Quote of the Day

"Somehow I feel like Michael Moore just told me to eat more salads."

-- Robert Stacy McCain on Barack Obama lecturing America on federal spending and fiscal responsibility.

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You Lie

President Obama's misplaced budget priorities may be the result of his misdiagnosing the cause of the deficits. During his State of the Union speech, the President asserted that "by the time I took office, we had a one-year deficit of over $1 trillion and projected deficits of $8 trillion over the next decade. Most of this was the result of not paying for two wars, two tax cuts, and an expensive prescription drug program."

This is simply not true.

The policies mentioned by President Obama were implemented in the early 2000s. Yet even with all those policies in place, the 2007 budget deficit stood at only $162 billion. The trillion-dollar deficits did not begin until 2009 (driven by financial bailouts, stimulus, and declining revenues) as the recession hit its trough.

And the policies mentioned by the President certainly could not be responsible for most of the trillion-deficits over the next decade, given that most war spending will phased out by then and the tax cuts and Medicare drug benefit are expected to cost a combined 2 percent of GDP over the next decade--even as the baseline budget deficit rises past 8 percent of GDP.

Still, it is hypocritical of Obama to rail about ANY deficit spending under the Bush administration, when his own policies will create more debt than has been created by all of the presidents who held office before him ... combined.

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Spending America Into Oblivion

From American Spectator (Spectator.org)

By Peter Ferrara on 2.3.10 @ 6:08AM

At the invitation of the Republicans, President Obama spoke at the Republican retreat last Friday. During the following Q & A, Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas rose to ask the final question: "You are soon to submit a new budget, Mr. President. Will that new budget, like your old budget, triple the national debt and continue to take us down the path of increasing the cost of government to almost 25 percent of our economy."

Rep. Hensarling's statements regarding President Obama's budget last year, supported by almost every Democrat, including those supposedly fiscal conservative "Blue Dog" Democrats, were completely accurate, taken directly from the analysis of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). That 25% of our economy refers only to the cost of the federal government. State and local government adds over 50% more, increasing the total cost of government in America to almost 40% of GDP already.

But President Obama responded as if the question were completely illegitimate, saying, "I've just got to take this last question as an example of how it's very hard to have the kind of bipartisan work that we're going to do, because the whole question was structured as a talking point for running a campaign."

On Monday, President Obama publicly submitted his new budget. That budget forthrightly answers Rep. Hensarling's question, even though President Obama would not in the light of a national TV broadcast. President Obama's own budget confesses that it would more than triple the national debt from $5.8 trillion at the end of 2008 to $18.6 trillion by 2020.

Indeed, it would almost double the national debt in just four years from 2008, to $11.5 trillion in 2012. The budget also confesses that under President Obama's first three years, 2009-2011, the federal government will borrow over $4.2 trillion. As the Wall Street Journalreported last week, "That is more than the entire accumulated national debt for the first 225 years of U.S. history."

During the glorious 2008 campaign for hope and change, then candidate Obama harshly criticized George Bush for running $3.3 trillion in deficits over his eight years in office. But President Obama's new budget confesses that he will run up that much in deficits in just two years and three months. Moreover, as Brian Riedl of the Heritage Foundation reported on Monday, "President Obama would run up more debt over his eight years than all other Presidents in American history -- from George Washington to George Bush -- combined."

But at the Republican retreat, when he was on national television, President Obama refused to take responsibility for any of this. Further responding to Rep. Hensarling, who had said, "what were the old annual deficits under Republicans became the monthly deficits under Democrats," President Obama said that "had nothing to do with anything we had done." He went on to repeat basically what he had said during his State of the Union Address earlier in the week, "By the time I took office, we had a one year deficit of over $1 trillion and projected deficits of $8 trillion over the next decade. Most of this was the result of not paying for two wars, two tax cuts, and an expensive prescription drug program."

Heritage's Riedl corrected President Obama on Monday, saying, "This is simply not true. The policies mentioned by President Obama were implemented in the early 2000s. Yet even with all those policies in place, the 2007 budget deficit stood at only $162 billion."

President Obama's budget admits a federal deficit for 2010 of $1.6 trillion, ten times as much as that 2007 deficit of $162 billion, which was the deficit for the last budget adopted by Republican Congressional majorities. This was where Hensarling got his statement that the annual deficits under the Republicans had become the monthly deficits under the Democrats, to which President Obama wrongly responded, "that's factually just not true, and you know it's not true."

