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

To: Hope Praytochange who wrote (50092)	3/21/2012 9:08:23 AM
From: Peter Dierks	3 Recommendations Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 71588

Ryan Makes Hard Choices Obama & Dems Won't Ryan, Obama budgets offer radically opposed visions of America Tue, 2012-03-20 18:46 House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin did something Tuesday that President Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and other Democratic congressional leaders refuse to do -- propose a 2013 federal budget that makes the hard choices needed if America is to regain its economic vitality and avoid becoming Greece. At least Obama did propose a 2013 budget earlier this year; Reid and his Democratic colleagues in Congress haven't done that in three years. Unfortunately, the president's approach makes all the wrong choices, opting to increase spending, taxes and debt without regard to the consequences. Worse still is the fact that the Obama budget, if adopted, would add immensely to the difficulties facing his successors in the Oval Office, to say nothing of the children and grandchildren of today's taxpayers. On spending, for example, the Obama budget increases federal spending every year, for a total of $1.5 trillion over the next decade. Ryan's "Path to Prosperity" decreases federal spending by $3.5 trillion. On the federal deficit, not only does Obama propose the fourth-straight year with a federal deficit of at least $1 trillion, his budget projects oceans of red ink as far as an accountant's eye can see. The Ryan budget goes in the opposite direction by progressively reducing the deficit by $3 trillion over a decade, compared with the Obama proposal, and puts the government's ledger on the way to being balanced thereafter. On the national debt, which currently stands at nearly $17 trillion, the Obama budget piles an additional $11 trillion (assuming that China and other international creditors will lend us the money), while the Ryan approach reduces the debt every year for the next decade and makes it reasonable to foresee it being eliminated entirely by 2050. Finally, and perhaps most significantly, the federal government's share of the gross domestic product would swell to 23 percent and remain there or higher for the foreseeable future if the Obama budget became law. Under the Ryan plan, the government share of GDP would drop to 20 percent and remain at that level or less in the following years. To put all this data in an understandable format, readers are encouraged to study the chart that accompanies this editorial. While it was made available by the House Budget Committee, the chart simply graphs data provided by the Congressional Budget Office and the Office of Management and Budget. Note that the red ink of national debt produced by the Obama budget blows past 100 percent of GDP by 2020 and then literally goes off the chart. The debt under the Ryan approach -- the green area of the chart -- does the exact opposite, decreasing every year thereafter. The two budgets represent starkly different visions of the role of government -- and of America's future. washingtonexaminer.com

To: Hope Praytochange who wrote (50092)	3/26/2012 2:50:56 AM
From: greatplains_guy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

Now that is funny. It seems to hit the high points and low points of Obama's need to distract people from his record of failures.

To: Hope Praytochange who wrote (50092)	9/10/2012 9:58:44 PM
From: greatplains_guy	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

Employment Is Worse than During the Recession 8:25 AM, Sep 10, 2012 • By JEFFREY H. ANDERSON In one of President Obama's TV ads, Bill Clinton says that the key question in this election is which candidate can figure out how "to return us to full employment." But as the federal government's own figures show, Obama might want to start by first figuring out how to get us back to the level of employment that we had during the recession. According to figures released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), only 58.3 percent of Americans over the age of 16 are currently employed. That's the lowest percentage in the past year—so things are getting worse, not better. But things haven't just gotten worse over the past 12 months; they've also gotten worse since the recession ostensibly ended and the recovery ostensibly began. In fact, for an amazing 38 consecutive months, the percentage of Americans who are employed has been lower than the percentage who were employed during the recession. According to the BLS, the low-water mark for employment during the recession was 59.4 percent, while the high-water mark for employment during the "recovery" has been 59.3 percent. That's right: When it comes to the percentage of Americans who are employed, every month of the "recovery" has been worse than any month of the recession. During George W. Bush's presidency, the portion of Americans who were employed was always over 60 percent—every single month, for eight consecutive years. The portion of Americans who are employed dipped below the 60-percent mark only under Obama, and it has now remained there for more than three consecutive years. So, to recap, the percentage of Americans who are employed is now lower, not higher, than it was a year ago. It's now lower, not higher, than it was during the recession. And it's now lower, not higher, than it was under Obama's predecessor. All of this begs two questions: What, exactly, did that $831,000,000,000 in debt-financed "stimulus" spending buy us? And is it merely a coincidence that since the Obamacare debate heated up in June 2009, the portion of Americans who are employed has never again hit 60 percent? weeklystandard.com This really akes one question what blaming it on Bush means. Is Obama really saying it is Bush's fault that a few people still have jobs?