Archive for the ‘Governor Mitch Daniels’ Category
Monday, February 21st, 2011
Where the Leaders Are
In a time of crisis, two governors show Washington the way.
There were two big speeches this week, and I mean big as in “Modern political history will remember this.” Together they signal something significant and promising. Oh, that’s a stuffy way to put it. I mean: The governors are rising and are starting to lead. What a relief. It’s like seeing the posse come over the hill.
The first speech was from Mitch Daniels, the Indiana governor who is the answer to the question, “What if Calvin Coolidge talked?” President Coolidge, a spare and serious man, was so famously silent, the story goes, that when a woman at a dinner told him she’d made a bet she could get him to string three words together, he smiled and said, “You lose.” But he was principled, effective and, in time, broadly popular.
The other speech was from a governor newer to the scene but more celebrated, in small part because he comes from a particular media market and in large part because he has spent the past year, his first in office, taking on his state’s most entrenched political establishments, and winning. His style—big, rumpled, garrulous, Jersey-blunt—has captured the imagination of the political class, and also normal people. They look at him and think, “I know that guy. I like that guy.”
Mitch Daniels
Posted in American Exceptionalism, Bankruptcy, Big Government, Chris Christie, Conservatism, Economy, Election 2012, GOP, Government Waste and Fraud, Governor Mitch Daniels, Mitch Daniels (Governor of Indiana), Obama, Obama Administraiton and Policy, Pensions, Republican Governors, Spending, Taxation, Taxes | No Comments »
Thursday, January 6th, 2011
January 4, 2011
Budget Hawk Eyes Deficit
Indianapolis
Of all the Republicans talking about the deficit these days, Mitch Daniels, the governor of Indiana, has arguably the most credibility.
Congressional Republicans have spent much of the last decade voting for tax cuts and spending increases, all the while giving speeches decrying the deficit. Mr. Daniels, who took office in 2005, has reduced the number of state workers by 18 percent and held spending growth below inflation. He has raised the sales tax to help make up for a property tax cut. Largely as a result, Indiana finds itself in better fiscal shape than many other states.
Which is why Mr. Daniels is often mentioned as a potential presidential candidate, despite — as just about every profile notes — not looking much like a president (5 foot 7, with a comb-over) and seeming genuinely torn about the rigors of a national campaign.
I recently sat down with him in his office to talk about what small government might actually look like. To be clear, it would be very different from the Tea Party dream, in which taxes could be cut; Medicare, Social Security and the military could be left untouched; and the deficit would somehow vanish. Mr. Daniels is willing to acknowledge as much. (more…)
Posted in Big Government, Conservatism, Democrats, Economy, Entitlements, GOP, Government Waste and Fraud, Governor Mitch Daniels, Mitch Daniels (Governor of Indiana), Obama Administraiton and Policy, Politics, Republican Governors, Spending, Taxation, Taxes, Tea Party | No Comments »
Tuesday, January 4th, 2011
Private-sector union workers begin to notice that their job prospects are at risk from public-employee union contracts.
Jeffrey Brown of PBS’s “NewsHour” recently summed up the year’s economic performance by invoking the most overworked chestnut of modern American punditry: “the disconnect . . . between Main Street and Wall Street.”
The notion that Wall Street and Main Street are fundamentally at odds with one another remains a popular orthodoxy. So much so that we may be missing the first stirrings of a true American class war: between workers in government unions and their union counterparts in the private sector.
In theory, of course, organized labor is all about fraternal solidarity. For many years, it is true, private-sector unions supported collective-bargaining rights and better benefits for government workers, while public-employee unions supported the private-sector unions in their opposition to legislation such as the North American Free Trade Agreement in the 1990s.
Suddenly, it’s a different world. In this recession, for example, construction workers are suffering from unemployment levels roughly double the national rate, according to a recent analysis of federal jobs data by the Associated General Contractors of America. They are relearning, the hard way, that without a growing economy, all the labor-friendly laws and regulations in the world won’t keep them working. (more…)
Posted in Bankruptcy, Big Business, Big Government, Chris Christie, Democrats, Economy, Financial Meltdown, Government Waste and Fraud, Governor Mitch Daniels, Industry, Liberalism, Mitch Daniels (Governor of Indiana), Obama Administraiton and Policy, Pensions, Populism, Progressive Movement, Republican Governors, Socialism, Spending, Taxation, Taxes, Unions | No Comments »
Saturday, January 1st, 2011
NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE www.nationalreview.com
Mona Charen December 10, 2010
The Daniels Dilemma
Indiana’s governor has a great record. Can he contend for the presidency?
