If Democrats wish to lie, demagogue, and drag Paul Ryan through the mud over the next two years as an election tactic it’s time for him to run for president. The United States has almost reached the point of no return when it comes to our fiscal situation. Right now there’s no one with the courage to address the problem. Our outdated entitlements are unsustainable. If they’re not reformed the nation will go bankrupt, inflation will spiral out of control, and most of the nation will be impoverished.
The Democrats don’t have a plan. Their only strategy is to tear down any idea that involves reform. Just a few weeks ago President Obama delivered his disgraceful remarks about Paul’s plan for reforming entitlements. Politicians are cowards. The most important thing to the Republican and Democratic parties is to strengthen their voting base. If the President was truly concerned about our current fiscal problems he would have offered a plan by now. Obama has been president for three years and he hasn’t outlined anything specific. The only person in Washington talking like an adult is Paul Ryan.
Paul Ryan is also the only politician in the GOP who is capable of effectively communicating what’s in his plan and the problem we’re facing. Currently, the only thing Americans know about the Path to Prosperity are lies propagated by the press, the White House, and the Democratic party. That’s not to say that Ryan’s plan is perfect, but right now there’s nothing else. Ryan’s plan doesn’t balance the budget until after 2060. This is what passes for an extreme plan? It could be argued that Ryan’s plan isn’t aggressive enough. What’s the liberal alternative? If 2060 is extreme are Democrats trying to balance the budget by 2160?
If Paul Ryan doesn’t run for the White House Democrats will effectively campaign against Ryan no matter who the GOP candidate ends up being in 2012. There is only one issue that matters in 2012. It’s reducing our debt and the only way to do it is addressing our entitlement problems. The nation needs a leader who is able to be honest and communicate effectively. Ultimately if the Congress ever gets serious about this issue the Executive Branch has to lead. President Obama is incapable of addressing this problem. He may get reelected, but it will only mean four more wasted years. I’m not sure the nation has much more time to fix this problem.
Paul Ryan needs to run for the good of the country. Not because of his own ambition, not because he has the best chance to win, but because he’s the only one serious about the biggest problem facing the country. If the nation goes bankrupt the American dream may die with it.
Here is a quote by President Obama from January 10, 2010:
“We’re not going to be able to do anything about any of these entitlements if what we do is characterize whatever proposals are put out there as, ‘Well, you know, that’s — the other party’s being irresponsible. The other party is trying to hurt our senior citizens. That the other party is doing X, Y, Z.”
And, here is a quote from President Obama’s speech yesterday:
“One vision has been championed by Republicans in the House of Representatives and embraced by several of their party’s presidential candidates…This is a vision that says up to 50 million Americans have to lose their health insurance in order for us to reduce the deficit. And who are those 50 million Americans? Many are someone’s grandparents who wouldn’t be able afford nursing home care without Medicaid. Many are poor children. Some are middle-class families who have children with autism or Down’s syndrome. Some are kids with disabilities so severe that they require 24-hour care. These are the Americans we’d be telling to fend for themselves.”
It’s quite apparent that by almost any conceivable measure President Obama has increased the partisanship in Washington. His 2008 election promises were a deception and his speech yesterday was a disgrace to the office.
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie quite astutely pointed out a few weeks ago what is so readily apparent about today’s politician in Washington.
“The old playbook says lie, deceive, obfuscate, make it to the next election … What game is being played down here is irresponsible and dangerous.”
Instead of looking at our financial problems in an honest way the President has decided to lie. He doesn’t have a logical plan to offer. It’s obvious that the Democrats don’t have any idea what to do other than raise taxes and cut defense. Doing both will not solve the problem. At this point the Democrats are the problem
Liberals really want to raise taxes on the rich. I mean really, really bad. Raising taxes on the rich would generate around $700 billion for the federal government. Apparently, liberals only care about $700 billion when it comes to taxing the rich. When the government passed the porkulus bill for $800 billion under the dubious claim that it would stimulate the economy liberals patted each other on the back. Yes we can! We are the ones we’ve been waiting for, and man are we stupid!
Now that the political reality of the mid-term elections has set in President Obama knows he can’t raise taxes on anyone. The neoleft wing of the party wants a climate bill, gay marriage, and higher taxes on anyone making $250,000 or more. None of these items are a high priority with the American people. Fake but accurate former news anchor Dan Rather appeared on MSNBC to discuss the political problem for the president.
