Archive for the ‘BUDGET FOR 2013’ Category

PAUL RYAN – THE GOP BUDGET AND AMERICA’S FUTURE

Wednesday, March 21st, 2012
The Wall Street Journal

  • Updated March 19, 2012, 10:50 p.m. ET

The GOP Budget and America’s Future

The president’s budget gives more power to bureaucrats, takes more from taxpayers to fuel the expansion of government, and commits our nation to a future of debt and decline.

By PAUL RYAN

Less than a year ago, the House of Representatives passed a budget that took on our generation’s greatest domestic challenge: reforming and modernizing government to prevent an explosion of debt from crippling our nation and robbing our children of their future.

Absent reform, government programs designed in the middle of the 20th century cannot fulfill their promises in the 21st century. It is a mathematical and demographic impossibility. And we said so.

We assumed there would be some who would distort for political gain our efforts to preserve programs like Medicare. Having been featured in an attack ad literally throwing an elderly woman off a cliff, I can confirm that those assumptions were on the mark.

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But one year later, we can say with some confidence that the attacks have failed. Courageous Democrats have joined our efforts. And bipartisan opposition to the path of broken promises is growing.

And so Tuesday, House Republicans are introducing a new Path to Prosperity budget that builds on what we’ve achieved. (more…)

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THE ‘DAYTON’ LESSON FOR AMERICA’S SHRINKING MILITARY

Tuesday, March 13th, 2012
The Wall Street Journal

  • March 13, 2012

Three years into America’s post-World War II drawdown,not a single U.S. nuclear bomber could hit a large, undefended target in Ohio.

By WARREN KOZAK

EXCERPT FROM THIS ARTICLE:  But it turned out that many of the planes couldn’t even take off. The best mechanics had left the service for higher-paying and easier civilian jobs after the war ended, leaving SAC’s planes in woeful condition. Of the planes that could get to Dayton, not one was able to hit the target. Not one. For obvious reasons, the results were kept classified……..The Dayton lesson serves as a cautionary tale. The next time some unforeseen event threatens the mainland as the U.S. is slashing its military budget, this country won’t have the luxury of time to rebuild what it will no doubt need.

It was simply called the “Dayton Exercise” and for obvious reasons it was kept secret for decades. It was also one of the clearest examples of the trouble the United States encounters when it decides to precipitously draw back its military in a troubled world.

At the end of World War II, the U.S. had the most modern and best-equipped military on earth. No one else came close. It had taken the entire war to build it, and at great sacrifice.

U.S. troops fought at a distinct disadvantage until 1944 because of an earlier self-imposed disarmament. But when the atomic bombs fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, forcing the Japanese surrender and preventing a land invasion of the Japanese islands, the U.S. abruptly demobilized again. It had done the same thing 27 years earlier, after World War I.

In the Army Air Forces alone (there was no independent Air Force until 1947), the number of men dropped to just over 300,000 in 1947 from 2.4 million in 1945. On the day the Japanese surrendered in August 1945, there were 218 combat groups in the Army Air Force and 70,000 planes. One year later, there were 52 groups—only two of which were considered combat-ready. The airplanes that American factories had churned out were parked end-to-end in the desert, sold to other countries or junked.

Never in history had one nation held such a strategic advantage over the rest of the world as the U.S. did in 1945, and never had a country been so reluctant to wield it. To many, the well-earned peace dividend appeared incontrovertible. Intelligence estimates assured the West that the Soviets would not be able to develop their own atomic weapon for at least 10 years. But a series of events quickly changed the strategic map.

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Associated PressAn Allied war correspondent stands amid the ruins of Hiroshima. (more…)

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A U-TURN STRATEGY FOR THE GOP

Monday, February 27th, 2012

February 23, 2012

A U-Turn Strategy for the GOP

By Herbert E. Meyer Herbert E. Meyer served during the Reagan administration as special assistant to the director of Central Intelligence and vice chairman of the CIA’s National Intelligence Council.  He is the author of several books including Hard Thinking, How to Analyze Information, and The Cure for Poverty.

As we head into some crucial GOP primaries — Arizona and Michigan on February 28, then Super Tuesday one week later — grassroots Republicans remain sharply divided over which presidential candidate to support.  A lot of us would vote for None of the Above, if we had that choice.  But we’re united in the belief that if our country continues on its present course for another four years, the damage to our economy and our national security will be catastrophic and irreversible.

And we’re perplexed by the obstinate refusal of so many Americans who aren’t Republicans to acknowledge the acute danger we’re in, and to at least consider voting in November for whichever candidate the GOP finally chooses to run against President Obama.

Is the problem that these people cannot see we’re heading toward a cliff?  Or can they see it just as clearly as we do, but they hate the GOP so much that they would rather go over that cliff with a Democrat at the wheel than be saved by a Republican driver who’s made a last-minute U-turn?

My guess is that they do see we’re heading toward a cliff.  After all, it’s obvious — and these people aren’t stupid.  But they don’t believe we’re in immediate danger.  More precisely, they cannot bring themselves to believe that.  Which means they may acknowledge to themselves — but never aloud, to us, or to some pollster — that at some point they’ll need to vote for a U-turn.  But not now, or any time soon, because they believe the cliff is still a long way down the road.

