Tag Archive: deficit


Broken promises: Obama fails to halve the deficit in his new budget

Filed under: Posts — Leave a comment
February 11, 2012

Obama's fiscal responsibility in a nutshell. Source: USDebtClock.org

Last night, the White House officially released President Obama’s budget proposal for the year. Sadly, under this plan, excessive spending will continue, and the wealthy will be forced to bear the costs of our government’s voracious appetite for tax dollars. Despite his pledge to soak the rich, President Obama has failed to cut the deficit and has thus broken his promise with the American people. Back in 2009, our leader promised to “halve the deficit” by the end of his presidency. However, under the president’s proposal, the deficit will actually grow from that of the 2011 budget.

President Obama has failed in two main ways. Firstly, he has proven utterly incapable at cutting spending. The president’s proposal cuts $360 billion from entitlements but does so over the course of ten years. Once President Obama is reelected, he could easily pass a second budget that eliminates or reverses these cuts altogether, as a one-year budget plan has no real authority over an entire decade of spending. Beyond this, however, no real cuts exist in his plan. More government subsidies and massive “shovel-ready” infrastructure programs eat up the savings from crippling defense cuts and the end of the Afghanistan War.

President Obama has also failed to create jobs. In spite of his growth of government entitlements and infrastructure projects, the number of people not participating in the labor force has skyrocketed, and officially measured unemployment numbers have only slightly decreased. To top this off, Obama’s stimulus programs and government bailouts have only made the situation worse for the industries they were intended to save. The economy is now sicker than ever, yet President Obama keeps prescribing the wrong drug.

I think that President Obama should try a new approach. He should slash entitlement spending and preserve the integrity of our nation’s defense by keeping defense cuts to a minimum. Along with reiterating his promise to halve the deficit, President Obama should promise to cut taxes across the board and to support a balanced budget amendment. Unfortunately, our liberally-minded president will never do any of this, but we always have 2012 to look forward to.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
Comment

The campaign implications of the State of the Union

Filed under: Posts — Leave a comment
January 26, 2012

President Obama says that without his leadership, the economy and the state of our country could be worse. However, it is an argument that won't fly.

President Obama’s State of the Union address Tuesday night was more of a preview of his new campaign strategy than an actual review of our current situation as a nation. Our growing deficit and our debt crisis, the two elephants in the room, were barely mentioned by President Obama, who preferred to spend his time bemoaning the success of wealthy Americans and pitting rich against poor. Fortunately, if these items are any indication of President Obama’s reelection strategy, Republicans should defeat him easily.

President Obama’s new strategy seems to depend on two central tactics: the first being to wage war against the rich in America and the second being to marginalize the problems that his administration has perpetrated. Pitting the rich against the poor and demonizing the successful in America will allow President Obama to essentially shift the blame for our current economic crisis onto the wealthiest Americans, who represent a minority in the United States. Castigating the rich can indeed win some voters, as some Americans are jealous of the wealth and prosperity of others. Fortunately, however, scapegoating the successful is not an effective strategy in the long term because it invites criticism from those on the right. Republican leaders have already decried President Obama numerous times for his divisiveness and for his pursuit of class warfare.

The more dangerous campaign strategy of the president is one that diminishes the real magnitude of the problems to which he has greatly contributed. Our national debt has increased by several trillion dollars since President Obama’s election back in 2009, and things are getting worse by the day. The United States debt currently sits at an alarmingly high $15.2 trillion, and Obama’s attempts to control spending have been quite literally non-existent. In fact, Mr. Obama has been more dedicated to increasing spending over his first term than he has been dedicated to decreasing it, as evidenced by Obamacare and the infamously wasteful stimulus programs that he championed. The economy continues to be driven into a ditch as disappointed, dispirited Americans continue to leave the workforce in droves and artificially suppress the unemployment rate, and the wanton waste of taxpayer dollars on government-funded messes like Solyndra shows an utter lack of stewardship of the hard-earned money of Americans by the Obama administration. All of these issues present major shortfalls for Obama’s reelection campaign, so the president’s new strategy is to simply minimize these topics. For example, the president has been attempting to diminish his failure at managing the American economy by saying that things could have been worse. However, be assured that whomever the Republican Party nominates to face the president this year will definitely focus on these topics and will make the president account for his failures. It is up to voters to listen to the truth and to realize that President Obama’s shortcomings far outweigh any of his supposed virtues.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,
Comment

The super-committee must compromise

Filed under: Posts — 1 Comment
November 3, 2011

The deadline is looming for the Washington budget super-committee to decide on how to reduce the deficit, and so far, Democrats and Republicans have refused to compromise on deep spending cuts and tax hikes. If a deal is not struck soon, automatic spending cuts will kick in, slashing defense spending mercilessly. In fact, top military officers have decried the super-committee’s indecision, citing the very real consequences of billions in cuts to our nation’s defense. General Norton Schwartz, the Air Force chief of staff, said, “at a minimum, [the cuts] would slash all of our investment accounts, including our top priority modernization program such as the KC-46 – the (air refueling) tanker – the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the MQ-9 remotely piloted aircraft, and the future long-range strike bomber.” Other consequences, as cited by other top military officials, include the loss of experienced combat personnel and a rapid, dangerous drop in the size of our entire military.

The 12 members of the super-committee

The top priority of government is to keep us safe, and the gridlock on the super-committee is putting our nation at risk. Democrats refuse to slash entitlements without job-killing tax hikes, and Republicans are unwilling to accept tax increases as part of a debt reduction proposal. Given the high stakes, I think that super-committee Republicans should compromise and approve a tax increase, but they should do so wisely.

