As they sit in the warm sun and listen to the celebrity speakers tell them about their bright future a grim reality will set in once the graduation cakes are cut and consumed.
111th United States Congress
Photo by shannonpatrick17
First we were told we had to pass the stimulus bill because if we didn’t unemployment would rise to 9%. The good news was that there were hundreds of shovel ready project raring to go. Later we learned that “shovel ready was not as shovel ready as we expected.” $800 billion dollars of squandered stimulus dollars later, unemployment is at 9%. But what about a real shovel ready project that doesn’t need taxpayer dollars?
Actual Unemployment vs. Stimulus Sales Pitch
It was a very close race, one of the last decided in the country. Out of 180,000 plus votes the final margin of victory was just under 600 votes. In that election Tim Bishop successfully managed to hide from his record and instead he took advantage of a late Republican primary that was hotly contested and pounced with a campaign of personal attacks on his opponent that was just enough to carry the eight weeks until Election Day. His opponent, Randy Altschuler, wants a rematch and it appears the race will be decidedly different.
The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money. – Unknown (often attributed to Alexis de Tocqueville)
An article in The Hill newspaper titled “Teachers union expands playing field for midterms” describes how the teachers’ union is getting out supporting certain candidates.
Who would you trust to better invest a million dollars in the economy, Bill Gates or Joe Biden? Do the richest people in America bury their money in a pit in their back yard or do they either spend it or invest it? Are taxes cuts where the American people give less of the wealth they created to the government or is it where the government gives money to the American people?
If you are like the overwhelming majority of Americans you would answer those questions as follows: Bill Gates; spend or invest it; give less to the government. But the Obama administration and their acolytes live in an alternate reality where Joe Biden, who President Obama put in charge of watching carefully how the stimulus money was spent because “nobody messes with Joe,” is in charge of spending $700+ billion; where they think nothing good happens from the most productive people in the economy when they have more resources to work with; where all money belongs to the government and the government gets to decide who and how much we can keep.
By excluding “the rich” from any tax cuts because we “can’t afford to give the rich a $700 billion tax cut”, this administration is saying that by giving Joe Biden $700 billion he will spend it in such a spectacular way that the economy will be humming before Recovery Summer has ended. We are still waiting.
What happens if Bill Gates has an extra million? I could see three things. One, he spends it. Although he is not known to be an extravagant spender like his competitor Larry Ellison, I understand that Mr. Gates lives in a very nice state of the art house. He may choose to upgrade it. That will probably involve architects, engineers, general contractors, carpenters, plumbers, electricians, laborers, and on and on. In other words, jobs. Isn’t that we need now? How many stimulus projects are there that have sucked up money but created no jobs? (If you are struggling with that question go to www.recovery.gov and sample some of the projects) Two, he could invest it. He might fund a start-up which would again create jobs. If the start up was successful, he might buy it outright which would put money back in the hands of the entrepreneurs who started the company and perhaps they would start another. More jobs, more spending, a growing economy. Three, he may put the money in his charity, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. That is a charity that does good things, but with a difference. Because it is a charity not a government program, there will be people watching how the money is spent with the discretion to modify the program if it gets off track. Government programs are built upon rules. If a crook gets a copy of the rulebook, he can rip off the program until someone gets around to re-writing the rules. In the meantime it is ka-ching for the crook.
The incumbents in government believe that tax revenues are their money and tax cuts are gifts from the government to the people. Taxes are what we the people give to the government. We need to starve the beast and put it back in its cage. Government is trying to run every aspect of our lives. This country was founded because a tone deaf government was taxing America to the eyeballs. It is that time again. We should make the Bush tax cuts permanent now and clean house in November.
This week we saw President Obama come out swinging to that old class warfare tune. Lashing out at Republicans in Congress for not adding to the deficit by extending unemployment benefits, he implied they were heartless and cruel. The president used the same tired prop of the straw man, that is, accusing “the same people” without naming any of those people. He uses this tactic because if he actually named the people he was accusing he would have to produce facts to back up the charges and Obama, as usual, doesn’t have any.
