A Serious Plan for our Country

President Obama & John Boehner

With the “fiscal cliff” right around the corner, and with President Obama and John Boehner unable or unwilling to be serious about a solution to our national crisis, I wanted to remind everyone that serious proposals have been offered to help our nation avoid these crises.  While  I don’t agree with everything in all the proposals, I appreciate that we have those who take our Countries problems seriously.   
One such proposal was the Penny Plan by Representative Connie Mack.

Lanny Davis

President Clinton's Special Counsel Lanny Davis said this about the plan:  “The Mack Penny Plan seems a goodplace to start -- it is simple, it makes common sense, and with some adjustments protecting the poor and the unemployed, it could be seen as fair even to many of the most liberal Democrats.”

 The Mack plan will achieve a balanced federal budget,  in eight years by bringing federal spending down to average federal revenue over the past 30 years, which is 18% of gross domestic product (GDP).  The bill would cut 1 penny out of every federal dollar spent for the next six years.  After that, the bill sets an overall spending cap of 18 percent of GDP.  

What is different from other spending cut agreements is it has enforcement mechanisms.  Either Congress and the President work together to enact program reforms and cut federal spending by one percent each year; or if Congress and the President fail to do so, the bill triggers automatic, across-the-board spending cuts to ensure the one percent reduction is realized.

There are areas, like Social Security and Medicare where cuts may not be feasible, but Congress has flexibility to cut other areas more so they do not have to cut Social Security or Medicare as much or at all.  As long as they achieve a total reduction of 1 percent of overall spending each year. 

Since Federal spending increased from an already bloated $2.7 trillion in fiscal year 2007 to $3.6 trillion in Fiscal Year 2011, a 33% increase, does anyone think it is unreasonable to ask the federal government to cut spending by an average of 1%? 

Tax Cuts Don't "Cost" the Government

Tax cuts do not necessarily “cost” the Government anything.  In fact, history has repeatedly shown that tax cuts can stimulate the economy like Obama could only dream of with his big Government Stimulus plans.  In the past, tax cuts led to economic growth, economic growth meant more employment.  More employment and economic growth resulted in more taxes collected by Government, and less need for Government services.

  

Calvin Coolidge, John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton (after initially raising taxes and losing Congress because of it), all lowered tax rates and each time the economy was stimulated and more money was collected by the Federal Government as a result.  Even George W. Bush’s lowered tax rates, the one's set to expire at the end of this month, resulted in more, not less revenue to the Federal Government. 

  

Dr. Thomas Sowell

Dr. Thomas Sowell explains this and more in two articles he wrote entitled Fiscal Cliff Notes and Fiscal Cliff Notes:Part II. 

  

A few of the excellent points Dr. Sowell explains are listed here:

• The Congressional Budget Office has been embarrassed repeatedly by making projections based on the assumption that tax revenues and tax rates move in the same direction.

• Tax revenues went up when tax rates went down, as far back as the Coolidge administration.

• It is sheer hogwash that "tax cuts for the rich" caused the government to lose tax revenues. The government gained tax revenues, not lost them.

• "the rich" paid a larger amount of taxes, and a larger share of all taxes, after the tax rates were cut.

• No previous administration in the entire history of the nation ever finished the year with a trillion dollar deficit. The Obama administration has done so every single year.

• “Quantitative easing" is debasing the value of money by creating more of it and is nothing new. Irresponsible governments have done this, not just for centuries, but for thousands of years.  It is a way to take people's wealth from them without having to openly raise taxes. Inflation is the most universal tax of all.

What Dr. Sowell is unable to explain is why Republicans, and specifically John Boehner, will not explain this, and take the argument to the American people rather than accepting Obama’s false narrative.  It should be such an easy case to make, with the truth and history on their side.

Who Is More Clueless Boehner or Costas?

I cannot figure out who is more clueless, John Boehner or Bob Costas?

John Boehner

Can Boehner do anything worst to lose the Public Relations battle?  He already has the media ready to pounce when he makes serious proposals,  but now he makes a not very serious “counter proposal” to avoid the so called fiscal cliff.  With this offer, critics can rightly say his proposal will cut Medicare and Social Security. 

President Obama's proposal is to merely raise Tax Rates on the upper 2% back to the Clinton tax rates.  This will solve all of our problems says he.  Of course, Obama's proposal is not serious and will not do anything to significantly lower the debt.  Instead of Boehner making that case and proposing serious solutions he makes a counter proposal that also does little to solve the problem.   

What it does is give ammo to the opposition because Boehner’s proposal will cut Senior Citizens COLA increases, and end the payroll tax cut which will immediately affect the middle class.  I could hear it now, "To save Tax Cuts for their millionaire and Billionaire friends, Republicans are cutting Social Security, and Medicare, and raising taxes on middle class working people by ending the payroll tax cut."

Could Boehner have made a worst proposal?  Who knows, maybe next week he will announce he wants to end Social Security immediately!

Then we have Costas, who said: “If Jovan Belcher didn’t possess a gun, he and Kasandra Perkins would both be alive today.” As if Belcher needed a gun to kill or commit suicide.  Costas, like other gun control advocates, is willing to blame guns for the actions of the gun user, as if "gun control" will stop murders or even prevent those wanting to get guns from getting them.  

