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Amendment XIV, Section 4: The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

Section 5. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

People have been advising President Obama that he doesn’t have to put up with the messy business of governing, he can just raise the debt limit himself. It is right there in the Fourteenth Amendment. Let’s analyze the amendment.

• The debts incurred to fight the Civil War are valid. They were a necessary expense of preserving the union and they should be paid. It also says refers to the debt authorized by law. What is debt? Borrowing. How much can the government borrow? They can borrow any amount up to the debt limit. In all the current debate I have heard no one say that our debts are not valid. To default on the debt means that you stop paying principle and interest on the debt. It does not mean you have to pay ethanol subsidies. But the debt has to be authorized by law. Who writes the law? Congress.
• The debts incurred by anyone to rebel against the United States are void. Any Confederate bonds would be collectors items, solely for historical value, not to be redeemed for greenbacks.
• This article is under the control of Congress.

I don’t know about you but I don’t see anything there allowing President Obama to basically ignore the debt limit and go right on spending. Do you?

That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours. Please comment below.

Michelle Bachmann let off the three day CPAC conference with a keynote address that laid out the case against the current administration and the rule of Nancy Pelosi. Most of the focus of her talk was on raising the alarm on our current financial situation and its urgency.

When the Nancy Pelosi took the Speaker’s gavel in January of 2007, the national debt stood a eight trillion dollars, not a meager sum by any means. To illustrate she pointed out that if a dollar was a second of time, a trillion seconds equates to thirty-two thousand years. It took two hundred and thirty years for the America to accumulate that much debt. In the four years that the Democrats controlled Congress and the two years that President Barack Obama occupied the White House, the debt increased by 75% to fourteen trillion dollars. That is truly astounding.

Much of that debt is being funded by foreign countries including China. She mentioned President Hu Jintao of China being perfectly happy with our borrowing binge, prompting her to ask, “Hu’s your daddy?” She asked who in the crowd was of college age and then addressed her next point to them. If we do not get our financial situation under control, she told them, you will be paying about one-third of your income to cover Social Security. If you add to that your federal income tax you may be rates up to 75% of your income in your peak earning years.

She then called on the assembled to complete the task they started with the major electoral victory this past November with a repeat performance in 2012, to take control of the Senate and the White House.

If you are not a progressive, it is generally not surprising when the government institutes some wonderful new “reform” on top of the last reform that didn’t work, and unintended consequences come along for the ride.  The free market tends to correct these disturbances quickly, but laws are rigid things and don’t adapt without passing more legislation or getting the courts to perform the surgery.

So it should come as no surprise that the 2009 Credit CARD (Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure) Act, passed to protect Americans from those evil profit seeking credit card companies, is now creating a booming business for loan sharks.  Gee, that’s so much better for the little guy.  Here’s how it works.

Credit decisions are based on risk versus return.  The higher the risk, the higher the price (interest rate) to compensate for that risk.  If the card issuers cannot price that risk appropriately, they don’t issue the card or the reduce the credit limit.  So if you are a working class stiff who carries a credit card, not because you are a spendthrift, but in case of emergencies your benevolent government has stuck it to you again.  Say this individual is faced with a situation where their car breaks down and they have to fix it so that they can get to work.  Since their credit card was just cancelled, what do they do?  One of their few options is to use a service like payday loans.  The interest rate on these loans can be 200%, 400%, even 900%. If that service doesn’t work there is always pawn shops and loan sharks. Isn’t it great that these folks won’t be gouged by 30% interest rates from credit card companies?  You ain’t seen nothing yet.  Just wait until the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau opens its doors.

The liberty of making choices is stolen from another group of Americans, with the panjandrums in Washington passing down edicts from on high.  The free market would quickly supply the credit that is needed and price it competitively.  These financial “fixes” that leave monstrosities like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac untouched make nice sound bites, but in reality take options away from hard working Americans.  It is time to leave us alone.

