some miracle it was voted on and passed by the Senate, President Obama would veto it guaranteeing the increase will go through as planed and the debt will grow by another 1.2 trillion. 

While Mr. Obama may work day and night to kill projects that might actually provide some work for the rest of us he has no problem investing billions of our dollars in green energy boondoggles that turn a profit for his donors and cronies.  Then when the flimflams are about to be exposed as the money pits they are, on the eve of an election, the Energy Department which turned a blind eye to the initial foolish investment suddenly becomes involved and the announcement is delayed until after the marks, I mean voters, have cast their ballots. 

In foreign policy our Commander-in-Chief announced the date for our withdrawal from Afghanistan at the same time he announced the same type of surge he was against in Iraq.  Now he decides it’s time to negotiate with the Taliban.  Are we supposed to believe these highly dedicated, highly motivated, and religiously fanatic battle hardened warriors will rush to make concessions?  Won’t they instead hang tough, demand concessions, and pick up the pieces as our leader leads our valiant, though under-cut warriors, for the door?  Does anyone doubt that Karzai, our creature in Kabul, will be on a jumbo jet filled with American dollars before our last soldier gets home?  All this is presented as a rational settlement instead of an abject surrender and jaded political maneuver. 

There’s no inflation.  At least that’s what the Federal Government wants us to believe.   Everyone who goes to the supermarket buys gas or pays to heat their home can evaluate the reliability of that piece of government information for themselves. 

How could anyone ever see through any of this unless of course they have at least the IQ of that potted plant mentioned earlier?  This may be insulting, it may show us what the perpetually re-elected think of their constituents, but it also shows that they’re giving us an advantage.  We’re smarter than they think we are so we should be able to blind side them with organizational skills and motivational abilities far beyond what they’ll expect. 

They are counting the Tea Party out because we aren’t holding mass rallies.  They believe they’ve won the organizational battle because they were able to mobilize the occupy everywhere crowd to gather for a street party and pollute some major cities.  They believe that since the conservative vote is currently split in the GOP they will manage to nominate the next Bob Dole/John McCain moderate to play the part of the Washington Generals in a Harlem Globe Trotter game: good but never quite good enough.  In 2012 they see the Republicans, like the Washington Generals, there to provide a platform for the chosen winner to shine.   

The parties of power treat us with such disdain it’s obvious they believe we’re the sheep they work so hard to make us.  They believe Americans have been dumbed down enough and fattened with enough entitlements that we’ll barely bah bah bah as they lead us to the shearing shed one more time.  Our Progressive leaders in both parties see that election is the one that counts.  This is the election that will either drive us over the cliff into the shabby abyss of collectivist conformity or the one that will give us one last opportunity to return to limited government, personal liberty, and economic freedom.  

We may not be demonstrating in the streets.  We may not be organizing boycotts.  We may not be united behind one candidate.  However, we are awake.  We are educating ourselves.  We are determined that this great experiment in human freedom shall not perish from the face of the earth.  Vote for the Constitution.  Vote for personal liberty.  Vote for economic freedom.  If we all do what we can do we will accomplish what must be done.  We will keep the faith.  We will keep the peace.  We shall overcome! 

Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion for Southside Virginia Community College.  He is the author of the History of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2012 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com  Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens

By Alexander Bolton

Top White House officials are warning liberal and labor leaders to brace themselves for President Obama’s budget proposal.

Gene Sperling, director of the National Economic Council, sought in meetings last week to lift the left’s gloom about Washington’s crackdown on spending by promising that the president this year will focus on job creation rather than deficit cutting.

Obama staffers sought to present their budget plan as a glass half full. According to sources familiar with the briefings, they promised that the president will focus on jobs and the economy, instead of deficit-cutting, which dominated last year’s debate on Capitol Hill.

Obama has signaled in recent weeks that he plans to run a populist reelection campaign. He will need to keep liberal activist and labor groups — important parts of the Democratic base — energized for his strategy to work.

In his first three years, Obama had a free hand to suggest spending levels for government programs in his annual budget blueprint. But that is not the case this year because the administration is constrained by the budget deal reached in August to raise the debt limit.

