Deficit Passes $1.4 Trillion as National Debt Approaches $12 Trillion

The Office of Management and Budget released the latest federal deficit figures. For the Fiscal Year (FY) 2009, which ended in September, the federal deficit was $1.42 trillion.

FY2009 includes the last four months or so of the Bush administration in addition to the first eight months or so of the Obama administration. Both Bush’s TARP program and the initial spending under Obama’s economic stimulus plan were included in the figure.

The ongoing federal spending spree (part of which was surely justified by economic circumstances) raised the national debt to $11.9 trillion.

Just over a year ago, Newsprism noted that the national debt had surpassed $10 trillion.

Just over six months ago, Newsprism noted that the national debt had risen another $1 trillion dollars in the previous six months. Now the national debt has once again risen nearly $1 trillion dollars more in just over six months.

President Bush inhereted a national debt of around $5 trillion along with a federal budget surplus when he took office in 2001. Since 2000, here’s how the federal deficit has grown:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Both parties are responsible for overspending without adequate revenue to pay for that spending. While the TEA Party movement is right on in decrying this, the blame must be spread evenly between Democrats and Republicans, and between Bush, Obama, and presidents dating back to Ronald Reagan, all of whom have failed to keep federal spending in check.

We’re stealing from future generations—”we” because we continue to vote for politicians who refuse to confront our fiscal problems.

Shame on us. Shame on all of us.

Newsprism

Something Has to Give—and It Ain’t the Taxpayer

Pat Buchanan’s latest column repeats his ongoing plea for sanity in American fiscal policy. Spending has been out of control for decades, and in response, we’ve been adding entitlements rather than eliminating them. Current levels of spending for Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security cannot be sustained. Our foreign policy includes billions of giveaways. We welcome legal and illegal immigrants who, in sum, take more than they give to this nation.

This kind of irresponsible spending, however well intentioned, cannot be sustained without seriously eroding, and eventually destroying, America’s economic stability.

We just dodged an economic collapse of historical proportions. What sense does it make to set out immediately on the same path—a path that leads off a cliff?

If you think Buchanan is an extremist and/or an alarmist, take note—the director of the nonpartisan and highly credible Congressional Budget Office came out yesterday with a chilling statement:

Under current law, the federal budget is on an unsustainable path, because federal debt will continue to grow much faster than the economy over the long run.

Unsustainable.

Nature imposes limits on everything, including generosity. We as a nation can heed those limits, or march like lemmings off the cliff of good intentions.

Newsprism

Obama Budget Cuts TipToe in the Right Direction

President Obama’s proposed budget, released this morning, includes $17 billion in cuts to federal programs deemed inefficient or unnecessary.

While $17 billion dollars is a significant sum, it is dwarfed by the $3.4 trillion in proposed spending for the upcoming fiscal year.

And that’s assuming a Democratic Congress will accept the entire $17 billion in cuts…hardly a sure bet.

The proposed cuts are a step tiptoe in the right direction.

To paraphrase Lao Tzu, “The journey of 1000 miles begins with one tiptoe.”

Newsprism

TEA Parties Turn Into Pissing Contest

It’s Tax Day—April 15, the deadline for filing federal income tax forms.

What usually passes with a few (million) grumbles and some local news video of post offices packed with procrastinating taxs filers has has taken on added significance in the media this year as hundreds of TEA (as in, “Taxed Enough Already”) Parties are being held across the nation. This kind of protest should be welcome news in any democracy, but for a few prominent voices in the media, it’s little more than an excuse to misbehave.

Right wing news outlets and commentators, especially on FoxNews and talk radio, have been promoting the events ad nauseum, to the point that FoxNews is acting more like a corporate sponsor than a news organization. This at the very least blurs the line between advocacy and reporting. Many commentators on the right have also strongly criticized the mainstream media for failing to cover the events (quite a neat trick, considering that most of the criticism came before the events were held…)

On the left, while the news coverage has been mostly straightforward (with the notable exception of  this grandstanding CNN reporter who lost her cool with a protester), the commentary has been anything but. Numerous commentators have  belittled the events as staged propaganda planned and coordinated by right wing media and public interest groups, as if libertarians and conservatives can’t possibly think for, or organize, themselves.

The worst behavior has been on liberal cable news. MSNBC’s prime time hosts—Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow—along with other anchors on MSNBC and CNN have inexplicably chosen to disparage, ad nauseum, the tea parties as tea bagging (a slang term for an unusual sex act…Google it if you don’t know.) Liberal pack journalism has never been as vulgar and sophomoric as it was today.

You’d think the left, with its tradition of protest and civil disobedience, would honor citizens exercising their First Amendment rights.

Sadly, it seems the usual suspects on the left and right are incapable of rationally discussing the issues involved—taxation and the size and scope of government. Instead, the cartoon conservatives on FoxNews (Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity) and talk radio (Hannity, Rush Limbaugh) are using the events to shamelessly promote themselves while glibly criticizing the mainstream media for failing to cover that self-promotion. The loony liberals on cable news and in the blogosphere are using the events to mock and patronize conservatives, too often with a vulgarity that is puzzling and disturbing.

Both sides can go tea bag themselves. While more thoughtful media outlets—including the network news divisions and most newspapers—are covering the events responsibly without a red or blue filter, the loons on the left and the cartoons on the right are cynically exploiting the TEA Parties to boost their own ratings and circulation.

I wonder what the patriots who participated in the Boston Tea Party would think of the way Olbermann and Maddow, or Beck, Hannity, and Limbaugh, are turning honest protest into a pissing contest.

One thing’s for sure. This isn’t the best moment to be swimming in the waters of American politics.

Newsprism

Pig Book Documents Swine Research

Citizens Against Government Waste has just released this year’s (fiscal year 2009) Pig Book, their annual compilation of pork barrel projects coming out of our esteemed Congress.

Last year (fiscal year 2008), we spent $17,200,000,000.00 on 11,600 special projects, or “earmarks,” proposed and funded by members of Congress.

The good news: this year we only had 10,160 such projects, a decrease of 1,440 earmarks.

The bad news: those projects cost $19,600,000,000.00, an increase of $2,400,000,000.00.

The Christian Science Monitor calculates those numbers to be a 12.5% decrease in the number of earmarks, and a 14% increase in their cost.

This is just the kind of “progress” Congress specializes in.

Among the pet projects imposed on taxpayers are these gems:

$1.8 million for swine odor and manure studies in Iowa. Ah, the sweet smell of what comes out the rear end of pigs!

$27.8 million for fitness centers at Air Force bases in Texas, South Carolina, and Mississippi. ‘Cause how else are all those flyboys supposed to stay in shape? (Hint: PUSHUPS)

$950,000 for energy efficient street lighting in Detroit. Great! Now the gangbangers can see whom they’re shooting at without damaging the environment!

$2 million for the Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholars Program. Sponsored by (who else?) Senator Pat Roberts!

Democrats came to power in 2006 and 2008 promising reforms. Fat chance.

Menwhile, Republicans have been grunting and grumbling over spending by Democrats; CAGW notes that about 40% of earmarked funds came from Republicans, who make up, oh, roughly, 40% of Congress.

Newsprism

 

National Debt Up Another Trillion—IN SIX MONTHS

Just six months ago, the national debt passed the $10,000,000,000,000.00 mark, having roughly doubled during the Bush administration.

Due in part to the tail end of the Bush spending splurge, and in part to the beginnings of the Obama spending splurge, our national debt has now passed the $11,000,000,000,000.00 mark.

When will our representatives in Washington stop putting their short-term interests first—getting re-elected, supporting pet projects, getting their names on bridges and buildings, greasing the palms of special interests for whom they hope to lobby—and take seriously the long-term interests of the nation?

This is shameful. One day our descendents may look back and wonder, “What the hell were they thinking?” (Or more to the point, “Were they THINKING???”)

During the next few decades, what was once an economic supremacy not seen since the British and Roman Empires will have been squandered over the course of just a generation or two.

While the economies of Brazil and China are poised to skyrocket, ours seems doomed to fizzle like a wet Fourth of July firecracker.

For some perspective, check out this clever way to visualize what eleven trillion dollars’ worth of $100 bills (not ones or tens!) would look like:

See that tiny spot in the lower left corner of the image? That's any US citizen staring up at what we'd be leaving future Americans IF WE STOPPED ADDING TO THE NATIONAL DEBT TODAY!

 Thanks to PageTutor.com for the image.

That massive debt lays at the feet of both Democrats and Republicans in both the Executive and Legislative branches of government. As Americans, we should be outraged, and the younger the citizen, the more outrage is called for.

Maybe this Fourth of July, instead of shooting our fireworks into the sky, we should put them somewhere more appropriate…

Newsprism

Stormy Seas, Uncharted Waters…and We’re Adding Ballast?

Let me torture a metaphor for a moment.

The Ship of State is currently sailing through stormy seas in uncharted waters.

We’ve sailed into stormier seas before—in 1873 and 1929, for instance, the US entered more severe depressions (interesting article here about which depression more closely parallels the current situation.) We’ve spent many a decade in uncharted waters as well, for example, when we transformed the country from an agrarian to an industrial economy, and from an industrial to an information economy. The first transformation helped spark the Civil War, and the second led to the bursting of the dotcom bubble and, to some degree, the credit crisis.

Now, we seem to be struggling through some stormy economic times while transforming from a nationally-based economy to a globally-based one, and from a production-based economy to a borrowing-based one.

So how should we steer the Ship of State through this storm?

On real ships, “ballast” is weight added to stabilize the craft, improve steering, and control buoyancy. Ships of state take on added debt for a similar purpose.

The problem is that both kinds of ballast take up room that could be used more productively. On the real ship, ballast replaces cargo with dead weight; on the ship of state, debt, while enhancing economic stability and allowing for more precise “steering,” the ballast of debt takes capital out of the system. Debt is like dead weight on the economy.

The budget submitted by President Obama will spend over $3.5 trillion in the upcoming fiscal year. The Omnibus Spending Bill up for a vote in Congress will spend over $400 billion in the remainder of this fiscal year. Hundreds of billions more are promised to failing banks and mortgage holders. Another $500 billion is proposed to shore up the FDIC—and if you want to see these stormy seas turn into a tsunami, just let the whisper of mass bank failures start to spread.

This is not the time to be adding tons and tons of ballast, of debt, to the Ship of State. It’s well past time to instead jettison as much debt as we can.

That means raising the retirement age and reducing Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid benefits. It means cutting government programs that aren’t vital (and that would be the majority of government programs…) It means freezing government spending, not increasing it. It means making difficult and unpopular decisions that shrink the size and scope of government and put more responsibility on the individual for his or her own well being.

It means asking us—all of us, rich and poor—to make sacrifices for the greater good.

Instead, President Obama is expanding the size and scope of government, increasing benefits, and running up an already obscene national debt to levels that make the waste and idealism of George Bush look modest.

What good is stabilizing a ship with ballast, if that ballast could cause the ship to sink?

Newsprism

Promises, Promises

Barack Obama’s speech before a joint session of Congres tonight (video) was expansive in scope and evocative of hope (transcript).

To call it ambitious would be an understatement. Three major policy thrusts were put forward, each of which is designed to enhance the long-term prospects for our economy. In health care, the president proposed reforms intended to take the burden off both families and businesses by reigning in costs and eliminating waste. In energy, he promised a long overdue reversal of our dependence on oil and a concomitant effort to enable the growth and development of alternative energy sources. In education, he pledged that every American will be able to afford a college education and that by 2020, America will once again lead the world in the proportion of citizens with a college education.

On the financialal front, Mr. Obama said his administration was working to shore up the banking system and get credit flowing once again. On the fiscal front, he said that old ways of hiding government spending would come to an end, that earmarks and wasteful or ineffective programs will be terminated, and that future generations won’t be burdened with an overwhelming debt. Att the same time, he promised that no one making under $250,000 a year will have their taxes raised and that taxes will be cut for 95% of the American people. He also noted that beginning not this year, but next year, the federal budget would be gone over line by line to eliminate waste and earmarks.

The biggest challenge Obama faced was to renew confidence in the economy. Rhetorically, he did exactly that; the speech was stirring and highly encouraging. In reality, however, one wonders whether a single speech, no matter how brilliant, can have any lasting effect on a disheartened public. Both the speech and the speaker were Reaganesque; no one can say whether it’s morning in America again, but for an hour at least, if felt that way.

In foreign affairs, the president promised a new era of engagement, with aggressive diplomacy replacing unilateralism. At the same time, he threw down the gauntlet to our enemies, insisting that those who wish to harm us won’t be allowed to plot against us from safe havens anywhere, particularly from Pakistan. He declared that Guantanamo Bay will be closed and that most of our troops will be withdrawn from Iraq while maintaining order in that country.

There were three overt rebukes of the Bush administration. On torture, the president made an unequivocal declaration that the United States does not torture (implying, of course, “any longer.”) The Joint Chiefs of Staff and John McCain were among the first to stand and applaud, and rightly so. The president made a pointed reference to the squandering of the balanced budget Bush inherited from Bill Clinton, and another to the Bush administration’s mismanagement of the $700 billion dollar bank bailout.

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the speech was its invocation of hope. Whether that hope is more realistic or fantastic remains to be seen. What President Obama didn’t make clear was how, short of divine intervention, we can do everything he promised while at the same time reducing the budget deficit and chipping away at the national debt.

Mr. Obama appealed to the promise of America, which he called the most powerful force for progress on earth.

The promise of America isn’t built on promises, however.

Talk is cheap. What the president promised tonight won’t be.

Newsprism

Stimulating the Center

With economic indicators plummeting and an increasing chorus of business leaders and economists warning of a potential depression, how are pols and pundits inside the Beltway responding?

Badly.

Liberal Democratic politicians on the Hill have taken advantage of the situation to ham-handedly cobble together a pork-laden stimulus bill. Conservative Republican politicians on the Hill rightly bemoan the bill’s excesses, but instead of working to trim the fat, many are posturing and grandstanding and moralizing as if they didn’t spend the last eight years turning surplus into deficit and more than doubling the national debt.

Same old same old.

Meanwhile, liberal pundits like Frank Rich and Paul Krugman launch ideologically rigid and reductionist attacks against the right, while conservative pundits like Charles Krauthammer and Glenn Beck do the same to the left.

With the stakes this high, extremists and ideologues, who are always an impediment to smooth governance, become a real danger.

Three columns by three of the nation’s best pundits illustrate the difference between thoughtful commentary and emotionalism.

In “On the Edge”, Paul Krugman demonizes Republicans and conservatism without a shred of nuance:

Over the last two weeks, what should have been a deadly serious debate about how to save an economy in desperate straits turned, instead, into hackneyed political theater, with Republicans spouting all the old clichés about wasteful government spending and the wonders of tax cuts.

 The American economy is on the edge of catastrophe, and much of the Republican Party is trying to push it over that edge.

In “The Fierce Urgency of Pork”, Charles Krauthammer yet again demonizes President Obama while characterizing the stimulus bill as an “abomination”:

The (stimulus bill), which inevitably carries Obama’s name, was not just bad, not just flawed, but a legislative abomination.

It’s not just pages and pages of special-interest tax breaks, giveaways and protections, one of which would set off a ruinous Smoot-Hawley trade war. It’s not just the waste, such as the $88.6 million for new construction for Milwaukee Public Schools, which, reports the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, have shrinking enrollment, 15 vacant schools and, quite logically, no plans for new construction.

It’s the essential fraud of rushing through a bill in which the normal rules (committee hearings, finding revenue to pay for the programs) are suspended on the grounds that a national emergency requires an immediate job-creating stimulus — and then throwing into it hundreds of billions that have nothing to do with stimulus, that Congress’s own budget office says won’t be spent until 2011 and beyond, and that are little more than the back-scratching, special-interest, lobby-driven parochialism that Obama came to Washington to abolish. He said.

A voice of reason on the stimulus is David Brooks, a critic of the bill who nonetheless eschews the emotional partisanship of Rich, Krugman, Krauthammer and Beck. In “The Gang System”, Brooks notes that the polarization so evident in the week’s debates may have led to a sort of revolt from the center:

The substance of the legislation set up the polarized debate that followed. Liberal interest groups were happy. Conservative Republicans were united in opposition. But something interesting happened this week. The momentum of the debate was set by moderates. Conservative protests wouldn’t have amounted to much without nagging moderate unease.

Moderate economists looked at the package and complained about the vast parts that don’t even pretend to stimulate…. (But) most of all, moderates were concerned about deficits.

Brooks goes on to suggest that this assertiveness from the center may not be as short-lived as some issue-specific coalitions in the past:

On Thursday, moderate unease translated into political action. Forty-nine moderate Democrats in the House belatedly signed a letter calling for cuts in the package, and protested the way they had been trampled by the Democratic leadership. Over in the Senate, a gang of roughly 20 moderates, led by Republican Susan Collins and Democrat Ben Nelson, huddled in the Dirksen Building to cut and focus the stimulus bill. They talked of trimming $90 billion or more.

The big news here is that there are many Democrats who don’t want to move in a conventional liberal direction and there some Republicans willing to work with them to create a functioning center. These moderates — who are not a party, but a gang — seemed willing to seize control of legislation from the party leaders. They separated themselves from both the left and right….

In the past, moderate gangs — like the judicial Gang of 14 — have appeared or disappeared depending on the issue.  But exploding federal deficits are a galvanizing issue for those in the center. Concern over these deficits will influence every piece of domestic legislation. In the coming weeks and months, there will be housing legislation, another round of TARP bailouts, the budget debate, the health care and entitlement debates. In each case, the Moderate Gangs will occupy the crucial ground…

Let’s hope so. The stakes are way too high for obstructionism and demagoguery to rule the day.

President Obama recently said of the economic crisis,

I don’t care if you’re driving a hybrid or an SUV; if you’re headed for a cliff, you’ve got to change direction.

Will he take his own advice and steer the nation towards the center?

Newsprism

Short- and Long-Term Division—Learning the Lessons of TARP

With the $825 billion economic stimulus package now at risk of failure, President Obama and congressional Democrats could learn a lesson from their own fine-tuning of TARP.

The Troubled Assets Releif Program has thus far distributed half of its $7o0 billion. With widespread disappointment at the way that $350 billion was divvied up—including strong criticism of the lack of transparency or oversight—the administration is in the process of setting new guidelines for the remaining $350 billion, of fine-tuning that spending for maximum effect.

Why not learn the lesson of TARP and divide the funding in the stimulus package over a period of time that will allow for the evaluation of its efficacy in order to fine-tune it as well? Why not separate the short-term, targeted, and/or temporary spending that will have the most immediate impact on the economy from the pork and pet projects, and from the long-term and permanent spending that can wait in any case?

Dividing the stimulus funds with an eye towards quickly passing a bill that would maximize the immediate impact on the economy would have several benefits.

First, it would avoid, or at least delay, a bitter political battle that may well lead to a filibuster in the Senate. Second, it would allow much-needed stimulative spending to begin wending its way through the economy as quickly as possible.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, it would show the American people that the two parties can work together to soften an already stunning blow to our economy.

Since the most pressing problem we face is (in addition to the loss of confidence in governance) the loss of confidence in the economy, which leads consumers to consume less and lenders to lend less, a little division could go a long way to bringing us together and healing an ailing economy.

Newsprism

Is Obama Following Bush in Overreaching?

George Bush failed to take the advice of Colin Powell in rushing to invade Iraq. The Powell Doctrine included three straightforward principles: don’t commit American military forces without 1.) a clear objective, 2.) an exit strategy, and 3.) overwhelming force.

Now, Barack Obama is at risk of mirroring Bush’s recklessness by overreaching on the economic stimulus package.

As David Brooks details in “Cleaner and Faster”, Harvard economist and Obama advisor Larry Summers recently insisted that any stimulus package should be 1.) timely, 2.) targeted, and 3.) temporary. Instead, the current plan is seriously diluted with long-term spending on pet domestic agenda items, many of which will be permanent.

We’re living with the burden of the war in Iraq; at a moment when we’re this vulnerable and overextended, do we really want to add an economic debacle to a military one?

Newsprism

Yes We Can (Say NO to Big Government Spending)

One of the first challenges President Obama faces may be the most consequential: can he say “No” to excessive spending by a Democratic Congress?

More specifically, the $825 billion stimulus package under consideration is heavy on government spending and relatively light on tax cuts. Government spending doesn’t stimulate the economy as efficiently as tax cuts and takes far longer to wend its way through the economy.

David Brooks, in “The First Test,” calls the Dem’s spending bill “a muddled mixture of short-term stimulus haste and long-term spending commitments” and notes that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that just half of the bill’s spending would even occur within the next 21 months. Brooks’ question for Obama is whether the president can say “No” to the extravagance of his own party:

President Obama is clearly going to have to show the hard way that he meant what he said about bringing change. He didn’t run for president just to sign whatever bills the Old Bulls put on his desk.

He’s going to have to prove the hard way that he meant what he said about being pragmatic and evidence-based. That means he won’t sweep a C.B.O. study under the rug simply because the findings are inconvenient.

He’s going to have to show that his plans have credibility, that a stimulus bill is really a stimulus bill, and not a Christmas tree for every special interest desire.

Ironically, and incomprehensibly, President Bush, who expanded presidential power at every turn, utterly failed to control extravagant big spending by a primarily Republican-controlled Congress. His veto pen was out of ink from the get-go.

George Will, in “Grand, Yes. Bargain, No“, gives us reason to worry. Despite Obama’s promise to trim entitlements, the House this week passed an expansion of an entitlement program, the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), that will now offer health care subsidies to families making as much as $100,000 per year. As Will notes,

Barack Obama vowed to convene a “fiscal responsibility summit”… (to) help chart a path toward what has been called a “grand bargain.” This Big Bang will aim to create a new universe of domestic policy by, among other things, making the entitlement menu — particularly Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, which are more than 40 percent of federal spending — manageable.

Will suggests that the real goal of the expansion of SCHIP is “to get as many people on public coverage as possible and to have children grow up thinking that it is normal for them to get their health insurance from the government.”

House Democrats seem intent on using the fiscal crisis as an excuse to further expand an already bloated federal government.

President Obama, if he truly intends to govern based on pragmatism rather than ideology, if he truly intends to be a centrist and a uniter, should pull out his veto pen right from the start and send an unambiguous message to congressional Democrats:

No. No. No.

Newsprism

Cartoon Conservatism—Why a Libertarian Conservative Voted for Barack Obama

Yesterday, for the first time in my life, I voted for a Democrat for president. As a libertarian conservative, I’ve been troubled by the turn the Republican Party has taken during the Bush years.

Under Bush, we’ve seen the largest budget deficits in the nation’s history, a near doubling of the national debt to a staggering $10 trillion, the erosion of civil liberties, an assault on Constitutional principles, the abandonment of the working and middle classes, a reckless and arrogant foreign policy, torture and sexual abuse of detainees, and the concentration of wealth in corporations and the upper class.

We’ve also seen the Republican Party devolve into a caricature of its former self, into what I call “Cartoon Conservatism.” Led not by conservative intellectuals grounded in philosphy, but by political hacks and cynical infotainers blinded by a shallow and self-serving partisanship, the GOP has betrayed what is best about America, what is most worthy of conserving.

A mean-spirited and ham-handed Tom Delay drained the House of Representatives of any sense of decorum or compromise. Karl Rove imbued the Bush presidency with an unscrupulous, winner-take-all obsession with political calculation at the expense of rational, far-sighted governance. Congressional Republicans and the White House colluded in an unprecedented spending spree that has imperiled our economic future, with almost nothing of lasting value to show for it. Billions of dollars have been siphoned upwards, filling the coffers of corporations to record levels and padding the fortunes of the wealthy. Scandal after scandal has revealed naked self-interest posing as devotion to country; Jack Abramoff and Ted Stevens bookend an era of disgrace. A level of hypocrisy that defies belief seeped into the right, from homophobic homosexuals like Larry Craig to anti-drug drug addicts like Rush Limbaugh. The rabid voices of the far right have demonized and divided, their only concern seeming to be to destroy the opposition and get rich and/or powerful doing it.

What the hell does this kind of behavior have to do with conservatism? Superficiality and selfishness have overtaken social order and enlightened self-interest as the foundation of the conservative movement. Rush Limbaugh is not so much the leader of this kind of philosophically rootless individualism, as its emblem. His glib dismissal of the scientific evidence of global climate change shows how profoundly self-centered and short-sighted Cartoon Conservatism has become.

Is that what our founding fathers risked their lives and fortunes for? Is that what our brave fighting men and women died for?

What a cartoonish vision of conservatism. a philosophy designed to promote and preserve social order, not each man’s individual wealth.

Ironically, I don’t think John McCain in any way represents what conservatism has become. He’s a national treasure, a man of integrity willing to sacrifice everything for America, a free-thinker whose refusal to submit to the Cartoon Conservatives nearly destroyed his candidacy. His greatest misstep may have been to compromise with the base (in both senses of the word—the conservative base, and the baseness of its corrupted leadership). His embrace of George Bush and his choice of Sarah Palin demonstrate that the maverick, that which is best in John McCain, was broken just when a little wildness was most needed.

David Brooks, who I think is next in line to take the mantle of intellectual conservatism from George Will, believes the right has ceded the center to the left. In a brilliant analysis of the impending defeat of a moderately conservative presidential candidate by a staunchly liberal one in a clearly center-right nation, Brooks puts the ideological landscape in stark relief:

There are two major political parties in America, but there are at least three major political tendencies. The first is orthodox liberalism, a belief in using government to maximize equality. The second is free-market conservatism, the belief in limiting government to maximize freedom….

But there is a third tendency, which floats between. It is for using limited but energetic government to enhance social mobility…. Members of this tradition have one foot in the conservatism of Edmund Burke. They understand how little we know or can know and how much we should rely on tradition, prudence and habit. They have an awareness of sin, of the importance of traditional virtues and stable institutions. They understand that we are not free-floating individuals but are embedded in thick social organisms.

But members of this tradition also have a foot in the landscape of America, and share its optimism and its Lincolnian faith in personal transformation. Hamilton didn’t seek wealth for its own sake, but as a way to enhance the country’s greatness and serve the unique cause America represents in the world.

Members of this tradition are Americanized Burkeans, or to put it another way, progressive conservatives.

The first President Bush, a liberal Republican, is of this ilk, as are conservative Democrats like Sam Nunn. Both of these statesmen follow in the even footsteps of some of the greatest Americans—from Alexander Hamilton to Abraham Lincoln to Theodore Roosevelt.

Brooks hits the nail on the head when he writes that, unlike McCain, Sarah Palin, whom 60% of the electorate judges unready for the vice-presidency, ”represents the old resentments and the narrow appeal of conventional Republicanism.”

Moreover, writes Brooks, praising the man’s progressive conservatism, ”McCain would be an outstanding president. In government, he has almost always had an instinct for the right cause. He has become an experienced legislative craftsman. He is stalwart against the country’s foes and cooperative with its friends. But he never escaped the straitjacket of a party that is ailing and a conservatism that is behind the times.”

What has happened during the last eight years richly deserves repudiation. As an Obama victory becomes more and more likely, more and more conservatives are making their true feelings known. Some, like Lawrence Eagleburger, are admitting that Sarah Palin simply isn’t qualified to be president. Others, like Peggy Noonan, are giving Bush the condemnation he deserves. Still others, like Colin Powell, have made the leap and are endorsing Barack Obama.

My mind wasn’t made up until five or six weeks after McCain chose Sarah Palin as his runningmate. While I respect her and see a bright future for her, after giving her a fair hearing, I can’t in good conscience cast a vote that could put her in line for the presidency.

I agree with little of Barack Obama’s philosophy. But I see in him a keen and subtle intellect and a steely temperament. His performance since announcing his candidacy in Springfield, Illinois, in February of 2006, demonstrates the quality of that intellect and character. He promises change at a time when nine out of ten Americans believe we’re on the wrong track, and healing at a time when we are divided within and at odds with our allies.

My vote is, in part, a protest vote; Republicans need to be sent a message that incompetence, unilateralism, and sanctimony won’t be rewarded. But I’m also very impressed with Obama, a man who has the potential to be one of our great presidents just when one of our worse has left us in the lurch. After eight years of Bush, maybe we need to turn left to get right.

Obama, like Bush, promises to unite the country. I hope he doesn’t betray us the way his predecessor has.

Half a century ago, Barry Goldwater, in The Conscience of a Conservative, sketched out the intellectual and moral underpinnings of conservatism. When John Dean wrote Conservatives Without Conscience in the middle of the Bush debacle, he wanted to begin a conversation about the ongoing erosion of those underpinnings.

That conversation’s time has come.

Newsprism

National Debt Surpasses $10,000,000,000,000.00—Charlton Heston Reacts

Lily Tomlin famously said, “No matter how cynical you get, you can’t keep up.”

By at least one measure—the National Debt Clock in downtown New York City (video)—our collective debt has just surpassed $10 trillion. In fact, a fourteenth digit must be added to the Clock to keep up with the (with our) debt.

Here’s a nice way to visualize $10 trillion:

One Quadrillion Pennies

Image copyright 2001, kokogiak media

$10 trillion dollars equals one quadrillion pennies, which would fill a cube roughly half a mile tall, deep and wide…dwarfing the Washington Monument and the Sears Tower.

Those responsible for this burden, including Democrats and Republicans in both the Executive and Legislative Branches over the last three decades, have put our national security at risk with their out-of-control spending. Our economic supremacy is at risk as the global financial system lurches into a paradigm shift at a time when we’re trillions of dollars in debt to our main economic competitor, China, and to our economic overlords in the Middle East.

As Charlton Heston said at the end of “Planet of the Apes”, kneeling before the remains of the Statue of Liberty, “Damn you…God damn you all to Hell.”

And that’s putting it mildly.

Newsprism

Citizens, States and a Ballooning Federal Government

Two recent Internet posts compelled me to take a brief hiatus from summer vacation today to blog about our ballooning federal government.

The first is a July 16 column by Walter Williams entitled “Oklahoma Rebellion.” Williams, an uncompromising libertarian conservative, outlines a bill passed overwhelmingly by the Oklahoma House of Reperesentatives–Joint House Resolution 1089 (text)–which demands a return to the Consitutional principle established by the Tenth Amendment. The Tenth Amendment plainly and unambiguously limits the scope of federal authority to precisely those powers enumerated in the Consitution:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

That the federal government long ago usurped, and continues to usurp, powers clearly reserved to the states and the people is undeniable. Resolution 1089, introduced to the legislature by Representative Charles Key, simply demands a return to the rule of law:

therefore, be it resolved … that the State of Oklahoma hereby claims sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States over all powers not otherwise enumerated and granted to the federal government by the Constitution of the United States. That this serve as Notice and Demand to the federal government, as our agent, to cease and desist, effective immediately, mandates that are beyond the scope of these constitutionally delegated powers.

Dr. Williams ends his column this way:

Both parties and all branches of the federal government have made a mockery of the checks and balances, separation of powers and the republican form of government envisioned by the founders. One of the more disgusting sights for me to is to watch a president, congressman or federal judge take an oath to uphold and defend the United States Constitution, when in reality they either hold constitutional principles in contempt or they are ignorant of those principles. State efforts, such as Oklahoma’s, create a glimmer of hope that one day Americans and their elected representatives will realize that the federal government is the creation of the states. A bit of rebellion by officials in other states will speed that process along.

Now for the irony: adjacent to the column in which Dr. Williams discusses this “Oklahoma Rebellion” is a news story entitled, “Oklahoma Asks Feds for Drought Aid.” The problem, as Dr. Williams well knows, is that the states suck on the federal teats just as greedily as do so many of our fellow citizens and are no more likely to be weaned from them than the most irresponsible welfare recipients.

Speaking of whom, an article on National Public Radio’s web site today proclaims, “For Some Ohioans, Even Meat Is Out of Reach.” The article describes an Ohio family that, despite government aid in the form of food stamps, subsidized housing, and Social Security, struggles to buy groceries. The story ends,

The rising cost of food means their money gets them about a third fewer bags of groceries — $100 used to buy about 12 bags of groceries, but now it’s more like seven or eight. So they cut back on expensive items like meat, and they don’t buy extras like ice cream anymore.

Apparently, at least according to NPR’s grocery bag index, inflation in Ohio is running at something like 35%.

Here’s the rub: these hungry victims of the vagaries of our capitalist economy don’t appear to be missing any meals:

I pity this mother and daughter, but starving Ethiopians they ain’t. The daughter, 19, along with “most of her siblings and their spouses,” is “unemployed and relies on government assistance and food stamps.” Predictably, the mother, 40, has never worked.

What is the Constitutional rationale for subsidizing so many aspects of citizens’ lives? That’s a power reserved to the state, or to the people, who are free to subsidize the poor through the church and civic organizations.

And what is the rationale for the federal government running a radio network, especially one with so transparent an agenda as NPR? The mass media, above all American institutions, is the one in which government should be most reluctant to operate.

One last irony: the link directly beneath the photo above reads, “Enlarge.”

Newsprism

Laugh While You Cry—It’s Tax Freedom Day!

According to the Tax Foundation, the average working American pays 31% of his or her income in direct federal, state, and local taxes. That’s more than is spent on food, clothing, and shelter combined.

If that tax burden visualized as a percentage of one year, the average working American spends the first 113 days of the year to pay direct taxes.

According to the Foundation, that means today, April 23, is Tax Freedom Day—the day of the year on which the average working American has finally worked enough to pay his or her taxes.

Congratulations!

As you celebrate the end of this year’s servitude to government, you should ask yourself these questions:

1. What do I get for my 113 days of labor? (You probably don’t want to know the answer, but if you do, check out this, this, and this.)

2. Who are the non-working Americans I’m supporting, and why the hell aren’t they working? (Some are retired or disabled—God bless them—but then there are the millions of parasites, scammers, lazybones, bureaucrats, corporations and assorted criminals we support thanks to misguided government largesse.)

To ease the burden and help you laugh through the tears, watch this witty Tax Freedom Day video courtesy of YouTube.

Newsprism

McCain Proposes Tax Cuts, Curbs on Spending

In a speech timed to coincide with the deadline for filing federal income tax returns and to reach the media covering the Democratic primary, John McCain outlined his economic policies in Pittsburgh today.

McCain’s plan rejects the upper-class orientation of George Bush, embracing instead the populism and pro-growth policies of Ronald Reagan.

The Arizona senator’s tax plan calls for doubling the exemption for dependents from $3500 to $7000, establishing a simplified two-tier tax schedule, eliminating the alternative minimum tax, and suspending gasoline taxes over the summer. In addition, McCain would extend Bush’s tax cuts, reduce corporate taxes significantly, and give tax benefits to businesses for research and purchases of equipment.

In addition to these tax policies, McCain wooed working- and middle-class voters with the promise of readily available student loan funds, government-guaranteed mortgages for homeowners at risk of foreclosure, and a continuation of unemployment insurance for displaced workers.

In terms of government spending, McCain would freeze nonmilitary discretionary spending at current levels for one year while reviewing government programs for waste and fraud, increase Medicare premiums for wealthy retirees, veto any bill that includes earmarks.

McCain’s plan combines tax cuts with curbs on federal spending, a breath of fresh air compared to the irrationally expensive proposals of the two Democratic presidential hopefuls and the equally irrational Bush policy of cutting taxes while dramatically raising spending.

Newsprism finds McCain’s proposals substantive, centrist, and sensible, and therefore likely to be quickly overshadowed by the next irrelevant gaffe or contrived Bittergate.

Newsprism