No Compromise on Principle

Compromise is Fiscal suicide. Bipartisanship is not mandatory or necessary. The problem here is negotiable Principles.

America Just Checked Into Rehab

http://patriotpost.us/opinion/victor-davis-hanson/2010/11/04/america-just-checked-into-rehab/

America Just Checked Into Rehab
By Victor Davis Hanson · Thursday, November 4, 2010

On Tuesday voters rejected President Obama’s attempt to remake America in the image of an imploding Europe — not just by overwhelmingly electing Republican candidates in the House, but by preferring dozens of maverick conservatives who ran against establishment Washington.

Why the near-historic rebuke? Out-of-control spending, unchecked borrowing, vast new entitlements and unsustainable debt — all at a time of economic stagnation.

So what is next? Like the recovering addict who checks himself into rehab, a debt-addicted America just snapped out of its borrowing binge, is waking up with the shakes, and hopes there is still a chance at recovery.

It won’t be easy. Obama and his Democratic Congress ran up nearly $3 trillion in new debt in just 21 months — after running a disingenuous 2008 campaign that falsely promised to rein in the fiscal irresponsibility that had been rampant during the spendthrift Bush administration.

So the voters intervened and sent America in for rehab treatment. In our three-step road to recovery, we, the sick patient, must first end the denial, then accept the tough medicine, and finally change the entrenched habits that caused the addiction.

First, voters did not reject Obama’s agenda because he was too centrist, borrowed and spent too little money, or did not more vigorously pursue unpopular agenda items like cap-and-trade and blanket amnesty. Nor was the Democratic meltdown because of Obama’s inability to articulate his agenda. The vision itself — not the talking points — was the problem.

Obama failed miserably to keep the nation’s trust. After just 21 months, the country concluded that he was an extremist, and that his attempts to manage the economy through massive borrowing, rapid growth in government size and spending, assumption of private enterprise, and serial harangues against business and the rich had turned a recession into a crisis of confidence and a near-depression. For some strange reason, Obama thought the cure for Republican big-spending was European-style socialism, when in fact, voters wanted an end to Bush-era borrowing and waste — not far more of it.

Second, not being Obama will no longer be enough for the ascendant Republicans, many of them political novices or Tea Party mavericks skeptical of both parties. These outsiders told outraged voters that America will have to step up and start controlling spending in a manner Republicans never did as a majority in Congress from 2001 to 2006. Perhaps a good symbolic start would be to cut back on popular pet programs — agricultural subsidies, for example — whose end the republic will survive. This would be iconic proof of congressional willingness to alienate powerful special interests. Social Security, Medicare and some Defense programs all have to be on the table.

If conservatives plan to cut taxes, they will no longer be able to convince the public that the resulting supply-side growth in the economy will eventually bring in more money and balance the budget. Instead, right from the start, the new House majority will have to demand that we pay as we go — every dollar lost in revenue will require a commensurate dollar cut in federal spending.

Republicans should be willing to be demagogued by a weakened Obama as heartless and cruel budget cutters — even if the president may well be the ultimate beneficiary by running on the new theme of fiscal responsibility and a recovering economy in 2012.

Third, voters want their Congress and president to end the pathological value system that got us into this mess. Instead of the president barnstorming the country handing out borrowed cash to favored constituencies and playing one identity group against another, he had better stay in Washington, keep off Comedy Central and “The View,” and only come out to brag when he has cut unsustainable spending for all of us.

It should also be an embarrassment, not an honor, for congressional members of either party to put their names on the latest pork-barrel projects. And instead of weekly newsletters from Washington that boast of bringing home the bacon, voters prefer hard proof that their government only spent what it took in. Any politician can promise a new project, an expanded entitlement or a special-interest tax break with someone else’s money, but only a statesman can explain exactly how it is all to be paid for.

So for now, voters have said that they are sick of profligate Democrats. But if Republicans do not get that message regarding fiscal restraint, in two years it will be their turn — again.

Pay Go as I recall was a shameless lie. I don’t reckon that more borrowing and frivolous spending is any solution either. Austerity and Frugality is no vice, it is required after the spending orgy of the 111th Congress. Earmarks need to go away as well. We honestly have no room for discretionary spending or economic illiteracy on the part of Congress.

Who had a majority in that time period? Complete frauds? I don’t think so.

Hard Right —

Who had a majority during WHAT time period? 2001 to 2007? The GOPers controlled everything . . . and they ran up the deficit and Bush signed off on each budget. Which is why I call them the Hastert/Frist/Bush deficits. Not sure what your point is . . . .

Unfortunately, most politicians HAVE no principles.

Has there been a President who was considered successful and didn’t compromise? Even Reagan compromised.