That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours.  Please comment below.

Barney Frank, in an interview with CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo, made the bold statement that, “heirs who now inherit, they haven’t done this on their own, they haven’t worked hard, that’s a pure gift to someone who was lucky enough to be related to someone or be friendly with someone who left them money.”  So Mr. Frank concludes that they are not entitled to that money.  So tell me what is the argument that government should get nearly half of it?  How did they earn it?

Well, it is not about earning it, is it?  It is about wealth redistribution.  It is as if you were successful enough to buy a ten thousand square foot house and when you die, instead of your wife and children being allowed to continue living in their home, their neighbors get free use of forty-five hundred square feet of the house.  Is that moral?  But the government needs the money.  Barney Frank needs the money because the debt is so high.  How did it get that way?

Barney Frank told us time and again that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were sound and that no taxpayer dollars would ever be used to bail them out.  Now with the potential risk of $400 billion or more in losses at the two mortgage giants, Barney needs more money to fix what he insisted wasn’t broken.

Just because estates exist doesn’t mean Barney gets a piece of the action.  Those who earned it paid taxes on those earnings.  When they saved some of that money, they paid taxes on the interest.  If they invested in companies that paid dividends, first the company paid taxes on the income and then the individual paid taxes on the dividends.  At the end of their life, Barney Frank gets a fourth bite at the apple?

When this subject was debated this morning on Fox, liberal commentator Ellen Ratner, cheerily offered that “there’s a five million dollar deduction, there’s a five million dollar deduction” as if that somehow changed the moral calculus.  Yes, I robbed you, but geez didn’t I leave you cabfare?  What an ingrate you are.

The American Dream partly consists of giving your children a better start than you had.  To help them go further than you went and to see their children prosper as well.  Where in the American Dream is the desire for more government, bigger government, more wasteful government that can’t live within its means?

The government has gotten too deep into the game of giving stuff away.  The root of the current crisis is the government trying to help people who couldn’t afford a mortgage buy homes.  Stop trying to give stuff away.  Give not, take not.

That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours.  Please comment below.

Over the past few days we have learned of a new tack by Al Qaeda on how to strike at America.  It is not by commandeering planes and crashing them into buildings, it is not by putting homicide bombers into passenger seats, it is now by sending packages with bombs inside from overseas to targets in the U.S.   It is very disturbing to know that Al Qaeda is not giving up, despite the piles of olive branches Barack Obama has laid at the feet of these despots.

Equally disturbing, for those of us in the First Congressional District in New York, is the scorecard just issued by national security organization Keep America Safe, which just gave Congressman Tim Bishop its lowest possible score, an “F”.  It explained:

Bishop’s grade of F is based on a comprehensive study undertaken by the group, which analyzed every significant national security vote cast by Rep. Bishop since he assumed office in 2003. Bishop’s failing grade is rooted in his multiple votes to transfer terrorist detainees, currently housed at the naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to U.S. soil, thereby granting them additional Constitutional rights and hindering intelligence gathering.

Bishop further cast a vote against allowing the U.S. military to develop a contingency plan to deal with the growing threat posed by Iran.

The ranking was based on House member’s votes on twenty-seven national security rated bills.

As our enemies continue to try to kill us, can we afford weakness in our resolve to defeat them?

Other scorecards

How has Tim Bishop measured up on other scorecards?  Here is a sampling:

