President Obama’s speech today was reminiscent of Stalin’s Order Number 227 to the Russian generals at the Battle of Stalingrad: “Not One Step Backward.”
Essentially, the president declared that he still wants to raise taxes, that he is opposed to any substantive changes to entitlements — oh, and he wants to raise taxes. He did suggest that if somehow he hasn’t been able to cut spending by 2014 (anyone taking bets?), he would appoint a commission to recommend spending cuts and (surprise) tax increases. A commission: Now there’s an original idea.
But the president’s speech does accomplish one thing. As he intended, it draws a clear distinction between his ideas and those of his opponents such as Paul Ryan. The president wants to spend (or as he repeatedly put it “invest”) more and raise taxes to pay for it. As I wrote this morning, he envisions a smaller debt but a much bigger government. Congressman Ryan, in contrast, envisions a smaller debt as part of a smaller government that leaves both more money and more responsibility in the hands of individuals.
Unlike the petty budget squabbling we’ve seen in recent weeks, that is a debate worth having.
— Michael Tanner is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute.
The real question is, is Obama's proposed budget going to be full of magical fairy assumptions in the way that Ryan's is? Ryan's plan might envision a smaller government but I have no confidence that this vision will ever be achieved by his plan, because his plan essentially doesn't add up.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI only saw part of the speech, but I recall that the President said that if we didn't pass the bush-era tax cuts, and enact prescription drug entitlement, then the budget deficit would be at 'historic lows' or some such. OK - here's the offer: repeal prescription drug entitlement and in exchange let the Bush era tax cuts expire. Put up or shut up.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseGive the president tax increases in exchange for legislation authorizing that the revenue raised from the tax hikes can only be used to retire existing debt.
tim
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAccording to his speech, there are no families to take care of each other, no neighbors or friends, no community (private) charities, no churches--just the State. Along with this we can eliminate all personal responsibility, because the State is responsible for our care and happiness.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseReminiscent of Stalin?
Ha! That's great... except that the Soviets WON the battle of Stalingrad.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseObama 2.0 has all the same flaws as the original release.
Fool me once, shame on me; fool me twice, our nation ceases to exist.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseNot so much a debate worth having (if no one believed in government supplanting the individual, the debate wouldn't even exixt) as one that shouldn't be lost. There will be zero responsibility when the government has the most responsibility. There will, however, be blame and eternal government retribution.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseObama wants spending reductions in the tax code and investments in the future. What could go wrong? He's awesome!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHe should have cut the speech short and simply stated it all in three words everyone can understand.
"Full steam ahead!"
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseFor NRO staff: Typing in the lengthy Campbell's Soup advertisement in order to post a comment is tacky and annoying.
Anyway...
Yes, it's a debate worth having, but it appears that we are destined to lose the debate until the government fails via default or debased currency. I don't see this ship turning back from the debt tsunami.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseTheFish,
And Ryan's plan "doesn't add up"...exactly how? Details, please.
As for Obama, his speech today was the rhetorical equivalent of Captain Smith on the RMS Titanic telling his officers, "Yeah, I see the iceberg, but we're not gonna hit it. Trust me."
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseReminiscent of Stalin?
Ha! that's great except.... my inner Derb reminders me that the Soviets won the battle of Stalingrad.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseNothing is going to work. We're all doomed.
Seriously, we're doomed. This is an insurmountable obstacle for our country.
No, it's not that the numbers are too big to get under control... if we really wanted to, we could theoretically do it.
But the fact is that we won't. There is simply no political will anywhere but on the very fringes of the right who are willing to come out and say that the only way to save this country is to turn the clock back on our social programs by about fifty years.
Nobody wants to hear that, much less do it. Not on the left and not on the right. Sure, independents are gravely worried about our fiscal situation, as well they should be. But they have no stomach for the cure. Nor do mainstream Republicans. And forget about liberals... they're split between those who refuse to believe there's a problem at all and those who are deliberately trying to tank the economy in order to spawn a new socialist system, by making it so bad that most of the public has no choice but to depend on the government.