The budget surplus in the nineties was created by raiding Social Security. It is a fraud.

@Greg: You said:

Because of Pay Go, from 1994 through 2001, the budget deficit disappeared and went into balance.

Contract with America FTW!!!!! 1994 was the year that the GOP took big gains in the mid-term of William Jefferson Clinton’s first term.

Hmmm, who said this? “The era of Big Government is over.”

Oh yeah, Clinton said that! And he was forced to by the GOP take over in ’94. Greg, you have once again proven not only your ideology, but your short sighted, narrow views as well.

@Greg:

What a surprise, here comes Greg with another “look over there.”

Compared to what Obama and the ‘ahem’ bipartisan democrats have done in less than two years, Bush was a scrooge.

@Greg:

Instead, it appears they’ll be the primary beneficiaries of another round of tax cuts, which will add another $4 trillion to the national debt over the next 10 years.

Your party just spent over $3 trillion in 21 months and got “shellacked” for it but they still think they deserve some kind of a trophy and the voters are stupid.

@Old Trooper 2:

Two types of paygo, used to be three. This from a decent conservative blog by Keith Hennessey, and yes, he is a DC insider….he explains:

The paygo rule is a self-imposed Congressional rule designed to make it harder to enact legislation that violates certain budgetary conditions. There are two variants, known as two-sided paygo (favored by most Democrats, including Leader Hoyer and Chairman Miller), and one-sided paygo (favored by most Republicans, including me).

* two-sided paygo makes it harder to enact legislation that increases the federal budget deficit, whether as a result of increased spending or lower taxes;
* one-sided paygo makes it harder to enact legislation that increases the federal budget deficit as a result of increased spending (only). One-sided paygo does not raise procedural barriers to cutting taxes.

Both versions have common features:

* They are rule changes specific to each body (the House and Senate) that can we waived with a simple majority in the House, and with 60 votes in the Senate.
* They do not by themselves reduce the deficit.
* They do not prevent government from getting bigger, if spending increases are accompanied by tax increases of the same size.
* They do not prevent the deficit from going up due to external factors like a recession or an increase in inflation. They only inhibit new deficit-increasing laws.

There used to be a stronger version of statutory paygo that included the Executive Branch. This version has fallen out of favor.

Much more:

anticsrocks —

I was the one who said that about Pay Go. But look at the dates. When did the budget go back into deficit? Yep . . . 2002, when the GOPer President was in control, along with the GOPer House and the split-then GOPer Senate.

The Dem president handed off a balanced budget. Had the GOPers followed Pay Go, and cut spending to pay for the tax cut, we would not be in the situation we are in now. We would not have had accumulated deficits from 2002 through 2007 when the economy tanks in 2008, thereby leaving less future interest and principal due, and giving more flexibility to deal with the recession. But all that debt hamstrings us. And the worst parts? The deficits were run up during a time of an expanding economy. That would have been the perfect time to balance the budget by cutting spending! But the GOPers did the exact opposite.

While Bush was President AND the Congress was held by Republicans there was a concerted effort to use the media to twist any slicing of any agency’s rate of growth as a CUT.

Over and over the NYTimes, LATimes, NBC, CBS, ABC, MSNBC ran bleeding-heart stories of someone in some weird situation (like being an illegal in high school and having to pay out of state tuition for college) as losing out all because of the Republicans’ proposed ”cuts” in the rate of growth of a federal program.

I recall this in Food Stamps, medical coverage for illegals, college tuition for illegals, all sorts of sad tales of woe hit the airwaves and would be the Republican’s fault IF they didn’t give this-or-that program MORE MONEY!

Emails and phone calls and letters flooded in on each of these trumped-up issues.

That is the real reason the federal budget kept going up while Republicans were in charge.

Notice many stories about the homeless encampments nowadays?
Nope.
But I live by the freeway/riverbeds and see them everyday!
They haven’t gone away.
The media just doesn’t want to embarrass Obama and the Dems in Congress.

Now that the Republicans have the House, what do you want to bet you’ll start seeing those types of stories again?

( http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2009/11/27/down_by_the_river_la_homeless_watch_their_backs/ See the photo….
Our last story on them only happened after 3 men and two women were shot by the 7th Street offramp, last November!)

Republican idea Number One.

Since “ideas” is plural, there must be more specifics soon to be revealed.