• ACLU – Tim Bishop has an 83% lifetime favorable rating from the organization
• The Club for Growth is an organization that supports policies that will help grow the economy through limited government and economic freedom.  A growing economy, naturally, creates jobs.  Mr. Bishop’s rating is 0% from the Club for Growth
• Another security organization, the Center for Security Policy, gives Mr. Bishop a score of 25%
• The American Conservative Union gives Mr. Bishop a lifetime score of 2.86% favorable, with a rating for 2009 of 0%.  While I understand Mr. Bishop is not a conservative, neither is he middle of the road. You cannot get much further left than a 2.86% lifetime rating from the ACU coupled with voting lockstep with Nancy Pelosi 97% of the time.  Some of Mr. Bishop’s positions that earned him this low rating include:
  • He voted against a bill to end TARP and return the unspent TARP money to the Treasury
  • He voted for the stimulus
  • He voted against a Republican proposal to balance the budget within ten years and extend the Bush tax cuts and $482 billion in spending cuts over five years.  In his debate with Randy Altschuler he scoffed at Republicans seriously having a plan to cut spending. Well there it is, and he voted against it.
  • He voted against deleting an earmark for an airport in Rep. John Murtha’s district in Pennsylvania.  Murtha, one of the kings of pork before passing away, channeled $150 million to this airport that handles six flights a week. A Wall Street Journal reporter visited this airport and said that they walked around for fifteen minutes before seeing another person.  Just what the taxpayers in New York need Tim Bishop to vote for, wasteful spending in Pennsylvania.
  • He voted against additional funding for missile defense, a function of Congress that is actually in the Constitution.
  • He voted for Cap and Trade, that will cause energy prices like home heating oil and gasoline to skyrocket.  Most of Long Island’s electricity comes from fossil fuels so this should also drive up electricity prices, already among the most expensive in the country.
  • He defeated an amendment to impose spending caps through 2014, limiting spending and deficits to a percentage of GDP.
  • He opposed spending cuts to the budgets of the Housing and Transportation departments by 5%.
  • He voted for ObamaCare over the strong objection of his constituents
  • He voted against extending the ban on the death tax, which could impact many small businesses and family farms in his district.
• The Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council gave Tim Bishop a rating of 0%.

It is clear that Mr. Bishop is not a moderate, middle of the road, Democrat.  He often votes against the concerns of his constituents and in lockstep with the leadership of his party.  That would be an indication that he has his focus on moving up the ladder of his party and getting more power rather than serving his district.  At a time when jobs and the economy are critical to get our country moving again, Tim Bishop’s record is among the most anti-business in the entire Congress.  It is business that creates jobs, not government.  How can Mr. Bishop possibly hold the solution to the problem?

Mr. Bishop’s Support

So where does Mr. Bishop’s support come from?  In reading news stories, comments on newspaper articles, blogs and the like, the constant theme that I hear is that Mr. Bishop is responsive to the individual needs of his constituents and helps them with their problems.  Okay, that may be true and I have also heard the arguments from the other side that if you disagree with him, he is deaf to your requests for support.

Let’s talk about what is commonly known as constituent service, that is, helping people in the district with their individual problems.  This is a noble thing to do, but let’s also look at why they need the help?  How did the problem come about?  It is probably because government has gotten so big, and so complex, and is increasingly embedded in our lives, that we sometimes need to reach out to those more powerful (Mr. Bishop) to cut through the red tape.  But here is a thought experiment for you.  What if the government wasn’t so big?  What if Washington didn’t try to tell you what kind of light bulb to buy, what kind of toilet to install, how many thousands upon thousands of tax regulations you have to follow?  What if the government in Washington focused on those powers given to it under the Constitution and left the rest to state and local government and to ourselves?

What the people who support Mr. Bishop speak most passionately about is little more than a Tammany Hall fixer.  He wants his constituents to depend on him.  The more he can help out, the more they will vote for him and get their friends to vote for him.  So he is motivated to make the government bigger and more complex and then rather than deal with it yourself, you go to him to deal with it for you.  It’s time to break the cycle of dependency.

