Congressional Republicans are breaking their pledge to cut spending “right now, not next year, but now.”

Yet, the editors of National Review today, while swooning over the latest budget proposal of Paul Ryan (R-WI), lauded the House GOP for an “actual honest-to-God reduction in federal outlays of $32 billion.”

How about we take a look at this with an honest-to-God perspective and the ability to check blind hope for supposed “conservative heroes” at the door?

1. Our national debt is over $14 trillion, climbing exponentially and heavily foreign-owned;
2. Annual spending has more than doubled over the last decade on the watch of both Republicans and Democrats - soon approaching $4 trillion per year - so any “actual cut” is a cut from ASTRONOMICAL spending;
3. Our nation has amassed (as NR’s Kevin Williamson noted last June) $106 trillion in unfunded liabilities (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc…) and we have saved precisely $0 to pay for it just as Baby Boomers retire;
4. Republicans, supposedly recognizing all this, campaigned VERY SPECIFICALLY on cutting spending by returning to pre-bailout, pre-Obama binge levels (i.e. 2008) and doing it immediately; and
5. Non-security spending in 2008 was $378 billion. Non-security spending requested by Obama for 2011 is $478 billion. Paul Ryan’s budget would spend $420 billion. (see here )

So what to do? Praise, criticize or just take the day off and go hit some golf balls?

As much as the latter sounds appealing, Republicans have to be held accountable. They simply are not honoring their “pledge” to return to 2008 spending levels and thus, save $100 billion from the President’s budget. They are hiding behind the fact they will only get 7 months of the year to enact cuts. Yet, they were never vague about this. Consider the following comments from House GOP Whip and Ryan’s fellow self-proclaimed “Young Gun,” Kevin McCarthy, from the Sean Hannity show last September:

MR. HANNITY: … I guess the only question that I think some people may have is, and you have been addressing this, the idea that the contract worked, but then some Republicans lost their way. How does this document hold you accountable?

REP. MCCARTHY: … we lay out… in the Pledge to America that we are going to cut spending. We are going to do it right now, not next year, but now, where we roll them back to pre-stimulus, pre-bailout, save $100 billion right now.

So, to be clear, that was to “roll [spending] back to pre-stimulus, pre-bailout” “right now, not next year, but now…” Uh-huh.

Read More →

Known and Unknown.

Open Thread.

The latest video from the Center for Freedom and Prosperity explains how excessive government spending undermines prosperity. Watch and learn!

As Blayne Bennett of Students for Liberty explains: “Even one hundred years ago, governments were able to finance their economic output based on a very small tax burden. The imposition of income taxes, however, enabled politicians to engage in vote buying behavior.”

Of course, you’re all part of changing that. As the saying goes, in the old days politicians promised to use earmarks in order to get elected — now they promise they won’t use earmarks to get re-elected.

Download audio here

Download Podcast | iTunes | Podcast Feed

On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Ben Smilowitz to discuss disaster relief in Haiti, and the need for greater oversight of disaster relief organizations.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

One Year Report On Transparency of Relief Groups Responding to 2010 Haiti Earthquake
The importance of disaster relief NGO transparency
Disaster Accountability Project releases report on transparency of relief organizations responding to the 2010 Haiti earthquake
Fraud plagues global health fund backed by Bono, others

Read More →

Live Action has released its latest video (unedited, full footage here), and it’s a doozy [UPDATE: this video should work, now]:

For those without video access, it’s the usual “Hi! I’m a pimp who has underaged illegal immigrant hookers! What can you guys do for me?” - and the answer, this time, is to walk the pimp through the process of vouching for said underaged illegal immigrant hookers in order to make the paperwork come out right. Because, you know, as the Planned Parenthood staffer noted: nobody checks the paperwork. Which is a very large, and exceptionally infuriating, issue: for almost forty years the pro-life movement has been told (usually snottily) that there were in fact laws and regulations that would prevent abuses of the system. Well. A law that is not enforced is not really a law at all.

Read More →

RedState Morning Briefing
For February 8, 2011

Go to www.RedStateMB.com to get
the Morning Briefing every morning at no charge.

Read More →

Remember when the Communication Workers of America backed Net Neutrality in the mildest way possible, despite the fact that it risked killing CWA jobs? Well here’s their payoff: CWA is all-in for the Internet Tax.

Of course, the left isn’t calling it the Internet Tax. Instead it’s “Universal Service Fund reform,” by which they mean finding a way to get more money into the so-called Universal Service Fund for rural phone access, then spend that money on state-run Internet access. How will they get that money? With “contributions” of course, by which FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski actually means USF taxes.

Read More →

From the diaries by Leon…

With news that a federal judge in Florida has declared the entirety of Obamacare to be unconstitutional, the left has reacted with predictable outrage. Cries of “activism” have echoed throughout the editorial pages, news networks, and university halls, and just about everywhere else liberals dominate. But while Democrats express their near uniform consternation, there is one notable leftist who is hoping for at least a partial repeal of Obamacare, and that would be President Obama himself. Ironically, the section he wishes to be repealed is the section his justice department argued in federal court to be the most important: the individual mandate, which forces every American to buy health insurance. The President wants it repealed because only it stands between him and his dream of a single payer system.

