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« on: December 06, 2012, 01:36:51 PM » |
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The Patriot Post - Alexander's Essay 12-06-2012
From The Federalist Patriot
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The Fiscal Bluff
The Jackass Caucus's 'Grecian Formula' for Economic Collapse
By Mark Alexander
December 6, 2012
"The multiplication of public offices, increase of expense beyond income, growth and entailment of a public debt, are indications soliciting the employment of the pruning knife." --Thomas Jefferson (1821)
Have you heard about this "fiscal cliff" thing -- I mean have you heard ENOUGH about it?
Well, for 16 months I have dutifully avoided devoting any time and bandwidth to the tax increases and budget cuts scheduled for January 2, 2013, if Barack Hussein Obama fails to sign pre-emptive legislation. However, now that the dust has settled on Obama's landslide 50.9 percent re-election and the status-quo reseating of Republican House and Democrat Senate majorities, it's time to put Obama's Budget Control Act of 2011 (BCA) "deal" into proper Patriot perspective.
In August of 2011, Obama signed this agreement into law in order to get a debt ceiling increase of $2.1 trillion. That in turn allowed him to borrow more money from the Red Chinese to fund his runaway socialist entitlement programs1 and bloated "stimulus spending2" boondoggles -- and, moreover, it allowed him to avoid default and another downgrade of U.S. credit.
In return for more spending ability, Obama agreed to caps on discretionary spending growth to "save" $950 billion over 10 years. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid refer to those caps as "cuts." He also agreed to establish a Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction (a.k.a. "super committee") to implement another $1.5 trillion in "savings." If, however, the super committee didn't come to an agreement by November of 2011, Obama's suggested sequestration trigger -- automatic cuts to the budget of $1.2 trillion over the next decade -- would commence on January 2, 2013. (To view mandatory versus discretionary spending, click here3.)
Republicans passed the BCA hoping to slow down Obama's "Grecian Formula" economic plan -- his second-term strategy to break the back of free enterprise4, crushing it under the weight of mounting taxes, regulations and debt, and ultimately, "fundamentally transforming the United States of America5" into a collectivist state under the irrevocable dominance of his Socialist Democrat Party6.
In his first term, Obama made significant progress toward that transformation. Much of his massive deficit spending was allocated for increased government employment. When Obama took office, federal, state and local government jobs were 33 percent of all employment. Government jobs now constitute 39 percent of all employment, and Obama wants to grow that number to more than 50 percent with additional "stimulus spending," irrevocably socializing the American economy.
Free enterprise, one of the foundational pillars of Liberty, is the nemesis of Obama's transformational plan, as implicit in his "you didn't build that" condemnation of entrepreneurship7 and his ridiculous assertion that "The private sector is doing fine," but we need more spending to create "public sector" jobs.
Though the super committee arrived at no agreement on budget cuts to stave off sequestration in January, the Republican House recently passed an extension of the Bush tax cuts, again. (It's the potential expiration of those cuts that Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke warned would constitute a "massive fiscal cliff.")
However, Obama is holding the Bush tax breaks extension hostage, calling his class warfare "tax the rich8" rhetoric "a balanced, responsible approach to deficit reduction" and using it as a smoke screen to obfuscate his real agenda -- avoiding the third rail of American politics, "entitlement reforms," and any substantive spending reductions.
Heeding the advice of his former chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, Obama will not allow this fiscal crisis to "go to waste," assuring Republicans he will use his Leftmedia sponsored soap box to blame House Speaker John Boehner, et al., for the consequences of sequestration.
The Democrats insist, correctly, that tax increases and budget cuts will put the economy back into recession, if Republicans do not acquiesce to his demands. But it is Obama who has to contend with the consequences. Most Americans who aren't enslaved on ObamaNation Plantations9 understand how budgets work, and for a good illustration of what would happen if families handled finances like Obama, Click Here10.
Sidebar: As for the Demos' assertion that the economy is no longer in recession, I suggest they take that up with the 23 million unemployed or underemployed Americans, those who have simply given up looking for work, and the tens of millions more who are working, but haven't received pay increases in years to keep up with inflation.
So what are Obama's positions on debt and taxation?
You already know that Obama is a disingenuous socialist charlatan, whose constituencies overlook his colossal character flaws in return for redistributed wealth. They like it when he gives them other people's money, but in the inimitable words of former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, "Socialist governments ... always run out of other people's money. They then start to nationalize everything."
On the record, regarding the bloating national debt, in 2006 then-Senator Obama wagged that Clintonesque finger at President Bush, declaring: "The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. government can't pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our government's reckless fiscal policies. ... Leadership means that 'the buck stops here.' Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better. I therefore intend to oppose the effort to increase America's debt limit."
Obama was against raising the debt ceiling and "shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren" before he was for it.
In 2008, then-candidate Obama criticized Bush for adding $4 trillion to the national debt, which most Republicans and Democrats did in an effort to avoid collapse of the U.S. banking system. Obama insisted, "The problem is, is that the way Bush has done it over the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up our national debt from $5 trillion dollars for the first 42 presidents -- number 43 added $4 trillion dollars by his lonesome, so that we now have over $9 trillion dollars of debt that we are going to have to pay back -- $30,000 for every man, woman and child. ... That's irresponsible. It's unpatriotic."
Obama was against "taking out a credit card from the Bank of China" before he was for it.
Obama would later conclude, "This rising debt is a hidden domestic enemy," and "interest payments are a significant tax on all Americans -- a debt tax that Washington doesn't want to talk about."
Indeed it is.
Now that Obama has added $5 trillion to our national debt in his first term, and is now bidding to double that, one might fairly deduce, "That's irresponsible. It's unpatriotic."
On raising taxes, in 2009 Obama declared, "The last thing you want to do is raise taxes in the middle of a recession, because that would just suck up, take more demand out of the economy and put businesses in a further hole. ... You don't raise taxes in a recession. We haven't raised taxes in a recession."
Obama was against "raising taxes in the middle of a recession" before he was for it.
On limiting deductions like charitable giving to raise revenues, he insisted, "There's very little evidence that this has a significant impact on charitable giving. I'll tell you what has a significant impact on charitable giving, is a financial crisis and an economy that's contracting. And so the most important thing that I can do for charitable giving is to fix the economy, to get banks lending again, to get businesses opening their doors again, to get people back to work again."
Obama was for "limiting charitable giving" deductions before he was against it.
So what is Obama's latest proposal?
He doubled his original $800 billion tax increase -- mostly on the "two percent," which recently doubled from the "one percent of wealthiest Americans" he used to reference. That $1.6 trillion is on top of the $1 trillion ObamaCare tax hike already on the way for all Americans. Most of Obama's targeted "two percent" are not the rich and famous, but small business entrepreneurs operating S-Corps -- like The Patriot Post -- which employ 55 percent of all working Americans. (Did I mention that free enterprise is the nemesis of Obama's "transformational plan"?)
On top of his double-down on taxes, Obama is proposing more stimulus spending, and the real non-starter -- he wants to delay further talk of cuts until sometime in the future. |