Indianapolis, Ind. — “If I could wave a magic wand, and change just one thing, it would be to guarantee that every American child could grow up in a two-parent home until the age of 18. That would solve maybe three-quarters of our problems.”
So said Indiana governor and possible presidential candidate Mitch Daniels. The words may surprise those who know only that Daniels has proposed a “truce” on social issues for the 2012 campaign. Daniels, whose pro-life and pro-family credentials could not be more solid, was simply attempting to sketch the nature of the fiscal and economic catastrophe that he says is coming, and that, for now, must take priority. “The debt is a devastating enemy. The threat from the Soviet Union may have been more severe — if you go broke you’re still alive — but it was also less likely.” National bankruptcy, on the other hand, “is a mathematical certainty” if we don’t change course — fast. “The America that we have known is profoundly threatened.”
It’s because the stakes are so high that Daniels has let himself — somewhat reluctantly — be cajoled into considering a presidential run. A parade of political professionals, pundits, and scribblers (including me) has trooped to Indianapolis because the modest, humorous, and mild-mannered Daniels may well be the best chief executive in American government.
After stints as a Senate staffer, a senior adviser to Pres. Ronald Reagan, president of the Hudson Institute, president for North American operations at Eli Lilly, and director of the Office of Management and Budget under George W. Bush, Daniels was elected governor of Indiana in 2004. He was reelected in 2008 (when Obama carried the state), winning more votes than any candidate in the state’s history.
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Posted in American Exceptionalism, Big Government, Conservatism, Economy, Education, Election 2012, GOP, Governor Mitch Daniels, Mitch Daniels (Governor of Indiana), Politics, Republican Governors, Spending, Taxation, Taxes | No Comments »
Friday, October 29th, 2010
EDITORIAL: Grading the
governors
2012 GOP hopefuls demonstrate fiscal restraint
Associated Press President Obama laughs as he’s welcomed by a bipartisan duo – New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (center), a Republican, and Newark Mayor Cory Booker, a Democrat – upon his arrival aboard Air Force One in Newark, N.J.
The ongoing economic crisis has been a test of leadership not only for the president and Congress, but also for the stewards of America’s statehouses. Polls show the public holds the Obama administration in low regard for the tax and stimulus policies at the national level. According to a Cato Institute report released Thursday, however, a handful of governors has demonstrated a better way of managing budgets in tough times.
Because states cannot print their own money, general fund spending has dropped a total of $75 billion, or 11 percent, since 2008. Not surprisingly, some governors don’t know how to reduce spending so have used tax increases to make ends meet. This year alone, there will be $31.4 billion in new taxes and fees imposed, according to the National Association of State Budget Officers. (more…)
Posted in Conservatism, Democrats, Economy, GOP, Governor Mitch Daniels, Republican Governors, Rick Perry, Spending, Taxation, Taxes | No Comments »
Monday, October 4th, 2010
The Twister of 2010
America’s political landscape will never be the same.
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On a recent trip to Omaha, Neb., I found a note prominently displayed in my hotel room warning of the possibility of “extreme weather” including “tornadic activity.” The clunky euphemism was no doubt meant to soften or obscure what they were obliged to communicate: There may be a tornado, look out.
That’s what’s going on nationally. Tornadoes are tearing up the political landscape.
Everyone talks about the tensions between the Republican establishment, such as it is, and the tea-party-leaning parts of its base. But are you looking at what’s happening with the Democrats?
Tensions between President Obama and his supporters tore into the open this week as never before, signifying a real and developing fracturing of his party. Mr. Obama, in an interview in Rolling Stone, aimed fire at those abandoning him: “It is inexcusable for any Democrat or progressive right now to stand on the sidelines in this midterm election.” The Democratic base “sitting on their hands complaining” is “just irresponsible. . . . We have to get folks off the sidelines. People need to shake off this lethargy, people need to buck up. Bringing about change is hard—that’s what I said during the campaign. . . . But if people now want to take their ball and go home, that tells me folks weren’t serious in the first place.”
