(R) “Romney” or “Ryan?”

Paul Ryan has unveiled his latest budget, and he’s the only adult in the room, bringing little Barry, Nancy, Harry and their fellow whining naifs in the press to tears by telling them No. Money doesn’t grow on trees.

Democrats, incoherent and out of ideas, hate Ryan because he proposes to dismantle their progressive machinery that has destroyed tens of trillions in wealth and produced $15 trillion in debt and over $50 trillion in future unfunded liabilities. The Buffett Millionaire Tax they propose as a panacea would only raise $31 billion, one-tenth of 1% of the federal budget (if we could get the rich to stand still while government ... taxes them). There ain’t enough tax money to pay for all of this. 100% taxation won’t cover it.

“I think we’ve seen pretty clearly that what this proposal does not do is take the serious approach to getting our fiscal house in order that everyone who’s serious about this issue says you have to take,” spokesman Jay Carney said. (Real Clear Politics)

The White House’s carnie barker in horn-rimmed eyeglasses should be shouting that at his own party. They’ve been on an unbudgeted free-wheeling spending binge for the past three years

We can fix this on our terms, while we still control our destiny, or we can wait until we are like the decrepit Soviet Union or today’s Greece, sold into penury and helplessly prostrate before the international bankers and enemy nations eager for our humiliating comeuppance.

Ryan shows a way out. Not the only way, but he’s the only one with a detailed plan that has been scored and analyzed. The Democrats are intellectually bereft; still hawking last century’s snake oil. Banking regulations failed? Pile on more regulations! Too much debt? We’ll spend our way out! It’s madness.

Democrats Protest Reality

Ryan’s gimlet-eyed analysis of the numbers sends fantasy land liberals into spasmodic paroxysms, leaving Democrat apparatchiks like Gene Sperling raging about “the tyranny of math.” Yes Gene, reality can be a tyrant to little children who stamp their feet demanding that unicorns poop rainbow-colored marshmallows from heaven.

All the left has left is scare tactics, while using “look over here!” tactics to keep our focus off of the looming debt-induced crash. Kevin Drum harps weakly on Ryan’s attempt to hold spending to 19% of GDP, but even that is not a big enough cut. We historically collect around 17% in good time and bad, high tax rates or low tax rates, so government budgeting should revolve around that iron law reality.

Dana Milbank makes the bald-faced case of government as a giant teat, and God forbid we try to wean anyone off of it. The children in the candy store never stop to contemplate that mommy and daddy are borrowing from China to pay for it all, and that it can’t go on forever. They love preaching environmental sustainability, which is a chimera because all natural resources are finite, while simultaneously believing in an eternal fountain of money to pay for their dreams and schemes.

Putting aside all the sturm und drang, here is the cold reality of Ryans “draconian” Plan…

By 2022, under the Ryan Path, debt as a share of GDP would be 62.3% vs. a projected 73.2% in 2012. Under the Obama budget, debt as a share of GDP would be 76.3% in 2022, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Over that period, the Ryan Path would spend $5.3 trillion less than the Obama budget.

Longer term, the differences between the Ryan Path and the Obama budget are even starker. By 2030, debt-to-GDP would be 53% under Ryan, 128% under Obama. By 2040, debt-to-GDP would be 38% under Ryan, 194% under Obama. By 2050, debt-to-GDP would be 10% under Ryan, over 200% under Obama—assuming that under the Obama scenario, the economy hasn’t collapsed. (Pethokoukis)

Meanwhile, Obama and Pelosicrats have offered...  Nothing.

GOP is Winning the Budget Debate

Those poor Democrats are looking more and more like Wiley Coyote. They buy the Acme Socialist Propaganda kit guaranteed to defeat that GOP roadrunner, but they end up dropping an anvil on their own heads.







From a DNC fundraising letter, courtesy of Johah Goldberg at NRO…

“Under the Republican budget, if you’re a millionaire, you win the lottery. If you’re a senior, you lose your Medicare.” (Jonah Goldberg – NRO)

Great propaganda points perfectly tuned for the true believers, but blatant lies. Tax rates go down, but loopholes (overwhelmingly used by the rich) disappear. The tax proposal is revenue neutral, and it comes from Obama’s Debt Commission.

Democrat Mediscare Lies and Propaganda

USA Today calls it counterintuitive: Despite Democrat demagoguery, seniors back Ryan’s budget plan. So do those in their prime working and family-raising years. Only with the under 30 crowd does Obama’s sketchy plan outpoll Ryan’s. It’s simple really. Older people study the facts. Younger people tend not to, especially those in the thralls of political hero worship.

Responsible adults who have pulled their heads out of their MSNBC and studied the facts realize that Ryan’s plan changes nothing for those over 55. Obama’s plan is just a sketchy scheme with no hard details, full of gouge the rich and ration the care.

