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

To: FJB who wrote (46210)	9/25/2010 4:02:13 PM
From: Big Black Swan	Respond to of 71588

Excellent article, thanks. (My hero speaks - I loved that book of his, hence my screen name).

To: FJB who wrote (46210)	10/12/2010 11:24:51 PM
From: Peter Dierks	1 Recommendation Respond to of 71588

Finally, Some Hope Republicans show that they're serious about curbing runaway government. SEPTEMBER 29, 2010. By PETE DU PONT How big has the government grown under the Obama administration? "The average level of U.S. government spending as a percentage of GDP from the end of World War II to the present is 19.6 percent," observes the Heritage Foundation. "In the past two years that level has exploded, reaching 24.7 percent in 2009 and an estimated 25.4 in 2010. . . . Without urgent action the U.S. is on course for national bankruptcy." So as Heritage says, the first urgent action is to get government spending under control, something that the current administration has almost no interest in. The next task is to offer concrete plans and proposals to lead our nation to surer economic footing and more job opportunities. As Douglas Schoen and Heather Higgins showed last week in The Wall Street Journal independents want Congress to "decrease the size and scope of government, cut spending and taxes, balance the budget, reduce the federal debt, reduce the power of special interests and unions, repeal and replace the health care legislation, and decrease partisanship." Those are not only good, substantive policies, but come January they will become the challenges for the new Congress, which is very likely to be led by the GOP, since independents in the Schoen-Higgins poll favor Republicans over Democrats by 22 points. Last week the House Republicans put forward a set of concrete ideas in their "Pledge to America." Among their proposals: rolling back government spending to "pre-stimulus, pre-bailout levels," which is projected to save $100 billion in the first year and presumably more in future years is one. Then stopping the new January tax increases and cutting back our huge federal spending growth over--some 25% over the past two years--will help the economy grow more rapidly. As the pledge points out: "Over the past three years, non-security discretionary spending . . . has increased a staggering 88 percent." Reforming entitlement spending--Social Security and Medicare, for example--is another good goal, as is getting the government out of the energy business and regulation. Repealing and replacing ObamaCare is equally important. This partisan law puts 17% of the U.S. economy under federal government control and management. Health-care should be made by individuals not, as the pledge puts it, by the "more than 160 boards, bureaus and commissions" established under ObamaCare. Allowing people to purchase health coverage across state lines, increasing the use of health savings accounts, and undertaking medical liability reform are also included in the Pledge. Another good idea is elimination of the requirement that small businesses "report to the Internal Revenue Service any purchases that run more than $600"--part of the ObamaCare law, though the connection to health care is obscure. That huge influx of information would require an increase in the size and scope of IRS operations, and would drown entrepreneurs in paperwork. The pledge estimates that Democrats in the Obama years "have enacted $680 billion in gross tax increases," including the pending expiration of the Bush tax cuts. Some 31 million families will soon have to pay an average of $1,033 in higher taxes because the child tax credit drops from $1,000 to $500, and 35 million married couples "will pay an average of $595 in higher taxes next year" because of the reinstatement of the marriage penalty. If Congress and the president do nothing, existing tax rates will increase substantially on Jan. 1. Income tax rates will rise from to 15% from 10% for some, to 39.6% from 35% for others. Taxes on capital gains will go to 20% from 15%, on dividends rates to as high as 39.6% from 15%. Nor has Congress addressed the alternative minimum tax problem, so that more than 20 million families may end up paying it. Finally in the new health care bill there is a 3.8% tax on investment income and another 0.9% extra Medicare tax on wages, effective in 2013. Another nasty new wrinkle of ObamaCare: Starting with the 2011 tax year, the W-2 form you get from your employer will include the value of your employer-provided health benefits as well as your wages. That means in the future you may be paying income taxes on your insurance too. All this is now relevant because the House and Senate Democrats who forced the sun-setting of the Bush tax rate reductions have done nothing during this session to stop the coming increases. The good news is that the Democrats are becoming squeamish. Tax increases are becoming very unpopular in a weak economy. Some 37 House Democrats have signed a letter urging the extension of all the Bush tax cuts. Add the 178 House Republicans, and that's just two votes short of a majority (with two seats vacant, the House currently has 433 members). In less than five weeks all House seats and 37 Senate seats will be up for election. Those members who do not support stopping these tax increases will have a difficult time explaining to their frustrated voters why raising taxes is a good idea in a bad economy. With Republicans all but certain to increase their numbers in the election, there's a good chance that tax reform will be next year's biggest public policy argument. A coming tax debate and the Pledge to America will lay out the good-governing principles we should expect if Republicans take control of the House. After two difficult years, it looks as if America's public policies are going to change in a more positive direction. online.wsj.com

