The President’s budget: whistling past the graveyard

Darth BeaverDarth Beaver Meine Ehre heißt Treue
edited February 2011 in Spurious Generalities
on February 14, 2011

I chewed on the President’s budget for a few hours today. Rather than bore you with a MEGO (“My Eyes Glaze Over”) post filled with numbers and charts, I offer a few overall qualitative and strategic impressions
* No big surprises here. The budget tracks the State of the Union address as well as press events and leaks over the past month. There are a few gems, including a hidden 25-cent per gallon gas tax, a State bailout and unemployment tax increase on almost all workers, and a $315 B unspecified Medicare savings gimmick, but those are to be expected.
So who wants to pay $.25/gallon more for the tank of gas? I know I don't.
* Spending, taxes, and deficits would reach new plateaus, each well above historic averages. The President proposes sustained bigger government and bigger deficits and debt. Much bigger.
Bigger government means more control, less freedom, less prosperity, and more socialism. Is this the direction you want a country you live in to head?
* The numbers are terrifying. That terror comes not from big new proposals, but from whistling past the graveyard of unsustainable current law.
Exactly, the policies of the current administration can not be sustained without crippling America's ability to prosper in the private sector. It is the private sector which took America from just another nation in the 1800's to the envy of the free world in leas than 100 years. By continuing down the current path we have been on since the FDR administration and doubling even tripling the speed which we move this nation will not last, as we know it, past the birth of most of your grandchildren. (if that long)
* The President says his new goal is “to pay for what we spend by the middle of the decade.” This clever language suggests he thinks that, since there was existing government debt when he took office, it is not his responsibility to find ways to pay for even the interest payments on that “inherited” debt. As President, his job is not, however, after eight years to momentarily stop making things worse, as his budget proposes. It is instead to address the challenges the Nation faces, including those that have been building over the past 70 years.
Instead of paying for what we spend by the middle of the decade wouldn't it be more fiscally sound to reduce what we spend to levels that we can afford? To me that is like saying, "Well, I can't afford all the toys I am making payments on right now so I will keep the toys and find some way to make more money over the next four years." If anyone one of us ran our household budget in this manner we would be living in a box by 2015 or trying to declare bankruptcy.

Stop making things worse? Really? How about start making things better. After all that is why would put people in public office, to improve things, not to stop making them worse. That is like if you were going to a quack doctor and switched to another physician simply because he promised to stop making you sicker than you already are. :facepalm:
* In mid 2009 a smart friend observed that President Obama was pursuing an ordinary liberal domestic policy agenda at an extraordinary time in the economy. It was as if the severe recession had almost no effect on the President’s outlook. Indeed his chief of staff argued that the national economic crisis created an opportunity to enact the President’s campaign proposals.
Why? Why does his chief of staff believe that economic crisis justifies spending more and taxing more?

* The same appears to be true with this budget. The President is proposing an ordinary liberal spending agenda at an extraordinary time in our fiscal history. His proposals for increased government spending on infrastructure, technology, and education are straightforward expansions of the role and size of government, in line with what I might expect from a Carter or even Clinton in his more expansive years. Times have, however, changed significantly since the 70s and the 90s. What were then long-term fiscal problems are now short-term looming crises.
Right! And those policies of Carter and Clinton are a huge factor in the current short term challenges we face. So why would anyone support more of what got us in the fix we are in now? Maybe because most Americans have the political memory that the gods promised to a pomegranate.

* The fiscal problems of current law, which predate but were exacerbated by President Obama’s expansions of government in his first two years, should be driving the policy agenda. In this budget they are an afterthought. The President’s budget ignores the problem of entitlement spending under current law, and proposes Medicare and Medicaid savings only sufficient to offset a portion of his proposed spending increases. Team Obama’s topline message includes dangerous and misleading reassurances that Social Security is not an immediate problem. Demographics, unsustainable benefit promises, and health care cost growth are the problems to be solved. The President instead wants to build more trains and make sure rural areas have 4G smartphone coverage.
He wants to spend our tax money that we earned in areas that will benefit the companies that contributed to his $680 million campaign. That much should be clear to anyone who is not a blind supporter of the "chosen one".