The bottom line is that true reform is never gonna happen. We're past the tipping point where enough people are dependent on their handouts (in one form or another) that even if their principles align them more with the right, their livelihoods force them to vote towards the left. Compound that with a media culture that is incapable of properly informing the public, and enough politicians who are willing to speak whatever platitudes the voters want to hear in order to convince them that not only is armageddon NOT just around the corner, but that the free lollipops will never end (and that it's their God-given right to have free lollipops), and you have a recipe for... well, nothing. Nothing at all.
We've completely ignored the constitution for too long. We've strayed too far from the principles that built this country into what it is. We've allowed ourselves --all of us-- to get lazy, both intellectually and physically, and we have nobody to blame but ourselves for it. We've happily and eagerly been sold a bill of goods by one pied piper of socialism after another, who told us that we can have it all, and not have to work terribly hard (or pay) for it, because The Government will take care of everything, somehow. We allow our children to be taught that we've never been exceptional, that our culture is nothing special or particularly worth saving and that everyone hates us because we're viewed as a force of evil in the world.
And now that it's all crashing down around us, our leader closes his eyes, puts his fingers in his ears and says "LALALALALALAA EVERYTHING IS FINE! LALALALALAA"... and more than 50% of the country STILL swallows it whole and puts their hand out for another entitlement.
We can't fix things with a 50% plurality. We can't even fix things with a 60% majority. We're way past half-measures that can be squeaked through in compromise legislation. We need 90%+ support from the population in order to do what really needs to be done, and quite frankly it will simply never happen. At least, not in any future I can foresee at this point.
Quite frankly, we're doomed. The left has played it's hand well, and the right slept through most of it. Now that we've waken up and began to make noise about the impending demise, we're viewed as fringe lunatics by a hostile media and a public fattened and accustomed to the entitlement culture.
We have no arrows left in our quiver other than the ability to shout as loud as we can and pray that it makes a difference somehow. Oh and we'll soon have the luxury of 'I told you so' when the economy collapses entirely and the 'social justice' amendment is written into the constitution. By then it won't matter though. Or at least, less so than it does now, because socialism, as we've come to find out, is all but irreversible.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseOr, reminiscent of Pinochet's public beheading of Jara at the soccer stadium with hundreds of thousands of Chileans watching with arms outstretched . . .
". . . His blood still cries from the ground . . ."
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI'm reminded of about 15 years ago when we were warned of the impending doom brought on by Clinton's tax increases... If my memory serves me correctly, we had a surplus as the end AND the economy was doing just fine. what seems to be missing from the debate is our trade deficit, where we seem to think that corporate profits at the expense of moving jobs overseas is a sustainable practice, and you idiots on the right just keep towing the line.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYeah, as noted, Stalin *won* at Stalingrad.
That said, the same rule applies to Hitler, who gave his own "no retreat" order after the 1941 defeat at the gates of Moscow.
Alas, one can't use a Hitler analogy and the President anymore now that the President isn't a Republican.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse@DevilsAdvo, a nice try at a correlation, but well off base. Tax cuts will always help an economy, but it's not the main driver. A stable dollar is much more important and Clinton and Reagan were much better in this regard than Bush or Clinton (coincidence on the economic fortunes of each? I think not) and spending as a percentage of the economy. Clinton's last year was around 18.2% where we are at 25% now. I'll happily (for a first step on the way back to Constitutional limits) trade a return to Clinton tax rates if you'll agree to returning to Clinton spending levels.
TJP_77, I simply could not say it better. My only guess is that it is very likely you will hear more and more talk about secession from certain quarters who will not want to go down this socialistic road. The non-producers will not take their goodies being taken away well while the producers will have to get to an Atlas Shrugged moment at some point. How that all ends is beyond me, but I'm with you, to think the only really viable option of drastic cuts in spending is going to happen is to believe in the tooth fairy. Bastiat said a 150 years ago plus, "Government is that great fiction where everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else." That was one smart Frenchman.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseRe: poster TJP_77's claim below that "We're all doomed."