But the truth is that President Obama's $1.6 trillion deficit for 2010 is the largest in world history, rising still more from last year's record $1.4 trillion deficit. And this record 2010 deficit assumes continued record low interest rates this year on our gargantuan national debt. If interest rates rise, then federal spending and deficits will explode still further due to interest costs on that debt. The Obama budget already projects that net interest spending will soar to $840 billion by 2020, more than four times current levels.

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Spending Bill Passes

By now, you already know that congress has passed a trillion-dollar-plus spending package that will raise the national debt so high that our grandchildren's grandchildren will be working three jobs o pay for it. What you may not have heard, and what the media has not been reporting, may startle you...

The omnibus spending bill would lift the 13-year-long ban on directly paying for abortions in the nation's capital. The legislation, which President Barack Obama is expected to sign, also contains funding for Planned Parenthood and the UNFPA.

The Senate passed the bill, which funds several federal government departments, by a 57-35 vote, with Democrats backing the measure and most Republicans opposing it.

Passage of the measure today was no surprise given that Democrats won a filibuster battle on a narrow 60-34 vote that saw Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Thad Cochran of Mississippi and Richard Shelby of Alabama side with Democrats to move ahead to a vote on the bill.

Those same three Republicans voted for the bill and three Democrats, pro-abortion Sens. Evan Bayh of Indiana, Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, all voted against it for other reasons.

Shelby voted for the bill even though he signed a letter along with 35 other Republicans saying they would filibuster it because of the abortion funding. Collins and Cochran did not sign the letter.

Democrats held open the vote to allow ailing pro-abortion Sen. Robert Byrd to come to the Senate to vote and for pro-abortion Sen. Joseph Lieberman to walk from synagogue to support it.

Several pro-life organizations called on members of the Senate to oppose the bill because it overturned the Dornan Amendment that has prohibited taxpayer funding of abortions in the District of Columbia.

Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council called the bill "a Christmas gift to Planned Parenthood" and "supporters of coercive abortion."

“This appropriations bill guts a longstanding prohibition on using public funds to pay for abortions in the District of Columbia," Charmaine Yoest of Americans United for Life complained in a statement to LifeNews.com.

"The bill also provides millions of dollars for international 'family planning' that could be directed to organizations that pay for and promote abortions. A majority of Americans do not support the use of their tax dollars to pay for abortions," she said.

The bill also appropriates $648.5 million for international family planning funding, an increase of $103 million from Fiscal Year 2009, without the constraints of the Mexico City Policy to prevent these dollars from being provided to organizations that promote and perform abortions.

The bill also increases funding for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), which has an admittedly pro-abortion agenda and has been criticized for working hand-in-hand with Chinese population control officials, to $55 million, a $5 million increase from FY09.

Perkins' group also said that the bill cuts abstinence education funding.

The Senate, today, passed a $1.1 trillion spending bill which doesn't include money for the military, the money for which will be subject to another vote and is expected to be $626 billion.

The bill also:

--permits detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba to be transferred to the United States to stand trial but not to be released.

-- voids a long-standing ban on the funding of abortion by the District of Columbia

-- phases out a D.C. school voucher program and opens the door for the city to permit medical marijuana.

-- lifts a nationwide ban on the use of federal funds for needle-exchange programs which allows addicts to exchange needles used for injecting drugs.

-- gives federal workers pay increases averaging 2 percent, with those in high costs areas getting slightly higher increases.

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Medicare Fraud Blamed on Low Admin Spending

Last night, "60 Minutes" reported on the issue of rampant medicare fraud, and if you haven't seen the stunning report, I urge you to find and watch the video. After investigating the matter, even CBS acknowledged that it raised "troubling questions about our government's ability to manage a medical bureaucracy."

For the story, Steve Kroft traveled down to South Florida, where the Medicare fraud industry has become bigger than the drug trade, and visited a number of so-called clinics that billed millions of dollars to Medicare but were actually empty store fronts. He interviewed a Medicare cheat who stole $20 million from the government before getting caught, who described it as being so easy to steal that it was like "taking candy from a baby." And the show also visited with an elderly woman who in 2003 discovered phony health care charges being paid out in her name by the federal government. Even though she has been reporting these recurring charges to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for the past 6 years, no action has been taken by the government to stop the fraudulent payments.