An Historic Moment

This election day presents an historic moment to turn the tide against big government.  Government that doesn’t listen to the people because it thinks the people are incapable of taking care of themselves.  Tim Bishop thinks he is smarter than all of us and he has proven that he thinks the fundamental purpose of the Constitution is to provide for the common good.  The Constitution says no such thing.  The purpose of the Constitution is to limit government to the few things that are best done for all of us, such as, national defense, a common currency, a court system, delivery of the mail, and manage or relationships with foreign nations.  It is not about light bulbs or toilets or government run health care.  It is for those things that affect all Americans, equally.  The reason we have legislation that is two and three thousand pages long is because this leviathan government has its tentacles into the far corners of our lives.  It is time to vote for a change.  It is time to start putting the monster back in its cage, where we are the masters, not the slaves.  Where we have the freedom to live our lives without interference from government intrusion.

Do you want your freedom for yourselves and your children, or do you want to continue to grow a massive government that will condemn your children, grandchildren and generations onward to a debtor’s prison, forever paying for the choice we make tomorrow?  Think carefully, my friends, your family is depending on it.

Congressman Tim Bishop referred to it in his town hall meeting.  If you ask a statist where does the Constitution authorize them to get involved in every detail of our lives, the only place they can point to is Article I, Section 8:

The Congress shall have the Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts, and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defense and general Welfare of the United States; {my emphasis}

So what does the general Welfare mean?  Statists who claim the Constitution is a living breathing document believe that this clause gives them the right to do whatever they please, and whatever gets them reelected.  As conservatives we believe in original intent and therefore we have to go back to what the founders meant when they penned those words.  Why is that an important distinction?  Because the meaning of words change.

Are You Gay?

If you were asked that question in the eighteenth century, the questioner would have been asking you if you were merry; keenly alive and exuberant; having or inducing high spirits.  If asked that question today, the questioner wants to know if you are a homosexual.  So if the founders wanted to emphasize that the Constitution was a serious document and wrote, “nothing contained herein should be construed to be gay,” no one at the time would have raised an eyebrow, other than the dopiness of the clause.  If read in today’s context, it would create an uproar.

Are You Bad?

The band Huey Lewis and the News have a song called “Bad is Bad” in which the band plays on how the word “bad” now means ”good” in contemporary vernacular, but sometimes it actually means bad, really bad.  It shows how words change can change with time.  Back when the Founders wrote the Constitution and you said someone was bad, you might find yourself choosing dueling pistols.  Today, the response to the statement, “You’re bad,” would probably be, “Thanks, man.”

So if you don’t seek out the original meaning of the Constitution and our laws based on when they were written, everything can become meaningless over time.

What Did the Founders Mean by Provide for the General Welfare?

Alexander Hamilton was a proponent of a broad interpretation of the General Welfare and he supported that position during the Constitutional Convention.  However proposals along those lines, such as spending for internal improvements were rejected by the Convention.

“{James} Madison repeatedly argued that the powers to tax and spend did not confer upon Congress the right to do whatever it thought to be in the best interest of the nation, but only to further the ends specifically enumerated elsewhere in the Constitution, a position supported by Jefferson.” — The Heritage Guide to the Constitution, p.93

There was another interpretation that fit in the middle that even Hamilton recognized.  That was that the term “general” meant “national” welfare and not for purely local or regional benefit. President James Monroe demonstrated this

“in his 1822 message vetoing a bill to preserve and repair the Cumberland Road.  Monroe contended that Congress’s power to spend is restricted ‘to purposes of common defense, and of general,  national, not local, or state, benefit.” — The Heritage Guide to the Constitution, p. 93.

Later President James K. Polk vetoed a bill that looked a lot like today’s runaway earmarks.