He must stick to the $1.047 trillion spending cap he agreed to with GOP leaders, which means he will call for less discretionary spending than he did last year.By Alexander Bolton – 01/17/12 05:30 AM ET
Top White House officials are warning liberal and labor leaders to brace themselves for President Obama’s budget proposal.

Gene Sperling, director of the National Economic Council, sought in meetings last week to lift the left’s gloom about Washington’s crackdown on spending by promising that the president this year will focus on job creation rather than deficit cutting.

Obama staffers sought to present their budget plan as a glass half full. According to sources familiar with the briefings, they promised that the president will focus on jobs and the economy, instead of deficit-cutting, which dominated last year’s debate on Capitol Hill.
Obama has signaled in recent weeks that he plans to run a populist reelection campaign. He will need to keep liberal activist and labor groups — important parts of the Democratic base — energized for his strategy to work.

In his first three years, Obama had a free hand to suggest spending levels for government programs in his annual budget blueprint. But that is not the case this year because the administration is constrained by the budget deal reached in August to raise the debt limit.

He must stick to the $1.047 trillion spending cap he agreed to with GOP leaders, which means he will call for less discretionary spending than he did last year.

Senior administration officials fear a backlash from the left and are trying to prepare their allies to expect a disappointing budget, sources say.

“A senior White House person said we weren’t going to be happy with the budget, but they’re doing the best they can” given the spending caps set by the 2011 Budget Control Act, said one source.

Obama took fire from the left flank of his party last year after he unveiled his budget proposal.

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), including Illinois Democratic Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., ripped Obama’s budget proposal. CBC Chairman Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.) said at the time, “We cannot win the future by leaving our most vulnerable behind.”

Democrats accused the president of endangering the lives of low-income people.

“It would have real-world consequences for some pretty powerless people,” Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) said. “People would literally freeze.”

This year, it appears the administration is giving Democrats a heads-up, which goes a long way in politics.

Administration officials have kept the details of the budget largely secret. One of the few specifics to leak is a 0.5 percent pay increase for federal workers. The budget will be submitted to Congress early next month.

Senior administration officials have reassured union leaders that the Department of Labor, including the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Mine Safety Health Administration, will be spared from the toughest cuts. The administration will also seek to preserve funding for the National Labor Relations Board, according to sources familiar with the discussions.

“I know there have been a variety of meetings and discussions with White House folks on the budget,” said Mike Lux, a Democratic strategist who advises liberal and labor groups. “I know from my perspective of working at the White House in the Clinton years, you have to prepare people when there’s tough news. It’s much better to have these conversations in advance.

“The White House has been doing a good job of briefing allies and prepping people,” he said.

A White House spokeswoman declined to comment on the meetings.

Administration officials told allied interest groups that Obama will make strong populist arguments to defend his agenda and bid for reelection, striking the same tone he did during a December speech in Kansas.

Speaking in Osawatomie, Kan., on Dec. 6, Obama vowed to even the playing field for economic elites and middle-class workers.

“This country succeeds when everyone gets a fair shot, when everyone does their fair share and when everyone plays by the same rules,” Obama said.

Liberal groups are pleased that the president has indicated he will shift away from the discussion of deficits and spending cuts that last year overshadowed the jobs agenda they preferred to emphasize.

“We’ve seen the pendulum go back and forth between deficits and jobs,” said one liberal advocate. “We want the president to focus on jobs and economic security and went away feeling confident the president will do that.”

Still, there remain differences between the administration and its allies on important policy questions.

Some on the left have pushed vigorously for a financial transactions tax on the trade of stocks, bonds and derivatives. Liberal Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) have introduced such a proposal in Congress.

Sperling and other senior administration officials have not embraced the financial transactions tax, which proponents say would dampen excessive speculation.

Administration officials worry Republicans could frame the proposal as a tax on 401(k) retirement funds, a potentially damaging election-year charge.