The most relevant moment to our current health care debate came when Kroft asked Kim Brandt, Medicare's director of program integrity, to explain why the government couldn't do anything to prevent the widespread fraud.

"Well, it really does come down to the size and scope of the Medicare program, and the resources that are dedicated to oversight and anti fraud work," Brandt said. "One of our biggest challenges has been that we have a program that pays out over a billion claims a year, over $430 billion, and our oversight budget has been extremely limited."

Liberals keep touting Medicare's low administrative costs relative to the private sector. To start with, those estimates exclude a number of costs that show up elsewhere in the federal budget (office rent, staff salaries, the cost of raising capital through tax collection). But to the extent that the program does have lower administrative costs, the result is far more fraud than exists in the private sector, which is more aggressive about policing claims. Estimates of the amount stolen from the government each year vary from about $60 billion to several hundred billion if you include Medicaid.

That being the case, I would love for someone to explain to me how creating a multi-trillion dollar government insurance boondoggle is going to save us money by cracking down on fraud and abuse.

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Your Stimulus Tax Dollars (future tax dollars) Hard At Work...

Contracts – Recipient Summary

CLOUGHERTY PACKING, LLC

Clarification of Codes

Award Overview

Agency Name	Department of Agriculture	Project Location	LOS ANGELES
Contract Number	AG3J14120297196	Project Location – State	CA
Funding Amount	$1,191,200	Project Location – Zip Code	90058-1800
Completion Date	2009-06-30	Congressional District	CA-34

Recipient Information (Award)

Recipient Name	CLOUGHERTY PACKING, LLC	Recipient Address	3049 E VERNON AVE
Recipient City	LOS ANGELES	Recipient State	CALIFORNIA
Recipient Zip Code	90058-1800	Congressional District	CALIFORNIA-34

Description of Work/Service performed

2 POUND FROZEN HAM SLICED

...So, if I agree to slice a three pound frozen ham, will they pay me $2 MILLION?????

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Taking Joe's Advice

You will notice that I didn't blog much today. I took today off to go shopping.

I saw Joe Biden on TV today saying that the government has to spend more money to keep from going bankrupt.

So I went on a shopping spree. I noticed my checking account was low. In fact, I don't have much in there at all. So I went out and bought some clothes. I got jeans at GAP and I spent some time (and money) at Macy's. I also found some jewelry that I just couldn't resist. Had lunch at Friday's.

Now I get home and I'm watching Newt on Hannity.

I may have made a mistake. They are suggesting, for some reason, that this may not work.



Uh oh.

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The Cost of War

According to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), all of the major U.S. wars, including such events as the American Revolution, the War of 1812, the Civil War, the Spanish American War, World War I, WW II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan (but not the invasion of Panama or the Kosovo War) cost a total of $7.2 trillion in inflation adjusted 2008 dollars.

That's a lot of money. 

Those on the left like to point out how much the military costs and how that affects the national debt and the U.S. economy. In fact, it has been a strong undertone during the past six to seven years that George W. Bush was undermining the U.S. economy with two wars that cost millions of dollars every month.

Fair enough.

Just F.Y.I, the total value of the bailouts undertaken by the federal government during our current economic cycle has exceeded the combined cost of every major war the United States has ever engaged in. According to a comparison of war costs calculated by the CRS and the value of the bailouts as calculated by Bloomberg News.  

In fact the cost of the bailouts before the Obama inauguration (totals for bailout funds during the year 2008 only)  exceeded the costs of all the major wars mentioned above. While the numbers have not yet been compiled, it would appear that the cost of bailouts for 2008 and 2009 combined may exceed the cost of all military actions (including minor ones) since before we were officially even a nation.

(Figures do not include cold war spending or the cost of maintaining the military not used in conflict.)

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Obamaspeak

In pushing for the Generational Theft Act back in January, Obama claimed he would "create or save" so many jobs that we'd all be swimming in work. Now that unemployment has topped 9% (and is rising), the administration is still parroting the "created or saved" mantra. Of course, there's no way to back that up, and most reasonable people are skeptical, since they cannot point to a single private sector job that has been created or saved. 

Yesterday, Obama tried to make the claim that the news media was being unfair to him. 