To understand how and why, one must first understand the purpose of the individual mandate. In short, it forces younger, healthier people to buy insurance, even though in most cases that would be more expensive for them than simply paying out of pocket. The insurance company, after all, is simply a middleman, and it is always less expensive to pay for something directly than to pay a middleman.

But Obamacare forces those healthier people to buy health insurance they don’t need specifically because these people will pay far more in premiums than they will collect in benefits. This creates a large surplus of money for the insurance companies. This is needed to offset the losses the insurance companies will suffer by Obamacare’s requirement that the insurance companies offer policies to people with preexisting medical conditions (i.e., people who are already unhealthy) at the same price as policies for everyone else. This price parity is required even though the unhealthy class uses far more resources, meaning that the unhealthy people will pay much less in premiums than they will collect in benefits.

This, effectively, converts the insurance companies into charities. The result is that the insurance companies are left with no choice but to increase the rates for everyone else, in order to cover the losses they will sustain due to the new enrollees who are not paying nearly as much as they take out. So, the healthier members of the insurance pool are forced to pay not only for their own medical care, but also to partially subsidize the care of the new, unhealthy members of the group.

Read More →

From the diaries by Leon…

Defending his administration’s push to enhance regulation of private enterprise, President Barack Obama told a Chamber of Commerce audience on Monday that companies have a responsibility to ensure that everyone profits from their expansion.

If we’re fighting to reform the tax code and increase exports, the benefits cannot just translate into greater profits and bonuses for those at the top. They have to be shared by American workers, who need to know that opening markets will lift their standard of living as well as your bottom line.

Opening markets to international trade and investment benefits every economy. The president has made this argument when he enacted a trade agreement with South Korea in December and during Chinese President Hu Jintao’s state visit last month, he continually pointed out that businesses and their workers profit from economic growth halfway across the world. (Even if major impediments remain to a truly free Sino-American trade relationship, on both sides.)

The fact that economic freedom benefits the whole of society, from business executives to ordinary workers, is both evident and of secondary importance when contemplating the morality of the marketplace.

Businesses do not have a social responsibility and government has no business trying to enforce it.

Read More →

From the diaries by Leon…

While our nation languishes amidst record food and energy prices, unprecedented underemployment (including those excluded from the workforce) and economic stagnation, crippling regulations, and an administration in contempt of two court decisions, the media would rather distract us with the Islamist uprising in Egypt.  It is imperative that we keep up the pressure on Obama and the Democrats by denying them the opportunity to preclude our attention from more relevant and ominous domestic problems.  On the other hand, there is one salient question that we should excogitate from Obama’s handling of the Egyptian insurgency.  If Obama is willing to listen to the protesters of a foreign country due to their grievances from high food and energy prices and an unresponsive government, shouldn’t he accede to the similar demands of his own citizens and resign immediately?

As a direct result of Obama’s assiduous depredation of the private sector, there are a record number of people who are unemployed or underemployed.  For those who are lacking sufficient income, their most vital needs include food, energy, and health care are among  Yet, this President has used every tool at his disposal (including illegal ones) to ensure that the cost of production or delivery of each vital sector of our economy has burgeoned exponentially.

Through this President’s continued support of ethanol mandates, subsidies, and tariffs, the price of essential food commodities has risen sharply, as corn is the antecedent of the food chain.  Almost 40% of corn grown in this country is now used for an ineffective and potentially environmentally degrading fuel.  In addition, the President has done everything in his power to mandate and subsidize the production and usage of under-performing and deleterious sources of energy.  This, along with his slavish devotion to the Fed’s policy of quantitative easing (QE2), has artificially and gratuitously spiked the cost of food and energy commodities.

Read More →

Update:  GOP Leadership pulled the bill from the schedule!

Can someone please tell me which party is in control of the House of Representatives? Because I cannot tell from looking at tomorrow’s floor schedule.

House Republicans have placed on the “suspension” calendar (typically reserved for noncontroversial matters) a bill to extend expanded Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) benefits until the end of June. The TAA program gives generous benefits to individuals who lose their job as a result of a free trade, even though 99 weeks of unemployment is already available for all laid-off workers. The Obama “stimulus” bill dramatically expanded the program in scope and duration so that now TAA benefits costs taxpayers roughly $2.4 billion each year.

Say what you will about unemployment benefits (and I’m not a big fan of them), but at least they’re equitable. If you lose your job, you are eligible for benefits. Not so with TAA benefits, which discriminate in favor of those who have lost their job as a result of trade.

TAA benefits are typically the political sweetener that accompany pending free trade agreements, such as the Columbian Free Trade Agreement, in order to attract votes from free trade skeptics. Unfortunately, House Republicans are now attaching it to a worthwhile but run-of-the-mill extension of the Andean Trade Preference Act, even though a Democrat Congress was able to pass a short term extension of this very trade preference, as recently as December 14, 2009, without attaching TAA benefits as a sweetener. What gives?

Congress should vote this extension of stimulus-level TAA benefits down tomorrow, and let the program expire…

Read More →