But here’s what he does have. He has a record of focusing his energy on passing ObamaCare instead of focusing on growing the economy. He is layering on more uncertainty of huge government programs and impending taxes that are scaring most small businesses from any hiring until the dust settles and they can tally up the bill. He has Republicans who are ready to go along with the extension in benefits, if and only if, they are paid for. With only about half of the $787 billion stimulus bill money spent, which is working fabulously by the way, taking the needed $30 billion from that kitty should be obvious.
President Obama also has a chief economic advisor named Larry Summers. Mr. Summers wrote an article on unemployment for the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics while at Harvard and in it he raised the following points:
- Government assistance programs contribute to long-term unemployment is by providing an incentive, and the means, not to work.
- Unemployment insurance also extends the time a person stays off the job. [Colleague Kim] Clark and I estimated that the existence of unemployment insurance almost doubles the number of unemployment spells lasting more than three months.
- If unemployment insurance were eliminated, the unemployment rate would drop by more than half a percentage point, which means that the number of unemployed people would fall by about 750,000.
- Another cause of long-term unemployment is unionization. High union wages that exceed the competitive market rate are likely to cause job losses in the unionized sector of the economy. Also, those who lose high-wage union jobs are often reluctant to accept alternative low-wage employment.
It seems as if President Obama has painted himself into a corner. The stubbornly high unemployment numbers are poised to ravage the Democrats in the mid-term elections. But if his advisor, Mr. Summers, is to be believed, the unemployment benefits he is trying to use as a campaign issue against the Republicans is probably propping up the unemployment numbers.
The American people have reached their limit on deficit spending and want it reined in. The Democrats put in place something called Paygo, which means pay as you go. If you want something, you have to pay for it. However, the Democrats are bypassing their own rule at every turn. You can’t have it both ways, ceremoniously pass a Paygo rule for the purpose of the photo op and to look responsible, and then spend recklessly once the klieg lights go dark.
What prompted this president to conduct his Rose Garden show with three unemployed Americans used as props? Could it be that Nancy Pelosi is hopping mad that this president has not been helping Democrats to get reelected in the fall? If so, perhaps that was the point of the Rose Garden performance, nothing but election year politics. And you wonder why the American people are becoming increasingly cynical about their government?
There was a commercial not too long ago where a young man looked out his window to the village green where a bundle of money had just fallen. He calls his wife/girlfriend over to show her. She suggests running down and getting it, but he says, no, let’s wait. Next you see a frizzy headed guy down on the green who screams, “MONEY!!!!” In seconds, people came out of the woodwork and scoffed up all the money while the young couple looked on.
The image of that commercial popped into my head as I considered the job summit being led by President Obama. To me, the young couple represented the government pondering how to direct the economy to achieve this specific goal or that. The mob on the green was the free market. While the government dithers over what kind of legislation to write, which special interest groups to pay off to pass it, how to develop incentives to get private industry to do this or that, if they would just cut taxes and get out of the way, the free market would get to work creating jobs where they are needed, not where some bureaucrat thinks they should go.
Uncertainty
The biggest cloud overhanging this economy is uncertainty. The Obama administration is slamming through enormous changes: a $787 billion Porkulus package, cap and trade, health care. Businesses look at this combined with the accumulation of massive government debt, tax increases rather than cuts (yes letting the Bush tax cuts expire is a tax increase, not just the expiration of tax cuts as Speaker Pelosi tries to spin it) and they don’t know what hiring that extra employee is going to cost, let alone what it will cost to keep the employees they already have. So they don’t hire until the dust settles and they can calculate the impact.