Greg, you have a “class envy” issue??? I’ll ask you, WHO owns factories and creates jobs?? A guy making 100,000 a year??? Or a guy making 1,000,000+ a year??? Seriously. A good tax cut, COMBINED with tax rules to ENCOURAGE in America investment, and DISCOURAGE “foreign investment”… will help get us up and moving…. if the rich get richer, SO WHAT??? The REST of us will get pulled up along with them.. way it worked before… before the Progressive Socialists make villains out of entrepreneurs….. Look back in History, when the Rich got richer, the Country ran well, when the rich got screwed, so did the rest of us.

@ Hankster, #25:

…if the rich get richer, SO WHAT??? The REST of us will get pulled up along with them.

That’s certainly not how it’s worked over the past decade. The rich indeed got richer, but the rest–the great majority–saw a steady decline in real wages; an errosion of employee benefits; the disappearance of employee pension plans; frequent corporate defaults on the plans that remained, with taxpayers getting stuck with the bill; massive outsourcing of jobs overseas, etc. Add to that the decline in the value every earned dollar saved, which is a predictable result of the increased deficits that have always gone hand-in-hand with unfunded tax cuts.

Trickle down is a sales pitch. If you want to see the real results of regressive taxation and trickle down theory in practice, look at what’s happened to the national debt since the concept took hold, and look at the growing financial insecurity of 80% of the population.

When was it, exactly, that the rich “got screwed”? They’re presently contending with the lowest real tax burden since 1950, while having acquired the highest percentage of the total wealth in history. Why should we risk crashing the entire monetary system to maintain that extraordinary level of advantage?

Class envy has nothing to do with it. Most Americans just want a fair deal and a fair system, that allows them to work toward a reasonable and sustainable level of comfort and security.

Missy, I found the following article

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/02/24/national/main274334.shtml

Key quote:

That huge projected surplus provides the underpinning of all the administration’s tax-cut and spending plans, Mr. Bush said in his recorded weekly radio address.

“A surplus in tax revenue, after all, means that taxpayers have been overcharged,” the president said. “And usually when you’ve been overcharged, you expect to get something back.” The surplus figure “counts more than any other” in the budget, he said.

So are you trying to tell me that Bush was perpetrating a fraud on the American people, saying there was a $5.6 trillion surplus projected over ten years, when in fact there were deficits actually projected? Why did Bush lie to us, Missy?

And if you are correct, and there was no surplus, why did Hastert, Frist and Bush still insist on adding on more and more and more debt on top of those deficits?

So you are claiming, in essence, that Bush was even more fiscally irresponsible that we all thought! Wow!

Missy, what you wrote made no sense whatsoever. You said there was no Clinton surplus. But that surplus was what Bush was talking about as justifying a tax cut in 2001 — because there was enough revenue coming in to satisfy government spending needs. So either there was a surplus in 2001 (as Bush, Clinton, the OMB, the 2001 GOPer cons, and every person looking at the budget contends) or there was no surplus, as you now contend.

The rest of what you wrote is either nonsense (like the “Clinton recession” b.s.) or just a post hoc excuse. Either there was no Clinton surplus and Bush was lying about it, or there was a surplus and he blew the budget. Take your pick. You seem to be contending the former, even though every government chart and even the plain words spoken by Pres. Bush contradict your position.

I see as you give credit to Bush for getting us out of the March 2001 to November 2001 recession, you also like to blow right past the fact that Bush ran deficit after deficit after deficit LONG BEFORE any Dem take over in 2007. Your efforts at revisionist history — trying to ignore the Hastert/Frist/Bush deficits run up during a time of economic expansion, when a spending cut or a tax increase would not have hurt as much as now — have not gone unnoticed. But here is the REAL question:

How hard will the GOPers fight to OPPOSE the Obama deficit reduction commission’s proposals? Are they forever wed to being known as “Republicans: The Party of Borrow and Spend”?

@B-Rob:

Bush was not talking about anything to do with Clinton, Clinton’s economy, or the debt Clinton left.

Bush was talking about his own upcoming, very first budget he was presenting and a surplus his own, upcoming, very first budget he was presenting would generate, go back and read your article in it’s entirety. You either took a paragraph out of context and tried to spin it or you can’t comprehend the article.

Hint, from your source:

budget….. he sends….. to Congress….. next week…… is the $5.6 trillion surplus……. it projects….. over the next 10 years.

projects, as in the future, get it yet? 🙄

blow right past the fact that Bush ran deficit after deficit after deficit LONG BEFORE any Dem take over in 2007.

Bush, Bush, Bush, blah, blah, blah…………..”

Did deficits spiral out of control? Here are the surpluses/deficits during the Bush presidency, as percentages of GDP (U.S. Statistical Abstract, Table 457):

* 2001: +1.3%
* 2002: -1.5%
* 2003: -3.5%
* 2004: -3.6%
* 2005: -2.6%
* 2006: -1.9%
* 2007: -1.2%
* 2008: -3.2%.