He's correct about America being "doomed" if he means the collapse of the welfare state as we've known it since the 1960s. To keep the Social Security and Medicare promises made to the retiring Baby Boom generation we would have to pay down a sizable chunk the 14 trillion national debt (remote chance, but still theoretically possible) and then find another 60 trillion dollars to fund the unfunded liabilities for Social Security and Medicare. This is not remotely possible under any scenario. End of story. The welfare state is doomed along with anybody who doesn't prepare and gets sucked down with it. The Boomer's aren't going to get the retirement benefits Uncle Sugar promised, even though they've been paying Social Security taxes their entire working lives. All that money went to into the Ponzi scheme of paying the pre-Boomer World War II generation retirees and to fund other federal programs.
The few Tea Party Republicans in Congress who understand the problem are outnumbered by the RINO Republicans led by Speaker Boehner, the Pelosi/Reid liberals, the liberal media / academia / pundit complex personified by Paul Krugman and the nearly 50% of Americans who don't pay taxes and live on government subsidies and vote for Democrats.
So, in the next few years America's foreign creditors are going to abandon the dollar as the world's reserve currency. This will cause higher interest rates which will make the current 14 trillion dollar debt burden unsustainable. An incredible economic depression is going to be the result or a hyperinflationiary nightmare or some combination of the two.
The silver lining in all this inevitable suffering is that the welfare state as it his been built and nourished since the mid 1960s is going to be swept away. It will be fun to watch the liberals wail and moan over this and but it won't give much relief from the pain and suffering of our fellow Americans.
The interesting question is what type of America will rise out of the ruin of ashes of a wrecked economy? If you're pessimistic and study history you can find plenty of examples of socialist or fascist governments that came to power of out of an economic depression or hyperinflation. Lots of banana republics in South America and Nazi Germany are good examples.
If you're optimistic, you can argue that America's 200 years of democratic traditions (which the Germans didn't have) and a core of surviving Tea Party folks can rise out of the ashes and return America to a constitutional republic based on a gold standard and the quaint idea that everybody has to work for a living and the government does not owe you a living. That is, the survivors of the coming carnage have to role back the clock to about 1963. The liberals will still be around to complain about turning back the clock, but the hope is they will be to discredited by the collapse of their welfare state for anybody to take them seriously. I don't what is going to happen, but the next 5 or 6 years will tell the tale.
Lewis Forro
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseVirginia Beach, VA
MarkJ,
No, actually Obama's speech is the equivalent of the entire crew of the Titanic coming to warn Captain Smith about the iceberg and the captain replying:
"I want the kind of ship where old people and kids can all have drinks with as much ice as their hopes and aspirations can imagine! Oh, and some green jobs, whatever those are, too. Now I'll be in my cabin. You guys work that out...and while you're at it, win the future, willya? Full speed ahead!"
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"DevilsAdvo
04/13/11 19:32
I'm reminded of about 15 years ago when we were warned of the impending doom brought on by Clinton's tax increases... If my memory serves me correctly, we had a surplus as the end AND the economy was doing just fine. what seems to be missing from the debate is our trade deficit, where we seem to think that corporate profits at the expense of moving jobs overseas is a sustainable practice, and you idiots on the right just keep towing the line."
This comment has all of the things I dislike in an argument. Errors in facts, and logic and ad hominum.
Clinton proposed tax increases and the economy and deficit were a mess. Thus the huge win for our side in 1994. Thus a balanced budget and better economy when Dick Morris persuaded Clinton to go along to get along. Clinton, to his credit, did not interfere with our side's fixing things. Unfortunately, Clinton then got the credit that people like you give him. It's like when the left takes credit for bringing down the wall in Berlin and destroying the USSR. The left did all they could to impede Reagan in his efforts there, then they take the credit.
If you don't approve of Corporations going overseas then you must stop taxing them too much and over regulating them here.
When I read disinformation and revisionist history like your comment has, I am tempted to call you what you call us. Only I prefer to stick to facts and logic and not use ad hominum.
Hope E Changey, that was perfect.
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