At first I thought this was another example of the president’s now-habitual political ineptness, his off-key-ness. You don’t diss people into voting for you, you can’t lecture them into love. The response from the left was fierce, unapologetic—and accusatory. Mr. Obama had let them down, he’d taken half measures. “Stop living in that bubble,” shot back an activist on cable. But Jane Hamsher of the leftist blog Firedoglake saw method, not madness. She described the president’s remarks as “hippie punching” and laid them to cynical strategy: “It’s about setting up a narrative for who will take the blame for a disastrous election.” She said Mr. Obama’s comments themselves could “depress turnout.”
Take the blame? Disastrous? Setting up a narrative?
This isn’t the language of disagreement, the classic to-and-fro between a restive base and politicians who make compromises. This is the language of estrangement. It is the language of alienation. (more…)
Posted in Big Government, Congress, Conservatism, Democrats, Economy, Election, GOP, Governor Mitch Daniels, Grassroots, Liberalism, Obama, Obama Administraiton and Policy, Politics, Tea Party, Transparency | No Comments »
Friday, September 10th, 2010
Time for Emergency Economic Reform
How about a payroll tax holiday, funded by a federal spending, hiring and pay freeze?
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- By MITCH DANIELS, Governor of Indiana
- Ronald Reagan enjoyed telling of the elderly Blitz victim rescued from her demolished London flat in World War II. A fireman found a bottle of brandy under the ruins of her staircase and offered her a nip for her pain. “Leave it right there,” the matron ordered. “That’s for emergencies.”
A look around the American economy suggests that it’s time to break out the brandy. By any measure, growth is anemic—alarmingly so for this time in what is supposed to be a recovery period. The administration’s wild foray into trickle-down government spending has clearly failed. Funneling borrowed billions to government workers hasn’t stimulated anything where it counts, in the private sector.
Moreover, the administration’s big-government policies—most notably health-care reform—are holding back job creation. Drowning in new or pending regulations and taxes, businesses, banks and investors are understandably sitting on dollars that could be putting Americans to work. (more…)
Posted in Big Government, Congress, Conservatism, Democrats, Economy, Election, Financial Meltdown, Governor Mitch Daniels, Obama Administraiton and Policy, Obamacare, Politics, President Ronald Reagan, Republican Governors, Spending, Taxation, Taxes | No Comments »
Monday, June 14th, 2010
THE WEEKLY STANDARD
Ride Along with Mitch
Can the astonishing popularity of Indiana’s penny-pinching governor carry him to the White House in 2012?
June 14, 2010, Vol. 15, No. 37
Indianapolis
When Mitch Daniels ran for governor of Indiana in 2004, a friend and videographer got the idea of filming the candidate in vidéo vérité style as he traveled around the state in his Indiana-made RV. In both his campaigns for governor—in 2004, when he won a close race, and in 2008, when he won reelection against the Obama tide in an 18-point landslide—Daniels visited each of Indiana’s 92 counties at least three times, appearing in places that hadn’t seen a statewide candidate in generations, or ever. If he wasn’t riding the RV, he came to town on his custom-built Harley Davidson, a solitary aide trailing behind.
He insisted on spending every night on the road in the home of a local family. Nearly all the families were strangers to him. He slept in guest rooms, family rooms, dens, and children’s bedrooms, on bunks and foldout couches, with pictures of pop stars staring from the walls and an occasional Disney mobile dangling overhead, proving to the people of his state that he could sleep anywhere. He was bit by a pig and, later, a farm dog. For his website he wrote a day-by-day account of the places he went and people he met. He paid special attention to the quality of pork tenderloin sandwiches he found in the local bars and diners. Pork tenderloin sandwiches, the size of a platter, are unavoidable in Indiana, no matter how hard you try, and Daniels made it clear he didn’t want to try. Food became a theme of the campaign. The best dessert he’d discovered, he said, was a Snickers Bar dunked in pancake batter and, this being Indiana, deep-fried.
All of this was the stuff of what became MitchTV. Daniels said he was skeptical of having his every move placed under the eye of a crew with a handheld camera and a boom mike. The first line of the first episode is: “The first thing you need to know about this is, it was not my idea.” But it was a good idea. The campaign edited the video down to half-hour episodes every week and bought time in nearly every TV market in the state, on Saturday nights, Sunday mornings, and Sunday evenings. A typical episode received a five or six share, a rating that shocked everybody and translated into tens of thousands of regular viewers. (more…)
Posted in Conservatism, Government Waste and Fraud, Governor Mitch Daniels, Mitch Daniels (Governor of Indiana), Republican Governors, Taxes | No Comments »