Obama’s senior advisers appear more inclined to push a tax on financial institutions, such as was included in the president’s fiscal 2012 budget proposal to recoup the costs of the 2008-2009 Wall Street bailout

We all know that trying the same thing over and over expecting different results is a popular definition of insanity.  And we also know that putting the paste back in the tube is a popular illustration of an impossible task.  

I tested the first truism mentioned above as a young man whose motto should have been, “I’ll never do that again – I just did it again.”  For some reason just as not going to school didn’t lead to improved job prospects attempting to spend every day at a party didn’t lead to happiness.  Over and over I valiantly kept trying to rock-n-roll all night and party every day.  I developed a patented hang-over cure. Stay drunk.  I figured it wasn’t the drinking that caused the hangover it was the getting sober, and I tried my best to avoid hangovers from the time I was fifteen until I was thirty.   Then at thirty I had my Come-to-Jesus moment, meaning I literally came to Jesus.  With His guidance I found another path which included school and working which yielded a different result including a soul mate for a wife, a son to be proud of, and a wonderful life. 

Turning to the second truism mentioned above, as a person who actually tried putting toothpaste back in the tube I can attest that it deserves its symbolism as impossible.  At best you can manage to get a little back in the tube.  But the process is messy, frustrating and in the end so fruitless it’s laughable.  All of which brings me to my question for the week.  Can those of us who believe in limited government, personal liberty, and economic freedom walk America back from the cliff to which the embrace of Progressive leadership and its collectivist mindset, one hundred years of reinforcement by indoctrination, and an addiction to entitlements have led us? 

How best to describe the problem we face?  Often a good example will expose a basic problem better than any technical explanation.  Look at the debate about the payroll tax extension.   Both wings of the Party of Power continue the baseline inspired fiction that you have to pay for tax cuts when all they ever do is allow those who earn money to keep it.  The Democratic wing, always seeking to divide America into interest groups, contends the only way to pay for tax cuts on one segment of the population is to tax someone else.  Therefore they propose to pay for the extension by taxing millionaires and billionaires.   The Republican Progressives propose cutting federal salaries to pay for it.  An approach which sounds as it if should appeal to those seeking to re-limit the central government.    

Looking at the first solution, taxing the rich to give to the un-rich is merely more of the same spreading-the-wealth-around income distribution socialism that is the hallmark of the Democratic wing of the Party of Power. 

Turning to the second solution it sounds good while in reality it is more baseline thinking where cutting a proposed increase is a cut even though the budget still increases. Instead of cutting salaries why not cut some of the tens of thousands of new bureaucrats which have been added in just the last two years?   Merely cutting the salaries of the hordes of federal drones is like re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.  It may look better but ultimately it really won’t help keep the ship of state afloat.  This is typical of the governance proposed by the big government Republican wing of the Party of Power.  It may look good, it may even sound good, but when you peel back the onion the deficits continue and the debt goes up. 

Peering through the fog generated by the media amplified rhetoric the entire debate is bogus because the original payroll tax cut was a trap to begin with.  It put money in the pocket of every person who receives a pay check by letting each of us keep a little more of the money we earned.  But the payroll tax is what supports the current recipients of Social Security.  There is no Trust Fund.  That is a fiction, since the money goes directly to the general funds to be replaced by IOUs that aren’t worth the paper they would be printed on if they weren’t electronic.  If this money is taken away Social Security loses even the illusion of a pay-as-you-go system and is starkly revealed for what it is: welfare for seniors.  

It is time for my generation to admit we have been ripped off for every cent ever extorted from us for Social Security, and the only way we can receive benefits is to have the government extort it from our children and give it to us.  By decreasing the plunder taken from the kids and instead taking it from the perennial enemies of the Democratic Progressives, the most productive, Social Security is revealed for what it is: just another welfare entitlement.  And merely lowering the salary of a bloated bureaucracy perpetuates the growth and legitimizes the recent exponential expansion of a centrally-planned government that has run amuck.  It also makes social security visible as the Ponzi scheme it has always been. 