Firstly, it is important to remember that the automatic defense cuts that will compromise our safety will only occur if the super-committee fails to reach the crucial $1.5 trillion benchmark of deficit reduction over the next decade. This means that super-committee Republicans can approve tax increases with the assurance that the comfortable Republican majority in the House will stop the super-committee proposal in its tracks. By bending to Democrat pressure, Republicans can remove the pressure on defense spending and safely kill the plan later in the House.

Another benefit of compromise is that it forces Democrats to compromise on entitlement spending. Republicans can push the envelope and get major concessions from Democrats on entitlement spending because without massive, significant spending cuts, Republicans will never sign on to tax increases. Also, some tax increases would not be especially painful when combined with massive entitlement spending cuts. Republicans could potentially push for upwards of $4 trillion in spending cuts alone to coincide with a relatively innocuous tax increase, such as the proposed 1% surtax on millionaires and billionaires. And to prevent Democrats from halting proposed cuts and fast-tracking tax increases, Republicans could mandate that a certain percentage or dollar amount of proposed cuts must occur in the year after the proposal is passed as immediate spending cuts. For example, a trillion dollars could be cut in the first year alone, with the rest of the proposed cuts spread over a five or ten year period.

Considering that Democrats will not budge on spending cuts unless Republicans go along with tax increases, the GOP should really think about the devastating consequences of the failure to reach a deal. Temporary compromise is better than putting our nation’s security at risk.

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Comment

So much for compromise: Dems want taxes first

Filed under: Posts — Leave a comment
October 1, 2011

The Super-Committee

Do you remember the endless cries from Democrats during the debt ceiling debate about a lack of compromise by the GOP? I sure do, and as Democrats in the super-committee budget talks insist on tax hikes coming before meaningful spending cuts, I can’t help but think of the word “hypocrisy”.

Considering our $14 trillion mountain of debt (over 35% of which has been accumulated by the Obama administration), it is clear that Washington’s spending addiction is the primary if not the only cause of our current debt woes. It is ludicrous to suggest that talking about tax hikes should come before meaningful cuts because tax increases are an immense burden on the economy, and in our dire economic straits, such increases would be devastating for small businesses and middle-class Americans.

I think a major issue with these super-committee hearings arises in the secrecy that surrounds them. Instead of allowing these lawmakers to lock themselves into a room and debate in secret, I think these hearings should be open to both the press and the public. Congressmen should be held accountable by their constituents in an open forum where concerned Americans can at least listen and even contribute to the super-committee hearings. Public opinion is stacked against Democrats when it comes to responsible spending, and I guarantee that if a Democrat publicly suggested that revenue should be considered before meaningful cuts are placed on the table, that Democrat would have a lot to explain to his constituents.

In my opinion, a balanced budget amendment and tax cuts will solve our debt crisis. Tax cuts grow the economy and increase federal tax revenues, and a balanced budget amendment would dramatically curtail spending and force government to cut back like the many Americans that have been stricken by our current economic disaster.

Tags: , , , , ,
Comment

Obama’s deficit plan and the “fair share” mantra

Filed under: Posts — 1 Comment
September 19, 2011

President Obama’s new deficit reduction plan will cut more than $3 trillion from the federal deficit over ten years. However, the president’s proposal will raise $1.5 trillion (or $1,500,000,000,000) of this deficit reduction through tax increases.

In his speech just today (9/19/11) revealing the major characteristics of his deficit reduction package, Obama made an about-face in terms of the solidness of his populist appeals. His calls to raise taxes during the debt ceiling debate were not heeded, and our president was forced to pass a bill containing no new taxes. But now, the president has decided that his only hope in the upcoming election is to woo his base with the same old rhetoric about raising taxes on “millionaires and billionaires.” And it is this strategy that has brought on the sudden appearance of a backbone in our president.

But of course, it never is just “millionaires and billionaires” that Obama wants to tax. Couples making $250,000 a year and individuals making $200,000 a year will also be punished by a massive tax increase, brought in by the expiration of the Bush tax cuts, new deduction limits, and the closing of tax loopholes and subsidies without matching tax cuts. The spending cuts that Obama has proposed in his new plan are also misleading, counting over $1 trillion worth of money saved through the withdrawal of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. So in essence, our president is raising $1.5 trillion in new taxes with only a half a trillion dollars in real spending cuts.

Something that has always irritated me about Democratic politicians that want to raise taxes is the mantra that the so-called rich should pay their “fair share.” On the O’Reilly Factor today, Bill O’Reilly asked Juan Williams what he thought his own fair share should be. Of course, the commentator could not answer, because it is an unanswerable question. A well-off family’s “fair share” of the tax burden might be very different to a person feeding off government welfare as opposed to the people who are going to get slammed with a tax increase. What will government declare to be my family’s fair share in taxes? Will it be 50%, 70%, or even 90% of my family’s income? I have always been supportive of a flat tax for this reason. If everyone is paying the same rate, it is political suicide to raise taxes unless there is a very important reason to do so. This brings accountability to big government and forces it to spend our money more wisely, since it will be very difficult for them to extract more through class warfare.

“We can’t just cut our way out of this hole,” our president said today. But maybe, just maybe, it’s time to realize that we did not undertax our way into this crisis; we spent our way into it. It is ignorance to think otherwise.

Tags: , , ,
Comment
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 34 other followers