Obama’s Team is So Transparent, They’re Opaque; Release of Mid-Year Budget Review Delayed
The release of the mid-year budget review from the White House has been delayed. It really comes as no surprise anymore that the Obama team meant “transparency for thee but not for me.”
As a democrat, it’s ok to harp about Republicans, scream, and whine when you feel as though they aren’t being transparent enough. Then campaign on empty slogans of hope and change, but once in office do nothing of the sort. As they say to the victor goes the spoils and in this scenario, the spoils include hypocrisy and a lack of information disseminated to the American public. Read more
The California Legislature Debates Cow Tails While the Rest of the State Burns
No wonder why California has massive amounts of debt – This has to be the biggest bunch of nit-wits I have seen yet!
Too bad it wasn’t these cow tales – mmmmm….
Liberal State Idiocracy: California Won’t Cut the Pork & Massachusetts Houses Homeless in Motels
California just can’t seem to beat the habit of government spending. The latest proposal coming out of the state legislature originally had $11B in cuts to state services, but that proposal was shot down. So while California burns, literally and figuratively, the state legislature sits there battling back and forth on “to cut, or not to cut.” My advice to California: cut the fat and start doing what’s best for your constituents and your state not your lobbyists, special interests, and your own pockets. I know it’s difficult for politicians, since so many have forgotten who they really work for, but it’s about time to start voting all these people out of office and voicing our concerns. California will be bankrupt before the legislature comes to a decision on the $24B budget, how sad is that?
“All of the cuts that were rejected by the majority party that the governor proposed are things that unfortunately have to be done,” he said. “We can’t afford some of those things when we’re talking about revenues that are back to where we were in 1999 or 2000.
Moody’s Investors Service has warned that California could face a “multi-notch” downgrade in its credit rating, citing the state’s expected massive shortfall for fiscal 2010 of more than 20 percent of its general fund budget and limited options for plugging it.
Schwarzenegger and lawmakers face the task of closing a $24.3 billion budget deficit for the state’s fiscal year beginning on July 1.
Besides the idiocy coming out of California, Massachusetts has also created a plan to house the homeless in motels. They aren’t housing them in motels because they are overwhelmed or out of room at shelters. No, they are paying for them to stay in motels due to complaints that the shelters didn’t have enough amenities to satisfy their needs, like kitchens, living rooms, etc. Are you kidding ME? These people are jobless, don’t pay taxes, and just become leeches on society. Not everyone, but the majority. What would be the incentive to me to make a better life and find a job if the government enabled me to live the way I have always lived and be lazy and complacent? This is the exact same problem with bailouts, welfare, unemployment benefits, and entitlements in general. This has become insane. This is not the innovative, hardworking American society that I studied and read about in school. This is not what my parents taught me or what those in our military have fought for. I’m appalled by the idiocracy that we are now calling our government and our country.
Housing Massachusetts’ homeless is costing tax payers around $2 million per month. It costs an average of $85 per night to have families, including nearly 1000 children, stay in motels.
The Interagency Council on Housing and Homelessness admits that the use of motels for the homeless is not ideal, but is the best that can be done at this time.
Homeless advocates are worried that families are not getting the support of shelters with living rooms, kitchens, and play areas.
More Money Down the Drain; Economic Woes Continue
Obama and the Democrats continue to spend taxpayer money and rack up our debt. The House panel, last night, passed the supplemental war bill worth more than $106 billion. The supplemental bill includes funds not just for the two wars we are currently fighting, but also for foreign aid, car rebates, and the Flu. The bill passed by a very narrow margin 226 – 202, with an almost united opposition from Republicans. If foreign aid caught your eye, then you were paying attention. Obama and the Democrats were sneaky and stuck several billion dollars worth of IMF funds to bailout foreign banks; as if AIG wasn’t enough. Republicans were strongly opposed to another bailout, especially in a war supplemental.