Europe is exploding because the bill is coming due for countries that have played this social welfare shell game for generations.  Austerity is the word that is igniting riots and strikes from Athens to London.  Faced with the possibility that they won’t be able to retire at fifty with full pensions, generous benefits, and guaranteed vacations people are throwing fire bombs and toppling governments.   

Western Civilization was born in the Mideast, was launched as a world embracing power from Europe, and culminated in the great experiment of America.  Today Western Civilization teeters on the edge of destruction.  Our Federal Reserve is pumping out funny money faster than anyone can count trying to prop up the European launching pad as we abandon our occupation of the Middle Eastern cradle and fear for the continued vitality of its American summit.  Western Civilization burns while our Party of Power plays the fiat financial fiddle.  Will we continue the shadow dance pretending we have a limited government or will we muster up the courage to tell our media enhance perpetually re-elected puppet master that he who pays the piper calls the tune? 

Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion for Southside Virginia Community College.  He is the author of the History of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2011 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com  Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens

Like a sleight-of-hand-artist on a busy street with a briefcase that turns into a table, three walnuts shells and a pea the perpetually re-elected and their town criers in the Corporations Once Known as the mainstream Media appear to be perennially able to fool the perpetually distracted by pulling a metaphorical quarter out of their ear. 

I know a professional revolutionary.  We grew up together.  He has correctly diagnosed America’s disease as a corporate cult in a symbiotic relationship with a corrupt government.  He deftly outlines the general theory, although not the specifics of how crony capitalists and political hacks have crafted a system wherein money laundering has become national policy.  The political hacks fleece the sheeple through taxes and inflation.  They give the money to their accomplices in the flimflam corporations who funnel huge chunks of cash back to the hacks for re-election.  Every few years the sheeple rouse themselves out of their media induced coma long enough to be herded to the polls to vote for more of the same. 

Yes, the professional revolutionaries and their government educated followers have correctly diagnosed the disease.  However, they have prescribed poison instead of medicine.  Their answer to the curse of Corporatism’s National Socialism is less nationalism and more socialism.  Since corporatism has built a coffin our body politic cannot seem to claw its way out of, he prescribes cutting out the crony capitalists and giving the whole operation to the political hacks. In other words if the black shirts have ruined the country let’s try the reds.  That would be as transparent as fighting the most horrendous war in human history because Hitler attempted to pull Poland into his freedom smothering embrace and then giving Poland to Stalin. 

Headlines and talking heads scream for days, “The Super Committee cannot fail or the sky will fall!”  Endless hours in the 24 hour news cycle are devoted to debating, “Will the Super Committee succeed or will they fail?”  Meanwhile most of the sheeple are consumed with concern about the NBA strike, a celebrity drowning thirty years ago, or was Kim’s wedding a set-up all along.  Then we’re told he Super Committee failed accompanied by endless squabbling about who caused the failure. 

It is all nothing but Kabuki, a form of Japanese drama based on popular legends and characterized by elaborate costumes, stylized acting.

Remember how the Super Committee became so super?  It didn’t come from another planet with a red sun and lower gravity.  It was instead the Frankenstein created as the cover for another rise in the debt ceiling.  The Tea Party had just made a Herculean effort in the 2010 elections and achieved an historical sweep of the House of Representatives.  Over sixty newly minted congressmen owed their seat at the table of plenty to the greatest grassroots movement America has seen in generations.  They had campaigned on changing the culture of corruption in Washington, stopping the deficit spending, severing the cord to the crony capitalists, and paying down the national debt. 

Before they could even arrive the Republican leadership colluded with a recently humiliated inexperienced president and a recently repudiated Democratic leadership to extend the Bush tax cuts in exchange for more spending in the lamest of all lame duck sessions.  Then as soon as the fresh troops arrive they raise their hands in salute to the same old Republican leadership, renew the patriot Act, pass a series of continuing resolutions allowing the drunken sailors to continue spending, and then vote to raise the debt ceiling by another few trillions. Oh but they fought!  They wrangled and they refused to give the Spender in Chief more trillions of our great grandchildren’s money unless he agreed to a Super Committee backed up by automatic cuts and automatic tax increases in future deficits totaling trillions of dollars in cuts.  This was drama worthy of As Washington Turns.  If it was joke it wouldn’t be funny. 