* Budgets represent policy priorities expressed as numbers. It’s easy to focus on the numbers and lose sight of the underlying priorities. For two years America has been debating whether restoring short-term economic growth or addressing our government’s fiscal problems is a higher priority. With his State of the Union address and this budget, President Obama is trying to define a new problem to be solved. He thinks Americans are at a long-term competitive disadvantage relative to the Chinese because our government isn’t spending enough on infrastructure, innovation, and education. Suppose you think he’s right (I don’t). Is this problem more urgent than restoring short-term economic growth? Is it more important than addressing unsustainable deficits and a federal government expansion that will leave fewer resources for the private sector? The President apparently thinks it is. I strongly disagree.
That's right, just follow the money and things get much clearer. The real reason America is facing a possible long term competitive disadvantage against China is the policies put in place during the Clinton administration in regard to creating unbalanced duties and tariffs for a nation with one of the worst human rights records on the planet. These policies are what has allowed china, for the last 15 years, to take our manufacturing sector and flood our market with overpriced shoddily made junk.

* The President is choosing both a policy path and a campaign strategy. He is betting that having no proposal to address the looming fiscal crisis is better for his reelection prospects than having one.
I am betting he will lose that bet in 2012. I am also hoping that the elections in the Senate next year sees more third party and independent gains coupled with liberal losses just as we saw in November 2010.

* The President has made his strategic choice: we are headed toward a two year fiscal stalemate in a newly balanced Washington.
This nation can not endure two more years of what has not worked for the last two years. Not if we are too remain stable in the long term.

Source

Comments

  • edited February 2011
  • edited February 2011
    Make your own post, Nigger. :o
  • Darth BeaverDarth Beaver Meine Ehre heißt Treue
    edited February 2011
    Sorry I thought I hit the quote button back off shithead. :p
  • DirtySanchezDirtySanchez Regular
    edited February 2011
    I think there are a few obvious things that could be done to improve the economy. First the amount of jobs we outsource has to stop. I think outsourcing is a perfect example of how capitalism defeats itself and allows greed to destroy an economy.

    Our unemployment problems could be solved if company's were told that they can't send jobs overseas just so they can pay workers less. Company's should be forced to hire Americans and if they don't like that they have to pay a living wage to people then tough shit. We need to become a self reliant nation. Another example is the vast amounts of oil in places like Alaska that we don't drill for because of environmentalists. Instead we spend millions of dollars buying oil from the middle east.

    It seems like almost nothing is actually produced IN America now. This is because of corporate greed and capitalism is what allows this. Second cut the bullshit pork spending that is costing millions. The president also needs to realize that with the amount of money war costs that means you have to cut down on the spending. The government spends like we are in peace time and it's ridiculous.

    tl:dr capitalism is a self destructive system.
  • Darth BeaverDarth Beaver Meine Ehre heißt Treue
    edited February 2011
    You can't force companies to make stuff in a certain place. But you can increase the duties and tariffs to a point where it is more profitable for them to manufacture domestically. That is the exact opposite of what Clinton did with NAFTA and what Obama is trying to do with a Korean free trade agreement.
  • skunkskunk Regular
    edited February 2011
    I haven't been able to take this guy seriously since he pretty much flip-flopped on every campaign issue.
  • Darth BeaverDarth Beaver Meine Ehre heißt Treue
    edited February 2011
    I never did take him seriously. I mean c'mon He was a state senator for 8 years and a Senator for 4 years and then he is the President?
  • mandingomandingo Regular
    edited February 2011
    The problem now is if we hunker in a place tariffs on imported goods, it would look like an "act of monetary war" with the countries that supply these goods :(
  • mandingomandingo Regular
    edited February 2011
    I never did take him seriously. I mean c'mon He was a state senator for 8 years and a Senator for 4 years and then he is the President?

    and he is from Chicago...
  • Darth BeaverDarth Beaver Meine Ehre heißt Treue
    edited February 2011
    mandingo wrote: »
    and he is from Chicago...

    Yeah right? Only the most corrupt political machine of the last 80 plus years.
  • mandingomandingo Regular
    edited February 2011
    I know... sad that he got voted in people are crazy :(
  • Darth BeaverDarth Beaver Meine Ehre heißt Treue
    edited February 2011
    If the electoral college were removed from the equation I bet we would see less "crazy".
  • edited February 2011
    If the electoral college were removed from the equation I bet we would see less "crazy".

    Probably llol

    Until then, take a couple OC-40s and it won't bug you so much

    EDIT: And keep in mind; our government was designed by rich, connected men.
  • Darth BeaverDarth Beaver Meine Ehre heißt Treue
    edited February 2011
    Nothing against drugs per say but the fact that so many truly use them hide from the truth us one of the many reason rich connected men hold so much power.
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