As we approach the third Republican presidential debate, conservatives should consider what they expect the next president to accomplish.
We certainly want the next president to repeal and replace Obamacare, undo the disastrous Iran nuclear agreement, and finally address the problem of illegal immigration. But after eight years of a president who promised to “transform” America, the “to-do” list is actually much larger.
The domestic and national security challenges that await the next president will require a candidate who can set to work the day after the election to assemble a talented team, establish clear priorities, and prepare a comprehensive plan of action.
Here are just a few of the issues that will need to be part of such a plan:
Since Obama took office, over three dozen agencies have issued over 2,500 regulations that impose excessive costs on families and businesses. Over the next 15 months, Obama’s bureaucrats will hurriedly push a flurry of additional regulations out the door.
The administration has notoriously turned to the “pen and phone” strategy. Federal agencies have issued countless directives and guidance memos, and have entered into legal consent decrees that have the effect of substantially altering federal policy. This imperial administration has even gone so far as to change policy, such as delaying parts of Obamacare, through blog posts and press releases. How many of these types of policy changes have been issued is unknowable, because there is no central database for nonregulatory actions. The next administration will need to review these regulations and policy documents and decide whether to rescind, modify, or replace them. This will require committed, competent executives and managers in every agency.
In addition to staffing the White House, the next president will need to fill about 3,000 policy-related positions (not counting ambassadors, U.S. attorneys, and marshals) across the vast federal government. Of these, about 800 will require Senate confirmation. The longer it takes to fill these positions, the longer the new administration will be delayed in reversing Obama’s policies.
Mr. Skoning is a labor and employment lawyer in Chicago
Like millions of other Americans, I have spent cautiously, paid bills on time and maintained a strict budget. That doesn’t make us heroes. But it does mean we have exercised common sense, which has been sorely lacking among the politicians in my home state of Illinois.
The Land of Lincoln has accrued a $111 billion unfunded liability for government workers’ pensions—up 75% from five years ago. There is an additional $56 billion of unfunded debt to cover health benefits for the state’s retirees. Illinois today is already spending more of its general fund on pensions than on K-12 education. One in four tax dollars pays for its retired workers’ benefits. Last year the state had to defer paying $7 billion owed to contractors. All this after Democrats in 2011 raised income taxes and corporate taxes by 67% and 30%, respectively.
It’s getting embarrassing to admit that I’m a citizen of such a deadbeat state.
The level of debt is staggering. According to a recent report by Statista Inc., Illinois residents owe $24,959 each as their share of the outstanding bonds, unfunded pension commitments and budget gaps the state has accumulated. Thank goodness this obligation doesn’t go on my credit report, or my credit rating would be in the tank along with the state’s A-minus bond rating, the worst of any state in the nation.
It is no wonder that 850,000 people have left Illinois for other states in the past 15 years, according to the Illinois Policy Institute. Or that Illinois has become one of the most business unfriendly states in the country (40th in a recent Forbes survey). (more…)
Something strange is happening in Washington. We are slowly dismantling the federal government, even as its spending is growing larger. The paradox is that governmental competence is being systematically degraded while the government’s size, as measured by its budget, is increasing. We are spending more and getting less, and — unless present trends are reversed — this will continue for years. It threatens the end of government as we know it.
The cause is no mystery. An aging population and higher health spending automatically increase budget outlays, which induce the president and Congress to curb spending on almost everything else, from defense to food stamps. Over the next decade, all the government’s projected program growth stems from Social Security and health care, including the Affordable Care Act. By 2024, everything else will represent only 7.4 percent of national income (gross domestic product), the lowest sharesince at least 1940, says Douglas Elmendorf, head of the Congressional Budget Office.
This is the central budget story, and it’s largely missed — or ignored — by political leaders, the media, political scientists and the public. The welfare state is taking over government. It’s strangling government’s ability to respond to other national problems and priorities, because the constituencies for welfare benefits, led by Social Security’s 57 million, are more numerous and powerful than their competitors for federal support. Politicians of both parties are loath to challenge these large, expectant and generally sympathetic groups.