To: FJB who wrote (46210)	10/15/2010 10:14:03 AM
From: Peter Dierks	2 Recommendations Respond to of 71588

First the stimulus, now the hangover Last Updated: 12:38 AM, October 12, 2010 Posted: 10:07 PM, October 11, 2010 Nicole Gelinas Last week's dismal jobs figures tell us exactly what the President Obama's stimulus did: It temporarily saved jobs in state and local government -- thereby slowing our recovery. Friday's job scorecard for September -- the last before Election Day -- didn't carry even a hint of an imminent boom. Unemployment stayed at 9.6 percent, with private companies adding 64,000 jobs. And 64,000 jobs is nothing. The economy must create nearly five times that to keep up with population growth and replace 7.6 million jobs lost since 2007. Worse, the new hires were down a third from August -- and the positions were low-paying, in bars, restaurants and retail. The report also told us that people who have jobs aren't working much overtime. That means companies aren't overwhelmed by unexpected business -- and won't need to do a lot of extra hiring for the holidays. The big headlines went to the drop in government jobs. Local and state government lost 83,000 jobs -- the biggest hit in modern history. Teachers lost the most, with school districts cutting nearly 58,000 after summer break. That's terrible for laid-off workers. Life would be better if nobody had to lose a job. And, of course, Washington should provide unemployment benefits, as it does. But government still has to adjust to a new reality, just like every other part of the economy. This adjustment has just begun. Even with the latest losses, state governments around the nation still employ 8 percent more people than they did a decade ago (at the peak of the last financial bubble). At the local level, the figure is 9 percent. That's nearly 1.6 million people added to public payrolls in the last decade. Yes, the US population also grew at about 9 percent over the same period. But the population doesn't pay the taxes that fund public-sector employment. People with private-sector jobs do. And private companies created few new jobs after 2000 -- and then managed to lose them all, and more: Private job growth is minus 2 percent over the last decade -- there's 2.2 million fewer private workers to pay for those 1.6 million new public-sector workers. In short, when it comes to private job growth, the last decade has been a lost decade. A big part of the reason: State and local governments never got around to adjusting to the last recession. After the tech bubble burst, the private sector shed 3.5 percent of its jobs over two years, or nearly 3 million. But the public sector kept on hiring through the early-2000s slump. Politicians added 5 percent (647,000 people) to local payrolls and 3 percent (167,000 people) to state ones. Most of these new workers -- nearly half a million -- were, yes, teachers and education administrators. Back then, because local and state pols chose to spare their workforces the pain, they had to inflict it somewhere else. So states like New York and California spent the early 2000s raising taxes, slashing infrastructure investments and taking on debt. That should have left them with no choice but to start firing public workers two years ago, when the bottom fell out of their tax revenues. (After all, the construction industry depends on the same source of revenue -- property values -- as do local governments, and residential-construction jobs are down 31 percent since 2000.) Instead, the 2009 stimulus law sent more than $220 billion to state and local governments -- without asking them to pare their workforces or workers' benefits. But now the stimulus cash is running out. So the state and local government jobs that it "saved" are starting to disappear, as governments around the nation do what their voters have been doing for three years now -- cutting back. So as President Obama stumps for Democrats, reminding voters that the GOP tried to thwart $26 billion in new stimulus to states this past summer, voters should remember that some harsh public-sector labor austerity now will be good for the economy later -- as it will minimize state and local tax hikes and allow for long-term investment. We can't afford another lost decade -- and neither can the freshly laid-off public workers, who must now find jobs in a growing private sector. Nicole Gelinas is contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute's City Journal. nypost.com