“It provided $6,000 for projects in the Wisconsin territory — constitutionally permissible because of Congress’s broader power over federal territories — but it included $500,000 for a myriad of projects in the existing states.  Polk contended that to interpret the Spending Clause to permit such appropriations would allow ‘combinations of individual and local interests [that would be] strong enough to control legislation, absorb the revenues of the country, and plunge the government into hopeless indebtedness.’” – ibid, p. 95

If you changed some of the numbers you could have written that today rather than in 1847.  Where this came off the rails, along with so many other government disasters we are paying for today, was during FDR’s tenure beginning in 1936.  Subsequent Supreme Court decisions left the definition of “General Welfare” up to Congress.  How ridiculous is that?  Justice Sandra Day O’Connor summed it up pretty well in her dissent in South Dakota v. Dole

“If the spending power is to be limited only by Congress’ notion of the general welfare, the reality….is that the Spending Clause gives ‘power to the Congress….to become a parliament of the whole people, subject to no restrictions save such as are self-imposed.’  This….was not the Framer’s plan and it is not the meaning of the Spending Clause.”

Out of Control Spending

The outrage demonstrated at the town halls shows that the American people are fed up with Congress ignoring what they are saying and bankrupting the country.  The Supreme Court in the 1930s opened the door to profligate spending by Congress that was kept in check by the Constitution for 140 years prior.  To allow Congress to define general welfare as they want and then spend accordingly makes no sense logically or otherwise.  If the Supreme Court does not set this right, a Constitutional Amendment may be required, and I am no fan of amending the Constitution at every turn.  As an American I take pride our Constitution that we have only felt a need to amend 27 times in over 200 years.  But if we allow changes in the definitions of words to drag the Constitution along with them, then we need to take measures to put the Constitution back where it was as a beacon to guide us rather than a quaint artifact of our history.

Something We Can All Look Forward To

President Obama announces His Budget Plan and the Stock Market Craters

President Obama got his $800 billion stimulus package off the launching pad and now we eagerly await the massive stimulus to come when people start seeing their taxes reduced in April by $8-$16 per week.  Stand back, the crowds could be euphoric and out of control.

With the ink barely dry on that package, President Obama rolls out the next attack on future generations of Americans.  His plan calls for the addition of debt so staggering that it may destroy the U.S. economy.  How long before the additional interest on the national debt starts growing so fast that we cannot pay it, let alone the principal?  In his budget he plans to add half a trillion to the national debt every year, and all of this is with some very rosy forecasts of 5% and 6% GDP growth.  Will someone please tell the rookie, that when you slam the most productive earners with more taxes, they tend to react by producing less.

“The budget that President Obama proposed on Thursday is nothing less than an attempt to end a three-decade era of economic policy dominated by the ideas of Ronald Reagan and his supporters.”

The Reagan policies produced 25 years of unprecedented growth.  So the inexperienced President Obama is going to undo this because…?  The Democrats love to point to the economy during the Clinton years, but you have to look a bit more closely.  During the first two years of the Clinton’s time in office the economy was basically flat.  The economy didn’t really start moving until 1995.  What coincided with that?  Oh, yeah, the Republicans took control of Congress.  Taxes were cut and the economy took off like a rocket.

If you look at the term of George W. Bush, after 9/11 and the recession he inherited, he again cut taxes and the economy took off.  The stock market didn’t start it’s downward spiral until about six months into 2007.  What coincided with that?  Oh, yeah, the Democrats took control of Congress.  Coincidence?  You decide.

So now we have the new president deciding to trash the policies that have successfully grown the economy under Reagan, Clinton, and Bush.  At the same time he is going to saddle future generations with massive debt on top of a looming Social Security and Medicare bill coming due.

I consider myself an optimist, but for the first time in my life I am actually fearful that one man could destroy the U.S. economy in his first 100 days and rush this in under the guise of an emergency, where there is no debate, no time to read what is getting put into law, just slam it in and trust the the most inexperienced president in the last century that it will be all right.  Do you feel better now?

Can We Dump this Canard Over the Side?

More than anything else, the proposals seek to reverse the rapid increase in economic inequality over the last 30 years.

This economic inequality hogwash is dishonesty at it’s peak.  The so-called economic inequality is a sign of the success of the economy.  Think about it, the economy has a floor but not a ceiling.  That is, your income cannot go below zero, but there is no limit to how high it can grow.  So as incomes rise higher and higher, yes, they are going to move further from zero.  This is like saying that air travel is worse today than when the Wright Brothers flew because planes fly higher now than they did in 1903!  So let’s pass a law that says airplanes can’t fly higher than 2,000 feet so we don’t have a great inequality in altitudes.