The United States, of course, is not the only advanced society grappling with aging, but it is extreme in its stubborn denial of the obvious. The Pew Research Center recently polled people in 21 countries about whether aging is a problem. The United States ranked 19th in its unconcern, ahead of only Indonesia and Egypt, whose populations are young. Only 26 percent of Americans thought aging was a problem. The share was 87 percent in Japan, 55 percent in Germany and 45 percent in France. (more…)
Two very differing articles regarding the President’s new budget proposal. The first article is from the Wall Street Journal and gives detailed and concise reasons why the President’s proposed budget will not promote faster growth and a healthier economy.
The second article is from the New York Times regarding the President’s proposed budget which doesn’t miss the chance to blame Republicans for the budget impasse. Nancy
April 110, 2013
The President’s Priorities
Debt in 2014 will hit 78.2% of the economy.
President Obama is pitching his new budget proposal as a fiscal peace offering to Republicans, but the details suggest everyone should expect more conflict. The fiscal 2014 plan he released Wednesday is a very slightly modified version of his previous budgets that reduces the deficit by raising taxes and trading defense cuts for more domestic spending.
The real news is that his budget ratifies much of the spending increase of the first term and tries to lock it in. He wants the feds to spend $3.78 trillion next year ($11,944 per American), which would still be 22.2% of national output nearly four years into an economic recovery. Before the financial panic in 2008, the government was spending about $1 trillion less, or closer to $2.7 trillion a year and an average of 20% of GDP—and President Bush was no slouch as a spender himself.
Mr. Obama wants federal spending to grow to $4.45 trillion by 2018 fueled mostly by the exploding costs of his Affordable Care Act. This spending surge appears smaller than it is only because the government will bank large reductions in military spending as the Iraq and Afghanistan wars wind down. But unlike in the 1990s, this peace dividend will be spent.
The budget’s supposed bow to Republicans is Mr. Obama’s proposal for a modest change in annual cost of living adjustments for Social Security. “Chain CPI,” as the change is called, would cut spending by about $130 billion and raises taxes by about $100 billion over the next year. We support the concept, but the White House also slips a mickey into that proposal (see below).
Even with this inflation change, federal spending would grow by more than if Mr. Obama simply let current law continue. This is because the President wants to eliminate the current caps on discretionary spending under the budget sequester that are set to save close to $1 trillion over the next decade. He wants to repeal the sequester that is providing the only spending cuts in at least a decade. (more…)
EXCERPT FROM THIS ARTICLE: The Departments of Defense, State and Justice are authorized by the Constitution and are generally accepted legitimate federal government functions. Most of the rest ought to be done at the state and local levels or by the private sector. The current spending and debt crisis eventually will force debate on the role of the federal government — which programs necessitate taxpayer funding and which can be eliminated. The time is closer than most think — just ask any Greek citizen or resident of Stockton, Calif.
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The current debate about the debt vote is minor league compared to what will happen when the government literally cannot spend more than it is taking in. That time may be nearer than you think. It is true that the U.S. government can always “print” money to pay its bills, but at some point, printing more money becomes self-defeating because the resulting increase in the government bond interest rate and required interest payment will spiral out of control. At that point, the government will be forced to operate on a pay-as-you-go basis, as any individual or business is forced to do when they can no longer get credit. Several California cities are now in this situation.
The U.S. government now receives about $200 billion a month in revenue and spends about $320 billion a month. Any responsible business or individual faced with a situation where receipts are only 60 percent of expenditures would make changes before their credit was cut off or, at the very minimum, have a plan for which bills to pay first — but not the U.S. government.
It appears that President Obama is once again going to produce a budget that assumes very high levels of deficit spending can go on forever. It also appears that Senate Democrats will continue to not bother to pass a budget. Note that the purpose of a budget is to allocate scarce resources (your money) and to make sure that spending does not exceed the funds that are available. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is the ultimate spoiled child, accusing the taxpayers of engaging in child abuse by not giving him an unlimited allowance. (more…)
A Democrat, an independent and a Republican agree: Government spending levels are unsustainable.
GEOFFREY CANADA, STANLEY DRUCKENMILLER AND KEVIN WARSHMr. Canada is president of the Harlem Children’s Zone. Mr. Druckenmiller is the former president of Duquesne Capital. Mr. Warsh is a former Federal Reserve governor
We come from different backgrounds, parties and pursuits but are bound by a common belief in the promise and purpose of America. After all, each of us has been the beneficiary of the choices made—and opportunities created—by previous generations of Americans.
