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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DuckTapeSunroof who wrote (45232)	8/26/2010 12:18:46 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

What's driving current and projected future deficits is spending. That primarily is from entitlements which (except for Medicare Part D which is a relatively small portion of either the total spending or the total projected increase in spending) are not Bush era policies. The part that is from Bush's policies is also primarily spending (and primarily non-military spending, although military spending is not insignificant as a contributor). The tax cuts, even using static calculation of the reduction in revenue, ignoring the economic benefits of lower taxes, are small compared to the increase of spending. The war in Iraq is a temporary expense, and costs less than the total of the bailout and stimulus spending (some of which was pushed by the Bush administration, some by Obama), and much less than the increase in entitlement spending over the years Ruffing and Horney are looking at (to 2019). The war in Afghanistan is also temporary, and costs less than Iraq. Spending increased from $1.8 tril to $3.8 tril (in the current budget proposal, actual spending will likely wind up at least very slightly more than that) so far this century. That's a $2tril a year increase. No measurement of the level of reduced revenue from the tax cuts, combined with the costs of the two wars, and even combined with the cost of the increase in non-war military spending, comes close to being a large fraction of $2tril a year. So its obvious the drivers of the higher deficits where to this point, and will be for near future, the increase in non-military spending. Yes a large portion of that non-military spending increase happened when Bush was president, so it can be called "Bush-era policies", but the important question is what policies, not who was president when they where implemented. And going forward they are Obama's policies not Bush's. (Except the very large portion that's from pre-Bush entitlements which is due to the policies of FDR, and LBJ, and the congresses of their times, and to a lesser extent other presidents and congresses who changed the programs later). The policies that drove the deficits where the increases in spending. Obama has built on Bush's failures in this area, and is adding even more spending. He's taking the worst of Bush and making it worse. The fact that much of the current deficit can be connected to "Bush era policies" (but not "most of" since Bush didn't create the entitlements except the relatively small Medicare part D, and he was bashed from the Democrats on that one for not spending more government money on it), doesn't change the fact that the policies that caused the problem are in broad terms the same as Obama's current policies.

To: DuckTapeSunroof who wrote (45232)	9/1/2010 9:57:36 AM
From: Peter Dierks	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

The White House war on jobs By: Michelle Malkin Examiner Columnist August 25, 2010 Obama's "Summer of Recovery" is looking more and more like the Beltway Chainsaw Massacre for America's workers. As the president lolls on Martha's Vineyard with his well-heeled Chicago pals, a new Reuters/Ipsos poll shows that 72 percent of people are very worried about joblessness and 67 percent are very concerned about massive government spending. After a nearly $1 trillion fiscal stimulus and several multibillion-dollar corporate and union bailouts, unemployment remains stuck near 10 percent nationwide; jobless claims rose again last week. One shudders to think how many more jobs will be on the chopping block after the vacationing president finishes "recharging his batteries." The blame-avoidance industry, of course, never takes a break. Capitol Hill Democrats blame President Bush. Obama blames inaction by the, er, Democrat-controlled Congress. On Tuesday, Vice President Biden derided House Minority Leader John Boehner's, R-Ohio, speech on the Obama job-killing machine as a return to the past. Biden sneered about the "good old days" when Republicans held the majority in Washington. But laid-off, unemployed and endangered Americans in the health care sector, the auto industry, and the oil, mining, gas, and fishing industries are no doubt wondering: What's wrong with returning to the days when we had jobs and steady paychecks? These are not the wealthy fat cats and Big Business titans Democrats love to demonize. They're employees of companies like Assurant Health, which announced last week that it would slash 130 jobs at its offices in Milwaukee and Plymouth, Minn., to prepare for costly Obamacare mandates. They're employees of medical device firms in Massachusetts, where officials say they'll be forced to cut back on operational costs and jobs thanks to a little-noticed Obamacare tax on their products that goes into effect in 2013. They're employees of restaurants like White Castle and International House of Pancakes, whose executives say they will be forced into layoffs and premium increases to cope with the federal law's $3,000-per-employee penalty on companies whose workers pay more than 9.5 percent of household income in premiums for company-provided insurance. They're mom-and-pop enterprises across the country that must now deal with Obamacare's onerous Section 9006 tax-filing mandate. It requires them to file 1099 forms with the Internal Revenue Service for every vendor from whom they purchase $600 or more in goods. Nebraska GOP Sen. Mike Johanns calls it one of many "job-crushing provisions" that will bury small business in paperwork and legal costs. They're the estimated 23,000 workers in the deepwater drilling industry whom the White House deliberately wrote off in pursuit of its junk science-based drilling moratorium. They're the estimated tens of thousands of workers employed by car dealers that were shut down by Obama's auto czars at a time, as the Troubled Asset Relief Program inspector general pointed out last month, "when the country was experiencing the worst economic downturn in generations and the government was asking its taxpayers to support a $787 billion stimulus package designed primarily to preserve jobs... -- all based on a theory and without sufficient consideration of the decisions' broader economic impact." They're employees of Utah oil and gas companies whose leases have been pulled without cause by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. The Interior Department's own Inspector General rejected Salazar's explanation that the Bush administration had rushed the leases through. The Deseret News reports that "rescinding these leases has likely cost the state millions already. Officials in Uintah County estimate the county lost 3,000 jobs in 2009, and Duchesne lost 1,000 jobs." They're employees of commercial and recreational fishing businesses in New England, who have organized a flotilla on Martha's Vineyard on Thursday to protest the Obama administration's restrictive environmental policies and stealth regulatory ocean grab. The White House has invested mightily in creating a propaganda infrastructure to tout its "jobs saved or created." Taxpayers need a full, transparent accounting of how many jobs Team Obama has destroyed. Call it Wreckovery.gov. Examiner Columnist Michelle Malkin, author of "Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks & Cronies," is nationally syndicated by Creator Syndicate. washingtonexaminer.com