Do you see a spiral there? In fact, deficits declined from 2004 through 2007, the years most aligned with budgets passed by Republican Congresses. The average over all eight years was 2.0% of GDP. That is below the previous four-decade (1961-2000) average of 2.2% of GDP. (For comparison, the 2009 deficit was 9.9% of GDP.)

and rising. 🙄

http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/02/how_to_blame_bush_lie.html

@Hankster

GaffaUK…. I didn’t USED to be “protectionist”…. BUT, I’ve seen all the jobs We USED TO HAVE go overseas….. because Tax law allows it, AND “They work cheap”!!! I see two alternatives available now… become “protectionist”, and FORCE work back here.. or, we work for the wages THEY do, to bring jobs back here. This would result, using my personal work/wage experience as a example, of workers having to live with a 66% wage and benefit cut from now on. That’s what my industry would have to drop to, to compete with work done abroad. And, tell me what “foreign” nation is investing money in US???? When I was younger…. almost EVERYTHING I used/needed was made here, now virtually NOTHING is made here…. all overseas, so why don’t YOU tell us how to get our jobs back here!!!!
By the way, don’t you live in a Country, where if you protect yourself from a Robber or thug, YOU go to Prison?? Hmmmm…….

There is a difference between companies (including and particularly US companies) which go overseas for cheap labour and foreign investment where companies are set up in the US.

Foreign direct investment in the United States
“Invest in America” is an initiative of the US Department of Commerce and aimed to promote the arrival of foreign investors to the country.

The “Invest in America” policy is focused on:

Facilitating investor queries.
Carrying out maneuvers to aid foreign investors.
Provide support both at local and state levels.
Address concerns related to the business environment by helping as an ombudsman in Washington DC for the international venture community.
Offering policy guidelines and helping getting access to the legal system.
The United States is the world’s largest recipient of FDI. More than $325.3 billion in FDI flowed into the United States in 2008, which is a 37 percent increase from 2007. The $2.1 trillion stock of FDI in the United States at the end of 2008 is the equivalent of approximately 16 percent of U.S. gross domestic product (GDP)

Benefits of FDI in America: In the last 6 years, over 4000 new projects and 630,000 new jobs have been created by foreign companies, resulting in close to $314 billion in investment.[citation needed] Unarguably, US affiliates of foreign companies have a history of paying higher wages than US corporations.[citation needed] Foreign companies have in the past supported an annual US payroll of $364 billion with an average annual compensation of $68,000 per employee.[citation needed]

Increased US exports through the use of multinational distribution networks. FDI has resulted in 30% of jobs for Americans in the manufacturing sector, which accounts for 12% of all manufacturing jobs in the US.

Affiliates of foreign corporations spent more than $34 billion on research and development in 2006 and continue to support many national projects. Inward FDI has led to higher productivity through increased capital, which in turn has led to high living standards.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_investment

So there is plenty of foreign investment into the US. If the US is so concerned about foreign goods then why do US consumers continue to buy foreign goods? Maybe because they are cheaper and sometimes better made elsewhere. People care about value for money. Do you go out of your way to buy American made clothes and consumables? Might be tricky but not impossible. This trend has happened for a long time – I’m thinking when Nixon opened up China in the 70s it sped up this change. The same is for most 1st world countries – UK and Australia where I’m living now.

The US has long epoused trade and capitialism – I guess US workers don’t mind foreigners using US products whether they are from US companies or/and made in the US. So unfortunately workers within developed countries will have to avoid jobs which can be easily shipped abroad or have something extra that trumps anything that can be made elsewhere which consumers will want to buy. At the end of the day – individuals, companies and countries are selfish – they will do what is in there best interests. Foreign investors and workers care just as much as US investors and workers about the employment conditions etc of those overseas – which is very little.

Unfortunately in Australia I have to pay $35-$70 on average for a book because of protectionist measures which protect around 3000 jobs in a country which has over 20million people. Why not protect all jobs and stop free trade altogether – do you think financially we would all be better off?

By the way, don’t you live in a Country, where if you protect yourself from a Robber or thug, YOU go to Prison?? Hmmmm…….

Bit of a tangent isn’t it?

I presume you are refering to the UK. Those sort of incidents are pretty rare and happen in plenty of countries where people arrested, taken to court or/and jailed for protecting yourself.

http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2010/09/07/long-island-man-arrested-for-defending-home-with-ak-47/

and of course don’t forget Bernie Goetz. But then again some on here think the UK is overrun by muslims and that the law across has the land has been replaced by Sharia Law – based on exaggerations they like to pick up by the rabid right-wing Uk tabloids.