Raising taxes on the rich won’t kill the economy, but it certainly won’t help it. Even the most hardened Keynesian would admit that it would hurt the economy on some level. The best argument that could be made to raise taxes on the rich would be to help balance the budget, but that’s short sighted. If the budget was balanced tomorrow it wouldn’t solve the long term fiscal problems facing the nation. Simply taxing the rich isn’t the answer. Besides if the liberals are so concerned with balanced budgets they should look for real solutions. Namely scaling back forty years of unsustainable entitlements.
Liberals live under the delusion that if taxes were simply a little higher and if military spending was less suddenly we would have enough money for all their entitlement fantasies. The minimum wage could be raised to $10 an hour. Jobless benefits could be extended to 10 years. What’s next? The amulet of immortality? When it comes right down to it that extra $700 billion wouldn’t be used responsibly. It’s not the state’s job to penalize people for being rich and until the left comes up with a better argument that’s all they’ve got.
The right to free ice cream isn't spelled out in the constitution, but when has that ever been a problem for "progressives."
I have to admit I’m growing a little weary of politics. Perhaps it’s the Arizona controversy and the left’s ability to ignore logic and its apparent inability to read. It seems our population is fine with being ignorant. It’s easier to be angry and upset with Arizona than to actually realize that its law not only mirrors the federal law, but provides additional protection from racial profiling. So if we boycott Arizona, shouldn’t we boycott Washington?
Then, on the other side, there are those who spend time theorizing about the President’s birth certificate. The Republic has a lot of problems, but the President’s birth certificate isn’t one of them. The average American’s knowledge of our current fiscal situation is abysmal. Sure, most Americans can tell you that the economy is not doing well, but how many people cared before 2008? Most Americans are frustrated by the business cycle, not the 40-plus years of governmental mismanagement of finances.
For the United States to right this fiscal Titanic it would take a huge majority in Congress to do it. I don’t see how this is possible as long as the Democrats have the support of 40 percent of voters. The Democratic party doesn’t have a plan to balance the budget or reduce our debt, only plans to run us into the ground financially. Sadly, neither does the Republican establishment. Eventually this economic policy leads to California.
“So goes California so goes the nation,” or so the saying goes. California is our homegrown version of Greece. The citizens of California want big government, but they don’t want to pay for it. The indelible Mark Steyn has an article about the situation in Greece, but it’s just as relevant to California and the United States.
The problem facing the Western world isn’t very difficult to figure out: we’ve spent tomorrow today, and we can never earn enough tomorrow to pay for what we’ve already burned through. When you’re spending four trillion dollars but only raising two trillion in revenue (the Obama model), you’ve no intention of paying it off, and the rest of the world knows it.
Most liberals I know haven’t thought this far ahead. They’re in favor of free health care like they’re in favor of free Baskin Robbins ice cream. The ice cream tastes good, it’s available in 31 flavors, and no one really cares who’s paying for it. I too am in favor of free ice cream because providing it to Americans would be a helluva lot cheaper than free health care.
Eventually we end up like Greece, except there will be no one left to bail us out. There’s no Tea Party in Greece. It’s the Government Party there. Almost everyone is employed by the state and they all want to keep their 14-month annual pension (that’s not a typo; they get paid for 14 months of work in a 12-month period). Think that can’t happen in the United States? It’s happening already.
In Yonkers, more than 100 retired police officers and firefighters are collecting pensions greater than their pay when they were working. One of the youngest, Hugo Tassone, retired at 44 with a base pay of about $74,000 a year. His pension is now $101,333 a year.
It’s what the system promised, said Mr. Tassone, now 47, adding that he did nothing wrong by adding lots of overtime to his base pay shortly before retiring. “I don’t understand how the working guy that held up their end of the bargain became the problem,” he said.
“It’s what the system promised.” What happens if the system is broken? I apologize, but I really don’t feel sorry for able-bodied men who retired at the age of 40. What are these people contributing to society? Being a police officer is a respectable job, but it shouldn’t mean that 15 to 20 years service equals 30-plus years of pension. Obviously some of these pensions are related to disability, but not all of them. Until progressives take this problem seriously the United States is headed to bankruptcy.
I saw this video a couple of days ago and I haven’t had time to post it. It’s too early to tell if New Jersey Governor Christopher Christie will be successful, but I do like his frank tone.
Christie’s rhetoric sounds great but we’ll see if he means business. So far he’s saying and doing all the right things. The fiscal decisions we’re facing aren’t going to be popular. The reason government spending is so high is because politicians are adept at creating programs that are popular. The first politician that’s serious about reducing our spending will be labeled anti-elderly, anti-education and anti-military. It’s going to take a special kind of person to lead us out of this mess.
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