If this perception is accurate, it suggests a wholly new approach to the 2012 election — not just for whoever emerges as the GOP’s challenger to President Obama, but for Republican candidates at all levels of government.  We should talk to voters the way a physician would talk to a patient who’s got some serious health problems: calmly and professionally, but bluntly: (more…)

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VIDEO – PARODY OF THE DEBT FACING OUR CONTRY

Friday, February 24th, 2012

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VIDEO – PAUL RYAN, THE ILLUSION OF FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY

Thursday, February 23rd, 2012

FOX NEWS INTERVIEW OF REPRESENTATIVE PAUL RYAN FEBRUARY 2012

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THE REAL OBAMA

Sunday, February 19th, 2012
Published on The Weekly Standard (www.weeklystandard.com)

The budget of a left-wing progressive.

Fred Barnes

February 27, 2012, Vol. 17, No. 23

President Obama’s budget for 2013 is pure Obama. How do we know? Paul Ryan, the House Budget Committee chairman, was once asked how to become a budget expert. “You have to read the budget,” he said. To know Obama, it’s similar. You have to read the speeches and look over the budgets.

For the past year, they’ve told the same story. No, the real Obama is not a pragmatist or a frustrated moderate or a well-intentioned but weak politician forced by political circumstances to take positions he’d rather not. Only sympathizers, notably media types, believe any of those notions.

The truth is not hidden. One merely has to digest the new budget Obama unveiled last week, his budget last year, and his four major speeches since last April, and the real Obama comes into focus. He turns out to be a left-wing progressive who rejects many of the mainstream political and economic ideas of post-World War II America.

This is not an entirely new take on Obama. Others have identified him as such, Stanley Kurtz in particular. What’s new is that Obama has been so revealing in his own words. Only occasionally do you have to read between the lines to discover what he truly thinks.

I’ve gleaned his views from the two budgets and from the “reducing the budget” speech in April 2011, the address to a special session of Congress on jobs in September 2011, the speech at Osawatomie, Kansas, last December, and the State of the Union address last month. Here’s what the president not only believes but is committed to: (more…)

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TO INFINITY AND BEYOND – DEBT PROJECTIONS

Friday, February 17th, 2012
The Enterprise Blog

To infinity and beyond! This is the debt chart Obama and Geithner should be ashamed of

By James Pethokoukis

February 16, 2012,

Testifying before the House Budget Committee today, U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner told Chairman Paul Ryan the following: “We’re not coming before you to say we have a definitive solution to that long-term problem. What we do know is we don’t like yours.”

Actually, President Obama sort of did have a definitive solution. He created a debt commission, which devised a long-term debt reduction plan. Which the president rejected. And instead, we get this new budget proposal, which makes no effort to deal with Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security — the long-term drivers of U.S. federal debt. The debt curve never gets bent, as the above White House (!) chart shows. It just goes up and up and up — until the heat death of the universe or the economy is struck by a Greek-style debt crisis.

Here’s what the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget says about the president’s plan:

Over the long-term, the President’s budget would not constrain rising debt, as retirement and health care costs continue growing faster than the economy. According to the Administration’s own estimates, debt would grow as a share of the economy past 2022 exceeding 93 percent by 2035 and nearly 125 percent by 2050. These levels would be both economically constraining and ultimately unsustainable. (more…)

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THE AMAZING OBAMA BUDGET

Wednesday, February 15th, 2012
The Wall Street Journal

  • FEBRUARY 15, 2012

He’s proposing higher spending and deficits this year.

Federal budgets are by definition political documents, but even by that standard yesterday’s White House proposal for fiscal year 2013 is a brilliant bit of misdirection. With the abracadabra of a tax increase on the wealthy and defense spending cuts that will never materialize, the White House asserts that in President Obama’s second term revenues will soar, outlays will fall, and $1.3 trillion annual deficits will be cut in half like the lady in the box on stage.

All voters need to do is suspend disbelief for another nine months. And ignore the first four years.

The real news in Mr. Obama’s budget proposal is the story of those four years, and what a tale they tell.

• Four years of spending of more than 24% of GDP, the four highest spending years since 1946. In the current fiscal year of 2012, despite talk of austerity, Mr. Obama predicts spending will increase by $193 billion to $3.8 trillion, or 24.3% of GDP. The top chart shows the unprecedented four-year blowout.

• Another deficit of $1.327 trillion in 2012, also an increase from 2011, and making four years in a row above $1.29 trillion. The last time that happened? Never.

• Revenues at historic lows because of the mediocre recovery and temporary tax cuts that are deadweight revenue losses because they do so little for economic growth. The White House budget office estimates that for the fourth year in a row revenues won’t reach 16% of GDP. The last time they were below 16% for any year was 1950.

• All of this has added as astonishing $5 trillion in debt in a single Presidential term. National debt held by the public—the kind you have to pay back—will hit 74.2% this year and keep rising to 77.4% next year. The bottom chart shows the trend.

Economists believe that when debt to GDP reaches 90% or so, the economic damage begins to rise. And this doesn’t include the debt that future taxpayers owe current and future retirees through the IOUs in the Social Security “trust fund.”

But, lo, says the White House, all of this will change in 2013 if Mr. Obama is re-elected. Next year, revenues will suddenly leap to 17.8% of GDP thanks to tax increases on the wealthy, which we are supposed to believe will have little impact on growth. (more…)

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SANTORUM’S FULL CPAC 2012 SPEECH – VIDEO

Saturday, February 11th, 2012

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ROMNEY’S FULL CPAC 2012 SPEECH – VIDEO

Saturday, February 11th, 2012

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