One of us grew up poor in the South Bronx of the 1960s and went on to lead a children’s antipoverty program in Harlem. Another grew up in a small town in South Jersey, and went on to be a leading money manager. The third grew up in a small suburb in upstate New York and found his way to serve in the government amid the financial crisis.
David Gothard
One of us is a Democrat; one, an independent; another, a Republican. Yet, together, we recognize several hard truths: Government spending levels are unsustainable. Higher taxes, however advisable or not, fail to come close to solving the problem. Discretionary spending must be reduced but without harming the safety net for our most vulnerable, or sacrificing future growth (e.g., research and education). Defense and homeland security spending should not be immune to reductions. Most consequentially, the growth in spending on entitlement programs—Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare—must be curbed.
These truths are not born of some zeal for austerity or unkindness, but of arithmetic. The growing debt burden threatens to crush the next generation of Americans. (more…)
EXCERPT FROM THIS ARTICLE: • In 1960, according to the Office of Management and Budget, social-welfare programs accounted for less than a third of all federal spending. Today, entitlement programs account for nearly two-thirds of federal spending. In other words, welfare spending is nearly twice as much as defense, justice and everything else Washington does—combined. In effect, the federal government has become an entitlements machine
In President Obama’s second inaugural address, he not only outlined an ambitious agenda for his second term but also seemed intent on shutting down debate about the social-welfare state and its impact on American life.
Getty ImagesPresident Obama during his inauguration speech on Monday.
“The commitments we make to each other—through Medicare, and Medicaid, and Social Security—these things do not sap our initiative; they strengthen us,” Mr. Obama said. “They do not make us a nation of takers; they free us to take the risks that make this country great.” In other words, the president is tired of listening to critics of America’s entitlement programs, and as far as he is concerned, the discussion is now over. (more…)
President Obama is eyeing a new tax cut to boost the economy. He wants to “reduce the costs of our health care programs.” He’s eager to “meet” the deficit-reduction target of the Simpson-Bowles commission. He’s “confident” he can reach a “grand bargain” with Republicans on taxes and spending. To get it, he promises to be breathtakingly bipartisan. “I’ll wash John Boehner’s car,” he told a radio interviewer. “I’ll walk Mitch McConnell’s dog.”
This sounds like meaningless election-year chatter, but there’s more to it than even Mr. Obama might suspect. If he’d done in his first term what he now vows to accomplish in a second term, he’d be in a far stronger position to win re-election next Tuesday. He might have been a shoo-in.
From the day he took office in January 2009, Mr. Obama hasn’t lacked for opportunities. His first initiative was an economic stimulus package. After he told Republicans that he wanted their input, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor personally handed him a one-page list of pro-growth proposals, including a 20% tax cut on small business income and a reduction in the two lowest income-tax rates. “Eric, there’s nothing too crazy in here,” Mr. Obama said after looking over the list.
But when the administration’s $831 billion stimulus bill was introduced three days later, it contained none of the Republican ideas. Would the pro-growth tax cuts have made the bill more stimulative? Yes. Would the economic recovery have been stronger? Most likely, but how much stronger is unknowable.
A compromise backed by congressional Republicans would have been a political windfall for the president. Instead, he made matters worse by accusing Republicans of spurning his offer of a bipartisan stimulus. In truth, he made the offer while addressing the House Republican Conference the day after Democrats had finalized the stimulus bill—without consulting Republicans.
The president’s next opening occurred in January 2010, when Republican Scott Brown won the Massachusetts Senate seat previously held by the late Edward Kennedy. Mr. Brown ran a single-issue campaign dedicated to stopping ObamaCare. His election gave Republicans the 41st vote they needed to block the bill by filibuster.
By then, the Senate and House had passed different versions of ObamaCare. The expectation in Washington was that Mr. Obama would seize the Brown moment to embrace a scaled-back, less-expensive measure that Republicans would support. Or that he’d give up on health-care reform for the time being. The president did neither. He adopted the most partisan, divisive approach conceivable.
AFP/Getty ImagesPresident Obama and House Speaker John Boehner at the White House, July 23, 2011. (more…)
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