“Tax incentives for job creation are “worthy of further consideration,” he said, while adding that the administration is also set on making a big push in the area of green jobs.” – President Obama at Jobs Summit
“Worthy of further consideration”? Since conservatives have been calling for tax cuts for a year now, this kind of statement in Obama-ese translates thusly, “I have to make a nod to the right, to acknowledge that I heard them, but it ain’t happening.” Couple that with the “big push in the area of green jobs.” We are in the midst of the scientific scandal that the “settled science” of man-made global warming could be the greatest hoax since Bernie Madoff, and Obama wants a big push in the area of green jobs. What if that area collapses because the urgency that Al Gore has been screaming about is no longer urgent? It’s government planning on the order of Soviet five-year plans or Mao’s Great Leap Forward programs. It harkens back to Jimmy Carter’s giant Synfuels project that was going to convert coal into oil, until oil prices fell and the project imploded, but not before billions of tax dollars were poured into that rat hole.
How Simulating!
If you listen to Joe Biden, the stimulus plan is working better than expected. But let’s take a closer look. As of about three weeks ago only $120 billion of the stimulus money had been spent. (So why is Congress looking at another stimulus with over $600 billion left to spend in the first one?) Of that money, 80% went to the Department of Education, Health and Human Services, and the Department of Labor. What about all the “shovel ready” projects? Only about $4 billion has gone to the Department of Transportation. Feel better?
Jobs Summit Attendees
So who is meeting with President Obama at the jobs summit? Well first let’s look at who was not invited:
- U.S. Chamber of Commerce — they have butted heads with Obama over health care and climate change policies
- National Federation of Independent Businesses
I don’t know about you, but I think they might have an idea or two about how to create conditions that let the free market create jobs. As for the attendees:
- Service Employees International Union (SEIU) officer
- President of the American Federation of Teachers — a union of workers in a government run monopoly
- United Food & Commercial Workers International Union
- CEOs of some Fortune 500 companies
How many jobs do unions create, not occupy, create? Think of the auto industry, steel industry, public K-12 education, the Postal Service, and government in general. Do they bring images of thriving, vibrant, engines of job creation? Or is the image more of the basket cases of the U.S. economy? This is not a slight against the union workers themselves, but rather of their leadership who create so many restrictions on job rules to artificially create the need for more jobs. There motto is: why have three people do the work, when you have five do it?
As far as big business is concerned, let me dispel the thought that conservatives and big business go hand in hand. In many cases big business looks to cut deals with the government to protect their industries and markets from upstart companies. They have gotten big and lethargic, rather than nimble and vibrant. Small businesses create about 80% of the jobs in the U.S. and they didn’t have a seat at the table.
So was the jobs summit about creating jobs or just jive talk? If you want a real jobs summit see what American Solutions was hosting in Cincinnati, Ohio and Jackson, Mississippi. They actually discussed ideas that would work.
In 1956 the Federal Highway Act was signed into law creating the Interstate Highway system that today is 47,000 miles long. The bill that created that was 29, that’s not a typo, 29 pages long. Who could not read through a 29 page bill before deciding whether or not to vote for or against?
In this Congress we had a stimulus bill that was over 1,000 pages long, a cap and trade bill that was over 1,000 pages long, and health care reform that is sure to be over 1,000 pages long. Who could possibly read over 3,000 pages of legislation and make any kind of intelligent vote on it. I don’t know about you, but I have read regulatory “prose” and after 10 pages or so, I need to take a walk around and get a cup of coffee, just to clear my head.
Why Are These Bills So Long?
Someone once asked, “Where is the best place to hide a tree?” Answer: “In a forest.” A 1,000 page bill is a very good forest. Arlen Specter just introduced legislation to help tort lawyers make more money from frivolous lawsuits. Consider this:
To show what a loyal tort-lobby servant he is, Mr. Specter has also introduced a bill to let attorneys claim an up-front tax deduction on expenses they incur while building contingency fee cases. Amazing but true: Mr. Specter wants to give a tax cut to sustain the likes of Mel Weiss or Dickie Scruggs in the yachts to which they have become accustomed while they await jackpot jury verdicts. Even Democrats are too embarrassed by this giveaway (estimated cost: $1.6 billion) to pass it as a stand-alone bill, so tort lobbyist Linda Lipsen recently said “we have to tuck it into something” else, such as another “tax vehicle.” {emphasis added}
What better place to hide something like this than a 1,000 page bill? Add to that the URGENCY that everything has to be passed NOW so that for those who want to read the bill to find these stinkers to oppose them there is no time before Nancy Pelosi rams that through.