I guess we are supposed to feel sympathetic to Obama’s lack of sleep due to the deficit? Pardon me for saying so, but I couldn’t care less. He continues to sign these bills and propose legislation/policies which all require massive amounts of government funding. My sympathies are also few and far between because I too have not been sleeping. I’m actually up every night researching and writing to attempt to stay on top of the latest news items and stay abreast of all the crazy things this administration is doing. If possible I’d like to record every time Obama tramples on the constitution… Needless to say, that’s a lot of sleepless nights.
One of Obama’s agenda items is his health-care plan which is a deceitful little gem…passed off as a competitive option to private industry, when intelligent individuals who have contracted with the government already know, anything that competes with the government loses.
His health-care plan is therefore a farce and it will require individuals who work for a living and pay taxes, to pay for those who do not. It’s another entitlement program that will raise taxes and put a massive burden on all Americans.
Senate sources say the latest cost estimates for health care legislation are around $1.6 trillion over 10 years. Two Senate staffers, one Democratic and one Republican, said Congressional Budget Office estimates put the cost of the Finance Committee version of the bill at around $1.6 trillion.
Even with all the spending, Obama truly believes we will have economic growth:
President Barack Obama said he is “confident” that he won’t have to raise taxes on most Americans to close the budget deficit as long as the economy picks up steam.
“One of the biggest variables in this whole thing is economic growth,” the president said in an interview with Bloomberg News at the White House. “If we are growing at a robust rate, then we can pay for the government that we need without having to raise taxes.”
Obama has repeatedly said he would keep his campaign pledge to cut taxes for 95 percent of working Americans while rolling back tax breaks for households making more than $250,000 a year.
“I’m confident that we don’t have to raise taxes on ordinary working families,” he said.
But he already has. He raised taxes on cigarettes, a product that most lower income households consume. Food products, and other goods have also had taxes tacked onto them. Obama’s plan may not be to outright raise taxes, but they are already hiding them in miscellaneous goods. Obama’s health-care plan also paints an entirely different story, requiring $600 billion in new taxes to fund
the program. I’m not sure if Obama is completely deluded, a great liar, or both.
The fact that Obama believes that we will have incredible amounts of economic growth, when Forbes and others have already compiled a list and conducted studies on future GDP growth for those countries with a moderate to larger sized economies – proving that the United States and the United Kingdom would be two of the most repressed/stagnant, is just ludicrous. Obama recently told Bloomberg that he expected the unemployment rate to go to 10%, and although it is a lagging economic indicator, you cannot expect an unemployment rate to go back down to below 4% in 6 months when it took almost 18 to get there. Roubini also doesn’t believe that the unemployment rate will stop at 10% but rather upwards to 11% by year end. Roubini also predicts that we could see another recession in the future if the proper actions are taken by the government and the Federal Reserve. I have absolutely no confidence in either entity and Roubini fears that if the correct actions are taken now, we could wind up in an inflationary crisis over the next couple of years – of which I believe to be inevitable.
How’s that Hope and Change working out for ya?
The Truth About PayGo (Pay-As-You-Go)
As Michele Bachmann points out the devil is in the details:
What the Administration would like for you to think is that by enacting this policy, Washington wouldn’t be able to spend a dollar unless they save a dollar and the national debt would cease to swell as it has these past several months.
However, this is really a charade – and the details tell the story. First of all, this PAYGO has no impact whatsoever on entitlement spending — Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, which make up a very sizable portion of the budget. They’d continue to grow on autopilot. In fact, even if this PAYGO were fully enforced, entitlement spending would continue to grow 6% a year without offsets.
Second, this PAYGO includes an enormous $3.5 trillion loophole. The President’s proposal specifically exempts a wide array of expensive policies. Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget remarked that, “This is like quitting drinking, but making an exception for beer and hard liquor.” And, Senator Kent Conrad (D-ND), Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee has criticized the plan, adding, “I’m not for waiving PAYGO for $3.5 trillion of items, much of which I think ought to be paid for.”
And more from the Wall Street Journal:
Mr. Obama must think the press and public are dumb enough to buy it, because there he was Tuesday re-selling the same “paygo” promises that Democrats roll out every election. Paygo is “very simple,” the President claimed. “Congress can only spend a dollar if it saves a dollar elsewhere.”