To begin with the Super Committee wasn’t filled with deficit hawks and balanced budget advocates.  It was instead filled with the most partisan members from both wings of the Party of Power guaranteeing there would be no settlement.  Obviously the plan all along was for the automatic cuts and taxes to come into play, over the next ten years.  In other words the spendaholics of this Congress are going to place limits on the credit card of following Congresses who have the ability to vote away the limits any time they want to.  How could that ever fail? 

The smoke and mirrors of political theater is meant to hide the fact that all they’re arguing over is reducing the yearly deficits way off there in the future somewhere.  All they ever discussed was slowing the rate of increase.  Even if the most draconian plan so far introduced by the young firebrand Representative Ryan had been adopted the budget still went up every year, and the national debt still grew every year.  And though there would have been more and more spending with no end to the red ink in sight Ryan was portrayed as pushing Grandma off the cliff and a large percentage of the population believes it.  This is baseline budgeting wherein the proposed budget becomes the base for what is cut.  In other words our leaders can cut all day and the spending still goes up. 

It is time to tell our hypnotized fellow citizens to take the blinders off.  Wake up!  The house is on fire and the firemen are pouring gasoline on the flames. 

The system is broke and it is becoming very clear that all the king’s horses and all the king’s men can’t put this thing together again.  The spending goes on every second of every minute of every hour of every day.  The tax code that ostensibly is designed to pay for it all is in reality a bewildering maze meant to trap those unsophisticated enough not to hire an army of tax lawyers and accountants while legally recognized persons such as GE file 57,000 page tax returns on fourteen billion in profits and pays no tax at all. 

While the hemorrhaging of our descendants wealth goes on night and day we are being set up for the next battle to raise the debt ceiling, the balanced budget amendment.  Even if this long threatened turkey could finally make it to the block what good is a balanced budget amendment?  The spendthrifts we call a government can still spend all they want as long as they raise enough money to pretend to cover at least the on budget portion of the swag.  And where do you think they will raise the money?  They will either raise taxes or print money.  Either way we pay so they can play. What we need is a spending amendment that limits spending to a prescribed percentage of the GDP.

At one time the best tongue in cheek advice for coping with the policies of the convention of confidence men masquerading as the American government was get a government job and study Spanish.  Now the situation has descended even beyond the black humor of that cynical joke.  Today the best advice may be to hunker in the bunker, store food, and learn enough History so you can tell those who come after what America used to be. 

Last year I thought it was time to take the gloves off and tell America the emperor has no clothes.  To do so this advocate of the Constitution and limited government wrote The Constitution Failed.  A book which places current events in a constitutional and historical context proving that while our nation was founded upon a document meant to limit government we now stand face-to-face with an unlimited government.  I believed it was time to sound the alarm.  I thought people were ready to admit the terrible truth; our government does little more than tip its hat to the Constitution while doing whatever it wants.   The first step in solving any problem is admitting you have a problem.  The second is recognizing what that problem is.  My hope is that The Constitution Failed will help people recognize and identify the problem so that we the people can reach a solution.

As one who has been pounding this drum and singing this song for fifty years all I can do is wonder, will the drowning Lady Liberty finally see the life preserver as she goes down for the last time?  Will she finally grasp the Constitution as the only thing that has ever guaranteed limited government, personal freedom and economic opportunity in America?  Will she remember her past and save her future or will she sink beneath the waves of government regulation and drown in the red tape of an all-powerful central government? 

I wrote The Constitution Failed to make a difference.  I wrote it because I see my beloved country walking off a cliff into the abyss of socialism and I am compelled to throw out the life line. 

If you want to read The Constitution Failed send me an email with your address and I will send you a complimentary copy.  I want to see the re-birth of limited government.  I want to see personal liberty and economic freedom continue to exist in this: the last best hope of mankind.   And I’m ready to put my money where my heart is, limited government, personal liberty and economic freedom.

Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion for Southside Virginia Community College.  He is the author of the History of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2011 Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com  Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens