Winning the Future? or Duh Losing!

Today President Obama spoke at George Washington University to dig in his heels, and fire the first volley in the coming battles that will be the debt limit and the 2012 budget.

He began by painting everyone who does not agree with his ideas as evil cold hearted evil doers by lecturing the country on social responsibility. Like these were thing the country did not know or understand

Transcript of Obama's Speech on the National Debt

“There but for the grace of God go I,” we say to ourselves, and so we contribute to programs like Medicare and Social Security, which guarantee us health care and a measure of basic income after a lifetime of hard work; unemployment insurance, which protects us against unexpected job loss; and Medicaid, which provides care for millions of seniors in nursing homes, poor children, and those with disabilities. We are a better country because of these commitments. I’ll go further – we would not be a great country without those commitments.

For much of the last century, our nation found a way to afford these investments and priorities with the taxes paid by its citizens. As a country that values fairness, wealthier individuals have traditionally born a greater share of this burden than the middle class or those less fortunate.

 And then he moved on to blame Bush for 40 years of entitlement and social program government spending.

But after Democrats and Republicans committed to fiscal discipline during the 1990s, we lost our way in the decade that followed. We increased spending dramatically for two wars and an expensive prescription drug program – but we didn’t pay for any of this new spending. Instead, we made the problem worse with trillions of dollars in unpaid-for tax cuts – tax cuts that went to every millionaire and billionaire in the country; tax cuts that will force us to borrow an average of $500 billion every year over the next decade.

To give you an idea of how much damage this caused to our national checkbook, consider this: in the last decade, if we had simply found a way to pay for the tax cuts and the prescription drug benefit, our deficit would currently be at low historical levels in the coming years.

 riiiiiiiight. 

While President Bush did in fact double the deficit he inherited during his eight year tenure, President Obama wants to ignore the fact that he double the deficit yet again in a mere two years. Yet this deficit problem is still Bush's fault (read: any republican who dares utter an idea toward cuts).

And then as a preamble to sharing his super genius plan for the budget (well his second one anyways) he attacks the opening bid proposed by Republicans. The cuts proposed in the Ryan proposal.

These aren’t the kind of cuts that Republicans and Democrats on the Fiscal Commission proposed. These are the kind of cuts that tell us we can’t afford the America we believe in. And they paint a vision of our future that’s deeply pessimistic.

It’s a vision that says if our roads crumble and our bridges collapse, we can’t afford to fix them. If there are bright young Americans who have the drive and the will but not the money to go to college, we can’t afford to send them. Go to China and you’ll see businesses opening research labs and solar facilities.

Great. China is his model. Centrally planned economies and trickle up poverty (communism) are the ideals he is looking to for inspiration. The fact of the matter is that the phenomena he is observing is due to the fact that China is moving toward free markets while America is moving away from them.

South Korean children are outpacing our kids in math and science.

And it's not due to lack of money. America has been throwing money at education for years to the extent that the amount of money per pupil has doubled in the last ten years in real dollars with no appreciable improvement. (statistics and reference to come shortly).

 Worst of all, this is a vision that says even though America can’t afford to invest in education or clean energy; even though we can’t afford to care for seniors and poor children, we can somehow afford more than $1 trillion in new tax breaks for the wealthy

Well Mr President, as you said earlier in the speech

Even after our economy recovers, our government will still be on track to spend more money than it takes in throughout this decade and beyond. That means we’ll have to keep borrowing more from countries like China. And that means more of your tax dollars will go toward paying off the interest on all the loans we keep taking out. By the end of this decade, the interest we owe on our debt could rise to nearly $1 trillion. Just the interest payments.

So let's get to the super genius idea then. What do we do? Nope. We need to perform the eat the rich ritual first.

Think about it. In the last decade, the average income of the bottom 90% of all working Americans actually declined. The top 1% saw their income rise by an average of more than a quarter of a million dollars each.

Really? I think we need a fact check on that one. If that's correct, then why are state tax revenues that are addicted to Millionaire taxes in so much trouble?

The Price of Taxing the Rich
The top 1% of earners fill the coffers of states like California and New York during a boom—and leave them starved for revenue in a bust.

Nearly half of California's income taxes before the recession came from the top 1% of earners: households that took in more than $490,000 a year. High earners, it turns out, have especially volatile incomes—their earnings fell by more than twice as much as the rest of the population's during the recession. When they crashed, they took California's finances down with them.

If Obama's outright lie were true, probably would not be having this discussion because we would be getting a good chunk of their purported prosperity already!

But back to the speech.

The first step in our approach is to keep annual domestic spending low by building on the savings that both parties agreed to last week – a step that will save us about $750 billion over twelve years

There we go. Finally an idea. Though he bemoaned those very cuts a week earlier, now they are his idea. Great. Whatever.

The second step in our approach is to find additional savings in our defense budget.

Fine. Everything is on the table. We should evaluate defense spending from many angles
( Charles Wolf, Jr.: The Facts About American 'Decline' - WSJ.com)
And finally the president makes his third point.

The third step in our approach is to further reduce health care spending in our budget. Here, the difference with the House Republican plan could not be clearer: their plan lowers the government’s health care bills by asking seniors and poor families to pay them instead. Our approach lowers the government’s health care bills by reducing the cost of health care itself.

Uh oh. Here we go again. Entitlements will save us, not sink us. If the president hangs onto the idea that Obamacare is saving the country money and that more Obamacare will save even more money, then say bye bye in 2012. The public at large has already roundly rejected that silly lie.

And finally

The fourth step in our approach is to reduce spending in the tax code.

Wow? What does that even mean? It takes a second to sink in, but what it really means is raising taxes. Is that not the mother of all euphemisms?

So, that's it really. Nothing new to see here.

Hope and change has been replaced with winning the future. Big government is still the solution to all that ails, and all those opposed will be destroyed.

Resistance is futile.