Republicans are winning the Budget Debate

Contrary to what the lying liars on the left are saying, USA Today/Gallup polling shows Americans are reluctantly coming to grips with the harsh realities of deficit reduction. Better yet, the GOP has not just touched the third rail; they’ve tapped into it to light their budgetary platform, and lived to fight on. I can’t believe it, but it looks like the GOP may actually be winning the debate.

“Republicans hold a 12-percentage-point edge over Democrats as the party better able to handle the budget, and a 5-point edge on the economy in general.” (USA Today)

Also encouraging…

“By more than 3-to-1, those surveyed say the deficit stems from too much spending, rather than too little tax revenue.” (USA Today)

Even more bad news for liberals: A growing cohort of Democrat congressmen and senators oppose raising the debt ceiling and voters overwhelmingly want spending cut, while only 11% dream the impossible dream of solving the debt with tax increases: 

“When it comes to solving the deficit problem, about half of Americans, 48%, want to do it entirely or mostly with spending cuts. Some 37% support an equal mix of spending cuts and tax increases; 11% prefer mostly tax hikes.” (USA Today)

Two Stubborn Facts:
+ Government Spending = 22% of GDP;
+ Taxation Stubbornly Sticks at 18% of GDP

Government spending is at around 22% of GDP and rising, which means government gets almost a quarter of every dollar the economy produces. Meanwhile, regardless of tax rates (Eisenhower = high; Reagan=low) the percentage of taxes collected as a percentage of GDP stubbornly sticks at around 18%.

The Solution
This leads to what I consider the smartest thinking on the issue: The federal government should base taxation, spending and budgeting upon these two facts. Size the budget to 18% of GDP and the problem is essentially solved.

The King's Speech

No, not the Hollywood movie, I'm talking about our philosopher king, Barack Obama.  Although his Alinskyite Marx-channeling did make me want to scream the F-word more than once.

His central theme? 

"From each according to their ability, to each according to their need"

Like almost everything out of this man's mouth, his speech was pure excreta.  He took bricks of leftist dogma, mortared them together with BS, and built a house of lies.

President Obama has racked up more publicly-held debt that all previous presidents combined, and he has the temerity to lecture us about fiscal responsibility, shaking his finger at Bush and Reagan.

Progressive America:  Brought to You by Lies & Propaganda
Obama repeated the lie that tax cuts increased the national debt.  As always, he is wrong.  Every time we cut taxes, the economy grew and actual taxes collected by the federal government increased.  Revenue is defined as the money the federal government takes in from taxes.

To refute the shameless lefty lies told to us by our president, here are the facts on taxes, revenues and economic growth

Tax Cuts Resulted in More Revenue
Contrary to the unhinged liberal propaganda, the data show that revenue did increase after the Reagan tax cuts and the Bush II tax cuts. The chart below is for the Reagan years and it shows the growth in constant 2005 dollars.  The same happened after the Bush tax cuts.   You can go here and run the numbers yourself.

The data plainly show that revenue increased after each tax cut, and GDP also kept climbing. So clearly, the culprit in all of this is the spending.

So Reagan and Bush tax cuts resulted in more tax money pouring into the government coffers.   Unfortunately, this goaded politicians on to even wilder spending orgies, resulting in the growth of the national debt.

The Liberal Lie
This is where the mischief comes in.  Liberals scream and point to the debt chart, ignoring the first chart showing the increase in revenue.  To them, this "proves" that tax cuts cause debt.  They have to leave out the fact that revenue increased and the economy grew in order to "prove" their lie.  That tax cuts caused the debt is patently and provably false.  Too much spending is what exploded the debt.

I defended John Boehner a few days ago, and I retract not one word.  I think he's a good man.  However, I now stand with the torches and pitchfork brigade. We need to cut trillions, not billions from the federal budget and the money needs to be returned to the people who earned it.  If the progressives insist on buying votes, they can do it with their own damned money.

Cool picture yoinked from IntelBook

Cloward-Piven from the Right

Angry anti-GOP mobs are rampaging across the internet, screaming that this budget deal is the worst betrayal in US history, right up there with Nixon signing the Paris Peace Accords, The Compromise of 1877, and Art Modell's betrayal of the city of Cleveland


We Have Not Yet Begun to Fight

How would these critics of Boehner and the GOP have reacted after the battle of Lexington that began the Revolutionary War?  Would they have gone home in defeat because there were still British left standing?  This is just an early skirmish in a long war to reshape the federal government.  We still have the debt ceiling fight coming up in May.

Republicans wrapped up a deal that takes us through 2011 while cutting $38 billion, and thank God for that.  It folds the tents on this nickle-dime DC circus sideshow (they were arguing over less than 1% in cuts) and clears the field for debate on Paul Ryan's long-term strategy for cutting Trillions from the federal government, and enacting fundamental reforms.

