A Cowardly Proposal

President Obama submitted his budget proposal on Monday.  This budget lays out the president's priorities and represents his vision for America.  As a sidenote, it shows that Obama is a coward and a colossal liar.

In 2009, the president made it clear that spending on a large stimulus was needed to end the recession and begin a recovery.  In 2010, his top priority was passing health care reform, which he argued was key to lowering costs.  In 2011, he came to realize that our booming deficits were an issue and pushed for a balanced program of tax increases and spending cuts.

But today, we can honestly say that President Obama is quite simply full of it.  In 2012, he proposes raising taxes well beyond anything ever discussed in the last 30 years and the final result is a larger deficit that last year.  Despite his words to the contrary, this budget makes it clear that raising taxes is not about fairness or lowering the deficit, it is only about spending more money; and spending it on his special interests, not America's interests.

This budget raises the tax deduction for buying an electric vehicle from $7,500 to $10,000.  This deduction has little effect on sales and the average income of those who purchase these $40,000+ cars is $177,000.  At the same time, the President would kill a Washington DC scholarship program for poor children that, by all marks, is succeeding. 

So the president who once said that he only cared about what works, has decided that putting more money into a failed effort for the rich is more important than a successful program for poor children.

When Obama took office he said that he would cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term.  Instead he doubled it.  If passed this budget would raise revenue from 15.4% of GDP to 20.1%, far above the post-WWII average of 18% and yet he spends even more, raising the projected deficit to $1.39 trillion.

The president has said that we need to temporarily spend more to fight this current crisis, yet his budget lays out a ten year plan that never spends less than 22% of GDP and is nearly 23% in 2022.  Given that spending was as low as 18% under Clinton, there is no way to call such a spending spree temporary.

The tax increases he proposes are unrealistic.  Dividend income would rise from it's current 15% to 39.6%.  The president has spent much time talking about the so-called Buffett rule that would tax the wealthy at a 30% minimum, but that is found nowhere here.  Why?  Because for Obama, 30% wasn't really enough.  With certain phaseouts on deductions, the actual tax rate for the wealthy will now be nearly 45%.  Is there a better way to kill economic activity than this?

Remember when Bill Clinton talked about the peace dividend from the end of the Cold War?  That peace dividend under Speaker Gringich went a long way toward balancing our budget.  President Obama's budget would make deep cuts in our defense budget, but this peace dividend would be transferred into more green boondoggles and high-speed rail projects. 

So what we have is a budget that would raise taxes beyond the thinkable, cut defense and still lose more money than before.  President Obama's budget claims to cut spending and lower the deficit but it doesn't.  He claims that this is a vision for an America built to last, but it isn't.  President Obama has talked a big game about being responsible and remaining true to our American values, but this budget makes that a lie; and the president is a coward for not having the temerity to level with the American people and tell them the truth.

Remembering 2006 - When $296 billion was a lot of money

Later today as President Obama submits a budget that will show a 4th consecutive year of $1 trillion plus deficts, it's helpful to put that into perspective.  Here is how ThinkProgress described President GW Bush's 2006 budget with a projected deficit of $296 billion:

Today, the Office of Management Budget projected a $296 billion federal deficit for fiscal year 2006. Bush held a press conference arguing that this is a vindication of his economic policies.
Actually, it would be the fourth largest deficit of all time. Here’s the top five:

1. 2004 (George W. Bush) $413 billion
2. 2003 (George W. Bush) $378 billion
3. 2005 (George W. Bush) $318 billion
4. 2006 (George W. Bush) $296 billion (projected)
5. 1992 (George H. W. Bush) $290 billion

In other words, Bush's 2006 budget (the last with a Republican majority) was not only on a downward trend over several years, but was similar to a budget deficit from 14 years prior. 