WSJ, Obama and the politburo have no respect for middle America, of course they think we are stupid!
That’s what Democrats also promised in 2006, with Nancy Pelosi vowing that “the first thing” House Democrats would do if they took Congress was reimpose paygo rules that “Republicans had let lapse.” By 2008, Speaker Pelosi had let those rules lapse no fewer than 12 times, to make way for $400 billion in deficit spending. Mr. Obama repeated the paygo pledge during his 2008 campaign, and instead we have witnessed the greatest peacetime spending binge in U.S. history. As a share of GDP, spending will hit an astonishing 28.5% in fiscal 2009, with the deficit hitting 13% and projected to stay at 4% to 5% for years to come.
Nancy Pelosi strikes me as the fiscally responsible type, the type that really cares what happens with taxpayer money. Well, I guess she does care, but that’s only when it’s used to pay for her botox injections and her flights back and forth to San Fran. in military aircraft.
The truth is that paygo is the kind of budget gimmick that gives gimmickry a bad name. As Mr. Obama knows but won’t tell voters, paygo only applies to new or expanded entitlement programs, not to existing programs such as Medicare, this year growing at a 9.2% annual rate. Nor does paygo apply to discretionary spending, set to hit $1.4 trillion in fiscal 2010, or 40% of the budget.
Does this not provide incentive to the government to create more entitlements to try and prove that PayGo was put to good use? New entitlements on top of too many old entitlements…
This loophole matters, because on the very day Mr. Obama was hailing paygo the House Appropriations Committee was gleefully approving a 12% increase in 2010 nondefense discretionary spending, the third year running that Democrats have proposed double-digit increases. Or consider that the 2010 budget resolution included a $2 billion increase for low-income heating assistance as an entitlement change that should be subject to paygo. But Congressional Democrats simply classified it as discretionary spending, thereby avoiding the need for $2 billion in cuts elsewhere. C’est-la-paygo.
Mr. Obama’s new proposal includes even more loopholes. There’s an exception for Congress’s annual alternative-minimum tax “patch,” which is worth at least $576 billion over 10 years; for any of the Bush tax cuts that Mr. Obama decides he wants to extend past 2010; and to protect against planned cuts in Medicare doctor payments. These carve-outs alone spare Democrats from having to come up with some $2.5 trillion in spending cuts or new taxes. To add insult to profligacy, the rules also allow the Administration to run huge early deficits for its looming health-care bonanza, and only pay for it later — say, after 2012.
The President also revived the myth that paygo was somehow responsible for eliminating budget deficits during the Clinton years. In fact, that brief era of balanced budgets was due to: mid-decade spending reductions by a GOP Congress elected on a balanced-budget pledge; an excessive cut in defense spending to 3% from 5% of GOP across the decade; and an unsustainable revenue boom due to the dot-com bubble. But harking back to the 1990s lets Mr. Obama avoid having to defend his own spending record.
The real game here is that the President is trying to give Democrats in Congress political cover for the health-care blowout and tax-increase votes that he knows are coming. The polls are showing that Mr. Obama’s spending plans are far less popular than the President himself, and Democrats in swing districts are getting nervous. The paygo ruse gives Blue Dog Democrats cover to say they voted for “fiscal discipline,” even as they vote to pass the greatest entitlement expansion in modern history. The Blue Dogs always play this double game.
Ahhh yes, more Kabuki theater, as Michelle Malkin so succinctly puts it.
The other goal of this new paygo campaign is to make it easier to raise taxes in 2011, and impossible to cut taxes for years after that. In the near term, paygo gives Mr. Obama another excuse to let the Bush tax cuts he dislikes expire after 2010, while exempting those (for lower-income voters) that he likes. In the longer term, if a GOP Congress or President ever want to cut taxes, paygo applies a straitjacket that pits those tax cuts against, say, spending cuts in Medicare. The Reagan tax reductions would never have happened under paygo.
We are so Scr—d! It’s like a game of chess they are playing – no concern for the country, just for their own political interests. If Obama is ousted in 2012 it makes it that much harder for the incoming administration to resolve the mess he created.