There is nothing stopping anyone from having that high income if they work hard, use their talents, and succeed.  America is not about punishing the successful.  Many who start out at the bottom move up.  Many who came here as immigrants start at the bottom.  If the Democrats want to improve the numbers, let them control the illegal immigration that is probably inflating the numbers on the bottom.  Let’s stop turning success into failure.  How many people would like to be like Bill Gates?  How many people think America would be better off if we were all like Willy Loman?

The Big Flameout

The Productive Ones Set Sail to More Favorable Tax Climates

Let’s suppose for a moment that the stimulus works and the economy takes off.  With what President Obama has in the works, and the massive taxes that he plans to impose on the top earners, and the carbon taxes he plans to levy on businesses that weill be passed along to the consumers in higher prices (there goes your $8 tax break), and the masive debt he is loading on future generations, the stimulus will soon flameout, and a bigger recession will follow.  This time we won’t able to borrow and spend our way out of it.  Tax cuts won’t matter because there will be no one earning anything to tax.  The wealthy will have packed up and moved to more favorable tax climates and Barack Obama’s historic presidency will have flamed out as well.

“Because each day we wait to begin the work of turning our economy around, more people lose their jobs, their savings and their homes. And if nothing is done, this recession might linger for years. Our economy will lose 5 million more jobs. Unemployment will approach double digits. Our nation will sink deeper into a crisis that, at some point, we may not be able to reverse” — Barack Obama, Op-ed piece in Washington Post, Feb. 5, 2009

Each day we wait…The most massive increase in government spending in the history of the Republic was passed on Friday night by the Senate, making it ready for President Obama’s signature.  Even Senator Sherrod Brown, had a private plane take him from his mother’s wake to cast the deciding vote on Friday night.

No Time to Read the Bill

Despite the enormity of this deficit spending increase that will saddle our children and our children’s children with a huge debt burden, and despite promises from President Obama concerning transparency and time to adequately review legislation, no one had the time to read this bill before it was passed.  You don’t believe me?  Do the math.  In 48 hours there are 2,880 minutes.  The stimulus bill is over 1,100 pages long.  So if you did nothing else for the 48 hours, you didn’t sleep, you didn’t eat, you didn’t go to the lavatory, you would have about 2 1/2 minutes to read and comprehend each page in the bill.

As President Obama said in the Post, we have no choice, this is URGENT!  So naturally, President Obama was standing with pen ready as soon as the Senate passed the bill.  It was raced up Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House to the waiting Chief Executive, or not.

• Friday night – President Obama does not sign the bill
• Saturday – President Obama does not sign the bill
• Sunday – President Obama does not sign the bill
• Monday – President Obama does not sign the bill

Pretty urgent, huh?  “Each day we wait to begin the work of turning our economy around, more people lose their jobs.”  So I guess the crisis has passed?  I guess losing more jobs no longer matters?

Do you think it might have been prudent to give the members of Congress and the American people the extra four days to review the bill before signing it? Of course it would be prudent, but the more we examine this the more it becomes clear that this is not about stimulus.  It is about rushing through a bevy of liberal spending programs under the guise of an emergency precisely so that it would not receive the scrutiny it deserves, because if it did, most Americans would be outraged.

The reason for delaying the signing for four days, is to get the most political mileage out of the signing.  Signing it on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, the Monday holiday, would simply not have the news coverage for President Obama to bask in.

American’s Interest or Self Interest

So despite all the rhetoric, the American people get a massive debt burden, the Democrats in Congress get all the spending goodies that have been stored in the closet waiting for the right crisis opportunity, and President Obama gets just the right amount of limelight.  Is that the change you were hoping for?