I will not be the first to defend Bush from the charge of being a big spender.  But despite the terrorists attacks and already burgeoning recession in 2001, policies were in place to bring spending under some modicum of control.  The following years of the Bush Presidency saw a democratic Congress, so the outlying years naturally told a different story even though it topped out at just under $500 billion.

What Obama proposes today will not be the actual budget that passes Congress.  Thankfully we now have a Republican Congress and a real hope of bringing the annual budget back under the $1 trillion mark.  But wouldn't it be nice if we could all be complaining about a record Obama deficit that was at least similar to any. other. President. we've. ever. had.  

Perhaps with a leader who actually cares about such things, we might even have a democrat-controlled Senate that would actually pass a budget - something that hasn't happened in three years.  Perhaps if the President could simply understand that free doesn't really mean free, we wouldn't have so many new "free" programs and mandates.  Perhaps if the President understood that the axiom "you have to spend money to make money" only works in the private sector.  Perhaps if the President wasn't too busy transforming America into something unrecognizable, he might notice we are in a perilous position.  Perhaps if the President cared about America as he does about himself.....well, nevermind.


UPDATE:  The budget has been released.  For an early analysis check out Veronique du Rugy's post on NRO's The Corner.

America Lost.....?

Now that the Obama administration has formally put in place new regulations stipulating that all health insurance plans will now have contraception coverage provided for free regardless of the wishes of the purchaser of the plan, at least we can look toward one silver lining.  The Federal government no longer needs to continue funding Planned Parenthood, right?  Sure, and I have some other Obama "compromises" I'd like to tell you about.

It's hard to pinpoint the exact moment, we stopped being America, but perhaps future generations will celebrate February 10th.  On that date, it became clear that we are no longer a free people.  Coincidentally, or not, that was also the date in 2007 that one Senator Barak Obama made his announcement that he would run for President of the United States of America.  Little did we know that he would be the last one.

Thus far, this President:

• has fired a private company's CEO
• played Robinhood by stealing the equity of a company from it's owners and gave it to it's workers
• had the head of the EPA to tell the American people what type of car they want to buy
• squashed energy production which raised energy prices in an attempt to force a transformation of supply
• mandated that every citizen purchase health insurance against their will
• told employers what health coverage plans must be offered and set fines for employers who don't offer health coverage
• told insurers what plans it may offer and that certain services must be offered free of charge to certain users
• forced banks to accept modify home loans against their will

This President has continually threatened banks, auto companies, the carbon energy sector, wealthy taxpayers and corporations, as well as average citizens.  In almost every instance, Obama felt free to take action due to the need to respond to a certain crisis or imminent issue.  But this week that argument cannot be made.  There is no crisis in access to birth control; not when Wal-Mart's pharmacy will sell you a birth control pack for $12.

Today, we can no longer kid ourselves into believing that we are citizens of the United States of America - we are now her subjects.  Once upon a time, being an American citizen meant that one were free to live one's life in the full knowledge that the U.S. Constitution held certain guarantees of rights that were not given by the state and could not be taken by the state.  But as her subjects today, we see that the President believes that those limitations placed on him by our constitution are not only unnecessary, but an impediment to achieving the results he desires.

That the former state legislator who voted to allow children born alive following a botched abortion to be killed, because it was unfair that the child survived despite the intentions of the mother, has no understanding of the issue of conscience and the Freedom of Religion in the 1st amendment of the Bill of Rights should come as no surprise.  

That this former candidate, who admitted on the campaign trail that he wished to raise the capital gains tax rate despite the likelihood of a decrease in revenue out of a sense of fairness, now wants to target only certain people for a special tax on them for the sake of fairness, it could not be unexpected.

That this President, who in his recent State of the Union address stated that when Congress would not act, he would, is now using his unconstitutional Health Care reform act as a vehicle to change the relationship of government and citizen, we can no longer be shocked.

The only question I have is whether we will look back at February 10th as the day America was lost or if that was the day the American people, the Congress and the Supreme Court heard the call to action and were moved to rescue her.