It seems like it is us against them. They have gotten into power and their top priority is to stay there. Representing us? That ended on election night.
Can anyone offer us a deal to give us cash if replace our Congressional Clunkers? How about the health insurance companies? They’d probably kick in, since they are Congress’ new whipping boy. Oil companies, coal companies? They get bashed every time Congress screws up and bans nuclear power, offshore drilling, ANWR, and coal as the price of oil climbs. Banks who didn’t take TARP money? Well Congress wants to set their salaries now.
Congressional Mileage
How much liberty per dollar are we getting for the money guzzling Congressmen and Senators who pull down $169,300 per year (more for committee chairs, and Speaker Pelosi who weighs in at $217,400)? And this doesn’t begin to count their expense budgets, gold plated health care, etc. I’m sure we could get much better mileage from a smaller government and a Congress that only meets half a year. I’m willing to bet that the longer Congress stays in session the more trouble they get us into, while consolidating their power and feathering their own nests.
Here’s the Plan
Let’s set up a fund. We’ll let Goldman Sachs run it, as they seem to know how to turn a buck. Anyone can contribute to the fund, no limits. For every Congressman who voted for the Stimulus, Cap and Trade, and the Health Care disaster and is run out of office, the fund will pay out a percentage of the fund to everyone who registered and voted. The percentage will be calculated as the percentage of these clunkers who are retired out of Congress.
Think about it. If you are a voter who really, really believes that the Stimulus, Cap and Trade, and the government takeover of our health care system is a good thing, you will vote to re-elect the members of Congress who voted the same way. However if you don’t, then perhaps you need a little personal stimulus to cross party lines, or set aside ideology, and vote the bums out. It might even help improve voter turnout. And why not? If ACORN can get illegal aliens and dead people to vote for their candidates, we need a way to fight back.
What do you think?
In an op-ed piece in the New York Times, entitled, “What You Might Not Know About the Recovery,” that might more appropriately be entitled, “What I Don’t Know About the Recovery,” Joe Biden educates us on the stimulus. It’s typical after the fact political obfuscation to try to convince people that they are not really seeing what they see with their own two eyes.
He begins in typical fashion going back to when he and Barack Obama took office, but avoids mentioning President Bush by name:
We still have a long way to go, but clearly we are closer to recovery today than we were in January.
This is a true statement, but I would argue that this is in spite of the $787 billion of our money squandered on the stimulus plan, while Mr. Biden says it is because of it. It is instructive to see how someone begins their defense of an issue and Mr. Biden begins by saying that not all of our $787 billion is being spent on pork barrel projects.
Notwithstanding this progress, the nature of the Recovery Act remains misunderstood by many, and misconstrued by others: critics have suggested that the entire $787 billion is being spent on pet programs. As the person leading the administration’s efforts to put the Recovery Act into effect, I want to set the record straight.
He takes up the position that the statists typically do, that we are too stupid to understand. This is complex stuff, America, way over your head. You need us in the political class to take care of this for you. Notice he didn’t say there was no pork barrel spending. He says that not the entire $787 billion is being spent on pet projects. (Don’t forget the $30 million for Nancy Pelosi’s salt marsh harvest mouse). Feel better?
Tax Cuts?
He says the single largest part of the recovery act is tax cuts, more than one third. Huh? Does he mean the $8 per week in lower payroll taxes? That’s going to stimulate the economy? At the same time they are finding trillions, TRILLIONS, in new taxes and spending through Cap and Trade, Heath Care reform, allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire, that will dwarf the paltry $8 per week that people are probably saving, rather than spending, if they even notice it at all.
Transfer Payments
The second largest chunk, Mr. Biden tells us, is for transfer payments. In other words, money from the federal government given to state and local governments. Where do all governments get their money from? Us. So taking our money in federal taxes and giving it to state and local governments helps us exactly how? Don’t forget the portion of each dollar that gets lost along the way as each bureaucracy handles it.
What are these transfer payments going to be used for? Uncle Joe tells us:
The money is allowing state governments to avoid laying off teachers (14,000 in New York City alone), firefighters and police officers and preventing states’ budget gaps from growing wider.
The dictionary defines recovery as returning to health, consciousness, etc. This part of the stimulus does nothing to stimulate the economy. It’s another one of the Obama administration’s wonderful fictions about saving jobs. As the economy continues to shed jobs even above the level that the Obama administration told us it would go without the stimulus Biden boasts that they saved the jobs of government workers; union workers; Democratic voters. Also it helps bloated state governments that have mismanaged their finances from having to make fiscally responsible decisions but keeping them fat, dumb, and happy. By the way, which states seems to be in the most financial trouble? California, New York, New Jersey, Michigan? Aren’t those all “blue” states? So is the Obama adminisitration helping America or helping themselves?
On Track?
Mr. Biden says that we are on track and that 25% of the funds have been committed. What exactly does that mean, committed? If you go to Recovery.gov, you will see that as of this week, only 8.5% of the money has actually been spent. Give Mr. Biden a calculator, please. With the three chunks that the Vice President says comprise the stimulus: tax cuts, transfer payments, and infrastructure projects, and that signs of recovery are due to the stimulus, how can the stimulus have that kind of affect when only 8.5% of the money has been spent?
The Resiliency of the American Economy
The American economy is the envy of the world. It is resilient beyond description. It is recovering on its own, despite government interference, and the government meddling that caused this recession. The American people are no longer being fooled by the smooth talking Barack and Joe Show. A Rasmussen poll shows that only 25% of the American people believe that the stimulus has helped the economy. If that’s not bad enough 31% say that the stimulus has actually hurt the economy. On top of that 45% say the rest of the stimulus should be cancelled.
The Stupid American People
With 92% of the stimulus yet to be spent 9% more Americans say cancel the rest than say to keep going. So Mr. Biden grabs the op-ed page of the New York Times to, sigh, lecture the American people once again on how they misunderstand, and misconstrue what your benevolent, socialist leaning government is trying to do for you. How ungrateful can you be? If you people don’t get it, then the president and vice president will just have to take over the rest of the economy and set you all straight. They will tell you how much you can earn, what cars to buy, what food to eat, what kind of light bulbs to put in your house, control how much energy you can use in your house through the smart grid, what medical treatment you can have, and when you have to die.
The Sleeping Giant Awakes
The American people have been charmed by Barack Obama as he is a very charming man. He is an historic president. But they are starting to notice the tea parties, the abdication of the main stream media to do their job, the warnings about what is happening to their country and they are starting to pay attention. The more they see and hear the more Obama’s approval ratings drop. So he pushes harder and faster. It will be a close race to see if President Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid can ram through their agenda and slam the door behind them, or if we can wrestle back control of our liberties and send these people packing.
It’s time to brush off the Constitution, read the 10th amendment, and start stripping the federal government back down to the size the founders envisioned. That will give more power to the states and the people and make government more accountable. Face it, when your Congressman represents several hundred thousand constituents and their voice is only one of 435 in the House of Representatives, is it any wonder that the founders gave them only the powers spelled out in the Constitution. They believed that effective government has to be responsive to the people. That is impossible in Washington. It is too big. It is run by too many unelected career bureaucrats. It has too much power to tax us, regulate us, spend our tax dollars on things to which we are morally opposed, and interfere with our liberties.
This is a critical time in our history and time to roll back the unrelenting growth of government and shrink it down to size.