 John Lott, author of More Guns, Less crime wrote:  "Whether people like Costas like it or not the facts speak for themselves: Murder rates consistently rise when guns are banned. This is not just a US phenomenon in places such as Washington, DC and Chicago, but has been observed worldwide. When guns are banned, even in island nations such as the UK, Ireland, and Jamaica, the pattern has been the same. The problem is that gun bans disarm law-abiding good people, not criminals. With disarmed victims, crime is easier to commit. " Newsflash for Bob, Prohibitive gun laws will only stop law abiding citizens from getting guns, as criminals do not obey laws.

I cannot figure out who wins this clueless sweepstakes!

I Am Pro-Choice

I am a Catholic, and I am pro-choice.  I believe taxpayers should be able to choose not to pay for abortions.  I also believe religious institutions should be allowed to freely exercise their religious beliefs as is their first amendment right.  The first amendment to the United States Constitution states in part:  “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” yet it is now a requirement of Obamacare that every Catholic institution larger than a single church — and even including some single churches — must pay for contraceptives, sterilization, and morning-after abortifacients for its employees.   Each of these is directly contrary to the Catholic faith and in violation of their first amendment rights. 

Catholic Bishops have been forced to sue to regain their rights so they are not forced to violate their faith.

During the health care debates, President Obama said he was not seeking federal funding of abortion.  He spoke on September 9, 2009 to a joint session of Congress avowing that “under our plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortion.” The President even met with Archbishop Timothy Dolan and assured him that when the final version of the policy was eventually released, any fears would be allayed.   With the President’s assurances, most in the Catholic leadership either did not oppose the bill or actively supported it.  That was a big mistake. Obama telephoned Dolan on the morning of January 20 to inform him that the only concession he intended to offer in the final policy was to extend the deadline for conformity to August 2013. Every other aspect of the policy enunciated by Sebelius would remain rigidly in place.

As a result Catholic Bishops have brought together 43 plaintiffs in 12 lawsuits against the Obama administration. The suits allege that the mandate violates the religious freedom of all Catholics by forcing individuals and institutions to pay into a health care system that provides contraceptives and abortifacients free of charge to all who want them.   In addition, “Harkening back to the civil rights era and the struggles of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) announced in an online bulletin that the Catholic Church intends to practice civil disobedience to the unconstitutional Obama Health and Human Services mandate.”

This is not a partisan issue and no one is trying to refuse women access to contraception. Access will still be there for those who choose to use these products. No one is taking away their choice so why take away the rights of those whose consciences and beliefs say the use of these products is wrong and want no part of providing them? Where is the choice for these citizens?  This Administration is only giving these citizens the choice to do as the government says or be punished. That doesn’t sound like much of a choice? It sounds more like discrimination. It sounds like a violation of the Constitution.

So I anticipate that even my Libertarian friends, with their emphasis on the Constitution, freedom and liberty will support religious institutions as this Administration continues to trample on the First Amendment.  For once, we can all be pro-choice- we can choose  to come together to show the Federal Government that it is We the People who have the right to choose how to live our own lives and what we want to believe. These are unalienable rights we hold because of who we are as human beings created by God. It is the whole premise behind the Constitution. It is this freedom that allows us to have true choice.

President Obama is being Irresponsible and Unpatriotic

In 2007 then Candidate Obama said President Bush took out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children and it was "irresponsible" and "unpatriotic".  I agreed with Senator Obama then, and still do today.  So how can he believe that then, and do what he is doing now?

President Obama has borrowed so much even the "Bank of China" credit card is not enough to meet our obligations, so now we do quantitative easing.  Quantitative easing describes a form of monetary policy used by central banks to increase the supply of money in an economy.  Risks of quantitative easing include inflation because basically it is the new way of printing money.  Our high food and fuel prices can attest to this risk.

Under George W. Bush debt increased by $4,899,100,310,608.44 in 8 years, but under President Obama debt increased by $5,696,206,400,691.90 in under 4 years so far.  That's about $49,568 per household as pointed out in Terence P. Jeffrey's CNS article titled "Obama’s Now Borrowed More Than All Presidents from Washington to W". So what is President Obama's "responsible" solution?   

More taxes, and more spending.  His “solution” at best will raise under $100 billion per year even according to Jeanne Sahadi of CNN Money.  That may sound like a lot of money, but when you consider we are running trillion dollar deficits each and every year, it is really just pennies on the dollar.  This "best case scenario" includes increasing taxes on households making over $250,000 ($200,000 for individuals).  It also assumes raising taxes will not throw the Country back into recession.  

President Obama talks about his "balanced approach" that will solve our fiscal crisis.  He says he has a plan, but his last real plan was rejected by a vote of 414-0 in the House while his 2012 budget was defeated 97-0 in the Senate.  That's a bipartisan rejection, but it never seems to deter President Obama from continuing to propose the same irresponsible and unrealistic solutions.

 

After 4 years of on the job training, it is about time for President Obama's actions to match the words he campaigned on during his 2008 Presidential run.  He seemed to understand then that overspending like he is doing now is irresponsible for our generation as well as for future generations. 

It is time for President Obama to lead and propose realistic, honest solutions that work and will get this Country away from the cliff and on the road to recovery.