Yeah, right. That claim is not even worth arguing. Even the liberals acknowledge it. The editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, himself an avowed liberal, admitted that it was getting so bad that Obama and the media "ought to get a room."

Obama's philosophy seems to be that if you tell a lie, make it a big one, keep a straight face, and repeat it often.

On Monday, Obama said that his budget proposals will take the country "all the way to covering the full cost of health care reform."

"????!!!!!"

How's he going to do that. His budget proposals can't even pay for the deficits he's creating without health care reform. Even his extremely optimistic projections have the national debt quadrupling during his term in office.

Still, in and address to the AMA in Chicago, he made the claim that the program would be "fully paid for" and that the $950 billion in savings and revenue that he's put forward will cover the cost of the program. The added that this amount does not include "longer term savings" from prevention programs and other strategies.

Is it any wonder that people are losing confidence in Obama's management of the economy?

By the way, the CBO doesn't seem to buy in. Their analysis of Obama's program suggests a cost of over $1 trillion and they are saying that would still reduce the number of uninsured Americans by only about half. Furthermore, they say that one of the Health Care Reform bills that Congress is looking at would cost over $1.6 trillion. Meanwhile Health Systems Innovations Network, a consulting group estimated the full cost of a bill that included subsidies and Medicaid expansion and would reduce the number of uninsured by 99 percent. That bill would cost the American taxpayer $4 trillion. 

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Roads Plan Was Oversold In Stimulus Package

A top congressional Democrat now says that the White House oversold the "roads-and-bridges" component of the historic Porkulus/Spendulus/Stimulus package earlier this year. 

That's the way the news media are spinning the story, anyway (minus my litte dig using "porkulus" and "spendulus.") To phrase it the way some of us outside of the DC belt might say it ... "Obama lied about the stimulus package."

Surprised?  I hope not.

An Associated Press analysis of the first $19 billion in transportation spending showed that communities most in need of jobs are least likely to benefit from the program. (The report said nothing regarding communities most in need of roads and bridges, which is what it should have addressed.) 

A spokesman for Minnesota Representative James Oberstar (Democrat), who leads the House Transportation and Infrastructure committee, said that the White House shouldn't have advertised the money designated for roads, bridges and infrastructure as the signature component of the bill, or as a surefire way to boost needy communities.

Do you suppose Mr. Oberstar will remember this when it comes time to vote for another big bill ... say the big government takeover of the nations' health care system that appears to be coming down the pike? I wouldn't count on it.

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Obama Goes After Wasteful Spending

Mr. Obama and his advisers know the public won't accept gigantic governmental expansions without at least some effort to pare the waste in Washington. So they scrubbed "line by line" through this historically huge budget and identified $16.7 billion of budget savings. This is less than a penny, about 0.47 cents, of savings out of every dollar Uncle Sam will spend this year. And these aren't real savings that will reduce debt, because Congress has already fixed the budget totals. Thus, each dollar saved from the African Development Foundation gets reallocated to some other foreign aid program.

To be fair, most of the 121 program "terminations, reductions and savings" that the President recommends make good sense, and we wish Congress godspeed in eliminating them. By all means have done with the Denali Job Training program (savings of $3 million) and USDA Public Broadcasting Grants ($5 million), and payments to high-income farmers ($58 million).

But Mr. Obama's war on government waste looks like a war on paper clips. Three-quarters of the cuts come from the national defense budget, not domestic agencies. Of the 10-year savings of $71 billion in entitlement programs -- now with a mind-numbing $62.9 trillion unfunded liability over the long-term -- one-third of the cutbacks aren't cuts at all. They are tax increases, mostly on the oil and gas industry.

One cut gives the word "savings" new meaning. The Obama budget will "save" taxpayers $290 million a year by increasing the IRS enforcement agency budget by $890 million. "Targeted enforcement resources more than pay for themselves," says the budget, in the first case of dynamic scoring by the Democrats since the Kennedy Administration.

Mr. Obama has scoffed at critics who complain these savings are inconsequential. "I guess that's considered trivial," he explained. "Outside of Washington [$17 billion] is still considered a lot of money." Yes, Mr. Obama himself signed a budget bill with 9,000 earmarks costing more than $13 billion and then justified the expenditure by declaring these levels of waste minor in the grand scheme of things.