Don't be a Sore Winner
For reasons unfathomable, some on the right are angry with Boehner.  I'd like for someone to explain how a government shutdown would have helped the GOP, who the American people still view with mistrust.  Here is what he and the GOP did, despite Democrat control of the Senate, the White House and the news media:

The history of offers on this bill goes something like this. Democrats first offered no cuts, then $4 billion, then $6.5 billion, then $33 billion, then settled at $38.5 billion.  (Fox News)

The spending cuts amount to $78.5 billion below what Mr. Obama had requested for 2011. (Washington Times)

 "...an estimated $38 billion in reductions — represented the “largest real dollar spending cut in American history.” (NY Times)

With the DC kabuki agitprop out of the way, Paul Ryan can now conduct an adult conversation based upon stark facts.  This is harsh terrain for unserious liberals who rely on the usual freakshow histrionics.  Americans are ready for a serious debate on ending our profigate ways, and the Republicans are the only ones discussing it seriously.

Do you want to reform government spending, or do you just want to burn the damned thing down?

It's a serious question, and if your answer is the latter, you are in the camp of the libertines who turned the French Revolution into a violent rampage that forever knocked that nation off of her powerful and glorious perch.  Such a sentiment also puts you firmly outside the camp of the founding fathers.  They had righteous anger, but they channeled it into constructive projects that built the greatest nation in the history of the world.

By clamoring for a shutdown, we feed into the left's stereotypes that we are a rabble of anarchists with torches and pitchforks clamoring to burn down government.  The broad middle does not respond well to such wild displays.  Ask "Pitchfork Pat" Buchanan, the latest in a long line of failed American populists.

Fiscal conservatives on Capitol Hill need the support of patriotic Americans who follow the example of our original revolutionary patriots.  Screaming libertines and bloody guillotines provide propaganda fodder for the leftwing statists struggling to preserve the status quo, and end up working against government reformers like Paul Ryan and Tom Coburn.

UPDATE:  American Thinker editor and publisher Thomas Lifson declares, The GOP Did Just Fine.  It is a great wrap-up.


Tea Party Activists Give Boehner Nod of Approval
Lefty Ezra Klein is all Pouty
Fox News - Who Won the Shutdown?
Salon - Boehner Won
WaPo - Boehner Gets $39 Billion, Reid Gets Nothing

A Plague of GOP Lobbyists

Dark clouds are forming over the House GOP agenda… 

May be storm clouds, or maybe a cloud of former GOP staffers-turned-lobbyists swarming like locusts and offering bribes, er… campaign cash in return for leaving certain programs alone.

It's already worked for farm subsidies.  The GOP treats them like a hot stove.

A number of associations hoping to retain federal funding have recently added GOP lobbyists with connections to the new majority. The hiring binge indicates Republican lobbyists are earning dividends from their party’s re-taking of the House in November and points to the headaches in store for a Republican House that wants to take a hatchet to public spending.  (The Hill)

Slashing NPR's tires will be child's play.  Cutting benefits for children will separate the men from the boys...

The National Association of Children’s Hospitals (NACH) has hired former Rep. Deborah Pryce (R-Ohio) of Clark Lytle & Geduldig to lobby for the reauthorization of the Children’s Hospitals Graduate Medical Education program, which uses $317.5 million in federal funding a year.

“As a parent of a child who battled cancer, [Pryce] is intimately familiar with the importance of timely access to specialty care,” said Jim Kaufman, NACH’s vice president for public policy.  (The Hill)

It's time for everyone to take a deep breath and realize that there are other funding sources besides the federal government.

Americans give over $300 billion to charity every year.  We donate 8 billion volunteer hours worth another $169 billion.  Swing some of that money and manpower from more frivolous enterprises like lesbian dance troups, battered husbands and Hotels for Hounds, and if we all dig a little deeper for the rest, we can fill the vacuum.  And it's all voluntary, from the heart, which is the true mark of genuine charity

GOP lobbying has already worked in one area

James Pethokoukis asks, "Did Wall Street nix GOP push to let states go bankrupt?"

In 2010 election cycle,  Wall Street campaign contributions shifted to Republicans from Democrats.

If I were a betting man I'd put my money on Hell Yes They Did!

Goldman Sachs and the other big Wall Street banksters who own the US government make money off the bond market, and state bankruptcies would send that market tanking.

Strap it on, my friends.  We're in for a bumpy ride.  It's even money that the GOP will collapse like a soggy cardboard box.  The alternative will not be pretty either.

If the GOP gets anything close to the cuts they want we will be subjected to a 24/7 litany of sob stories, old people freezing in their homes, poor children starving, hospitals closing, governments cutting back essential services.  The liberals will play the media like Satan's Bagpipes, and the crescendo of caterwauling and ululations from the left will become almost too much to bear.

We are living in interesting times.