The Patriot Post Brief 7-25-2011

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The Patriot Post Brief 7-25-2011
From The Federalist Patriot
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The Foundation

"Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm." --James Madison

For the Record

"Obama ... claimed to have a $4 trillion deficit-reduction plan. The court eunuchs of the press corps were impressed, and went off to file pieces hailing the president as 'the grown-up in the room.' There is, in fact, no plan. No plan at all. No plan whatsoever, either for a deficit reduction of $4 trillion or $4.73. As is the way in Washington, merely announcing that he had a plan absolved him of the need to have one. So the president's staff got out the extra-wide teleprompter and wrote a really large number on it, and simply by reading out the really large number the president was deemed to have produced a serious blueprint for trillions of dollars in savings. ... The only 'plan' Barack Obama has put on paper is his February budget. Were there trillions and trillions of savings in that? Er, no. It increased spending and doubled the federal debt. How about Harry Reid, the Senate Majority Leader? Has he got a plan? No. The Democratic Senate has shown no interest in producing a budget for two-and-a-half years. Unlike the president, Sen. Reid can't even be bothered pretending he's interested in spending reductions. But he is interested in spending, and, if that's your bag, boring things like budgets only get in the way. It seems reasonable to conclude from the planlessness and budgetlessness of the Obama/Reid Democrats that their only plan is to carry on spending without limit. Otherwise, someone somewhere would surely have written something down on a piece of paper by now. But no, apparently the Department of Writing Down Plans is the only federal expense the president is willing to cut." --columnist Mark Steyn1

Political Futures

"Regardless of how things turn out with the [debt] negotiations, what we are witnessing is the rollout of the Obama re-election campaign's theme: Obama is the pragmatic voice of reason holding the ideologues at bay. So it's worth asking, before this branding campaign gels into the conventional wisdom: Who is the real ideologue here? The president, we are told, is a pragmatist for wanting a 'fair and balanced' budget deal. What that means is tax increases must accompany spending cuts. Any significant spending cuts would be way in the future. The tax increases would begin right after Obama is re-elected. ... Obama says that Republicans are rigid ideologues because they won't put 'everything on the table.' Specifically, they won't consider tax hikes. ... But Obama hasn't put everything on the table either. He's walled off 'ObamaCare' and the rest of his 'winning the future' agenda. ... Republicans won a historic election last November campaigning against spending, borrowing, tax hikes and ObamaCare. Yet Obama's position is that the Republicans are deranged dogmatists because they don't want to raise taxes or borrow more money to pay for spending they opposed. And Obama is flexible because he refuses to revisit a program that has never been popular." --columnist Jonah Goldberg2

Reader Comments

"Mark, you are right on3, as usual. In addition to the BBA, we need a Congressional Containment Amendment that would include term limits, no Congressional retirement plan, Congress obeying all laws that pertain to the public, etc. We need Statesmen (and women), not slick, career politicians." --Bill

"I'm not at all sure I can support a Balanced Budget Amendment3. Folks seem to assume that a constitutional amendment will limit the growth of government or some such idea because they can't just keep raising taxes to support increased spending. Many states have balanced budget amendments in their constitutions. California is one. Has the California State Government been limited in its growth? Has it been limited in its regulations or bureaucracy? The short answer is No. They just keep spending and raising taxes and fees. I can't see that the passage of a BBA will solve anything." --Pat

"In response to Friday's sarcastic question4 about Democrats playing politics, of course the Dems would play games and allow our country to go bankrupt -- they've been working hard toward that very goal for decades. It's in THEIR interest for this country to fail, so they can step in and 'save us' by a government take over of every aspect of our lives. Welcome to the USSA!" --Dianne

"It is incredible that the Democrats are putting their imagined political gain ahead of the welfare of the nation. Statements like 'worst piece of legislation,' 'the Republican Party has morphed into a cult' and the unending stream of lies from the White House through the Congress are a disgrace to the Democrats and to our nation." --P Gwynne

The Gipper

"[The Democratic Party leadership] tell us they have done the most that humanly could be done. They say that the United States has had its day in the sun; that our nation has passed its zenith. They expect you to tell your children that the American people no longer have the will to cope with their problems; that the future will be one of sacrifice and few opportunities. My fellow citizens, I utterly reject that view. The American people, the most generous on earth, who created the highest standard of living, are not going to accept the notion that we can only make a better world for others by moving backwards ourselves.... The American people deserve better from those to whom they entrust our nation's highest offices, and we stand united in our resolve to do something about it." --Ronald Reagan5

Opinion in Brief

"Americans, and their companies, have long benefited from their freedom to move throughout our country. In the 19th century, we moved in search of natural resources, exchanging the stony soil of New England for the rich soil of Iowa. In the 20th century, Americans were more likely to migrate in search of better political environments, like the blacks who fled the Jim Crow states of the South. The profound role that mobility has played in our country, enabling repeated reinvention, causes me to be deeply worried about the possibility that a National Labor Relations Board complaint will prevent Boeing Co. from moving plane production from Washington state to South Carolina. I am an economist, not a lawyer, and I have nothing to say about the legal issues surrounding the NLRB's complaint. I am sure the NLRB is doing what it understands to be its legal duty, preventing retaliation against union activity. Yet I also dearly hope that the judicial process will affirm the right of companies, and people, to freely choose their locations. The U.S. economy -- especially our challenged manufacturing sector -- needs more, not less, freedom to adapt and innovate." --Harvard economist Edward Glaeser6

Government

"Government has been subsidizing higher education with low-interest college loans, Pell grants, and cheap tuitions at state colleges and universities. The predictable result is that higher education costs have risen much faster than inflation, much faster than personal incomes, much faster than the economy over the past 40 years. ... Politicians, including Barack Obama, still give lip service to the notion that everyone should go to college and can profit from it. And many college and university administrators may assume that the gravy train will go on forever. But that's what Las Vegas real estate developers and homebuilders thought in 2006. My sense is once again well intentioned public policy and greedy providers have produced a bubble that is about to burst." --political analyst Michael Barone7