We now live in a time when tens of billions of dollars has become a blip or rounding error in the federal budget. The Administration has said it's time to take action in reducing America's "$12 trillion American Express bill." We agree, but at this pace, with $16.7 billion of savings a year and even assuming no new debt, it will take centuries to pay off Uncle Sam's credit card.

(From the Wall Street Journal)

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Obama's Biggest Lie

As a continuation of the review of last night's presser, I wanted to add the following: Obama's biggest lie from last night; a lie unchallenged by the willing participants in the media.

While Obama spent very little time talking about the economy, he did make a point to say that he "inherited" huge deficits from the Bush administration. He wants to perpetuate this myth because he knows that the national debt and the deficits are going to grow beyond where he has taken them in his first 100 days.  He's already tripled the deficits the government was running under Bush.

Obama isn't an idiot.  He knows that the deficit spending and the huge government debt will have a detrimental effect on the economy. He's blasted Bush for this very thing. He also knows that his economic policies will grow the annual federal deficit by hundreds of billions of dollars over what it was when he took office. Furthermore, he knows that if he keeps repeating the lie that it's all Bush's fault often enough, the media will not question that point and will continue to record that the federal deficits, which may top several trillion dollars a year before he leaves office, were all Bush's fault.

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Obama in Mexico

If you've watched the news this week, you already know that Obama is making his first trip to Mexico to talk about borders and drugs.

What the media isn't reporting is the timing of the trip.

It appears that Obama and his teleprompter wanted to be out of the country on April 15 ... and for good reason.  This is the week that most of his cabinet celebrate their windfall from not paying taxes, and the week that many Americans voice their concern over excessive government spending.  By being out of the country, Obama avoids many embarrassing questions over the increase in the size of government, our national debt, deficit spending, and pork barrel earmarks.

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Colorado extending benefits to illegals

A proposal to grant in-state tuition to illegal immigrants passed out of a Colorado state Senate committee this week after Democrats moved up a vote on the bill to coincide with a Republican opponent's absence from the state on a family emergency.

Republican state Sen. Ted Harvey's father-in-law has Alzheimer's disease and his health began deteriorating so rapidly early this week that Mr. Harvey was forced to take a few days off to transport the ailing man from Florida to Colorado.

Even so, Mr. Harvey had planned to return to the state legislature in time for Friday's Appropriations Committee vote on Senate Bill 170, the in-state tuition bill. He had also planned to vote against it, which would have resulted in a 5-5 tie that would have killed the legislation.

Instead, the committee's Democratic chairman, state Sen. Abel Tapia, seized the opportunity and rescheduled the vote for Wednesday. Without Mr. Harvey, the bill passed 5-4 and now heads to the Senate floor.

Other Republicans on the Appropriations Committee tried to stop the early vote, but were stymied by Democrats. Mr. Tapia told Denver's Fox TV affiliate later that the vote was rescheduled so that the committee could clear its backlog of bills.

The bill's sponsor, Democratic state Sen. Chris Romer, son of former Colorado Gov. Roy Romer, argued that there was no reason to wait until Friday because the Appropriations Committee is charged only with weighing the legislation's fiscal impact.

Democrats have argued that the bill would have a positive effect on the state budget because more students would be attending state universities and thus paying tuition. Republicans counter that the state will lose money because those students would ordinarily be paying the higher out-of-state tuition rate.

Republicans were outraged, accusing the Democrats of taking advantage of Mr. Harvey's difficult personal circumstances.

Mr. Harvey's office did not immediately return a call for comment Thursday.

The bill could now come up for a vote before the full Senate as early as Thursday, although it must still win approval in the House before going before the governor.

Democrats control both chambers, and passage by the Senate appropriations committee was widely considered the biggest hurdle the bill faced.

Democratic Gov. Bill Ritter has said he will sign the bill, which would give in-state tuition to illegal immigrants who have attended a Colorado high school for at least three years. The students must also attend college within one year of graduation or earning their GED.

Nine states now have similar laws, although many are awaiting court challenges.

This story highlights one of the major problems I have with the Democraps and their party.  They don't understand that the term "Illegal alien" includes the word "illegal" and the implications of that.  There is no way that any government agency or branch should be discussing benefits to people, who by their very definition are breaking the law.  Instead, they should be debating ways to identify and deporting these people.  And WHY in the world are we spending government funds on illegal aliens in a time of economic crisis?

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