In this week’s “Freedom Minute,” CFIF’s Renee Giachino explains why President Obama’s “balanced approach” of tax increases and spending cuts for fixing the nation’s fiscal woes is far from balanced in terms of its effects on the American people and U.S. economy.
Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.
View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.
Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.
View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.
In the must-watch video below, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan lays out his 2012 budget proposal and the consequences should Congress fail to act now to restore the nation’s fiscal sanity.
In this week’s “Freedom Minute,” CFIF’s Renee Giachino makes the case for conservative optimism. Giachino points to the continued public backlash against ObamaCare, the growing movement against government excess, and widespread opposition to Cap-and-Trade and Net Neutrality, among other big government regulations, as evidence that the nation is committed to restoring to America’s founding limited-government principles.
Republicans in Congress are currently split on whether to accept incremental budget cuts in the name of political pragmatism or to hold a hard line — and face the possibility of a government shutdown or a freeze in the debt ceiling — in the name of principle. Freshman Florida Senator Marco Rubio takes to the editorial pages of the Wednesday edition of the Wall Street Journal with a message that leaves no doubt where he stands:
“Raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure.” So said then-Sen. Obama in 2006, when he voted against raising the debt ceiling by less than $800 billion to a new limit of $8.965 trillion. As America’s debt now approaches its current $14.29 trillion limit, we are witnessing leadership failure of epic proportions.
I will vote to defeat an increase in the debt limit unless it is the last one we ever authorize and is accompanied by a plan for fundamental tax reform, an overhaul of our regulatory structure, a cut to discretionary spending, a balanced-budget amendment, and reforms to save Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
For months now, we’ve heard “sober” politicians tell us that it’s time to have “an adult conversation” about the size and cost of government in which “everything is on the table”. It looks like Marco Rubio is calling their bluff.
From the opening graph of a story in today’s Washington Times:
As a thank-you to its most famous customer, Amtrak is renaming the train station in Wilmington, Del., after stimulus “sheriff” Vice President Joseph R. Biden — after the project received $20 million in stimulus money and came in $5.7 million over the initial announced budget.
Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.
View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.
As the congressional standoff over budget cuts heats up in Washington D.C., both Republicans and Democrats are seemingly scrambling to reach a compromise to avoid a government shutdown. But is compromise what the American people want?
According to a new Rasmussen Reports survey, 58% of likely voters “would rather have a partial shutdown of the federal government than keep its spending at current levels. “ A mere 33% would prefer Congress agree to maintain last year’s spending level in order to avoid a government shutdown.
Broken out by party affiliation, Rasmussen found that:
Fifty-eight percent (58%) of Democrats prefer avoiding a shutdown by going with current spending levels. But 80% of Republicans — and 59% of voters not affiliated with either major party — think a shutdown is a better option until the two sides can agree on spending cuts.
Read the complete top-line survey results here.
According to a Reuters/Ipsos survey released today:
The U.S. public overwhelmingly opposes raising the country’s debt limit even though failure to do so could hurt America’s international standing and push up borrowing costs…
Some 71 percent of those surveyed oppose increasing the borrowing authority, the focus of a brewing political battle over federal spending. Only 18 percent support an increase.
But other than curtailing foreign aid and tax collection, which is supported by 73 percent and 65 percent of respondents respectively, the public is split on exactly what federal spending to cut. And on the issue of entitlements (Social Security and Medicare specifically), which are by far the greatest contributors to the nation’s mounting debt, a large majority of Americans are seemingly saying “hands off,” according to the survey.
The U.S. National Debt is fast approaching the nation’s $14.3 trillion statutory borrowing limit set by Congress back in February.
Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.
View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.
Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.
View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.
Check out this new and powerful ad from our friends at Citizens Against Government Waste, which is “a chilling look at one potential future scenario” if the United States continues on its destructive fiscal path.
Learn more about this ad and CAGW’s inspiration for doing it here.
In an op-ed published today on Foxnews.com, CFIF’s Troy Senik makes the case for a Constitutional Amendment to force Congress to rein in excessive federal spending. Such a Constitutional Amendment is being pushed as part of CFIF’s “One More Vote” project:
If, as expected, a new generation of economic conservatives join the ranks of the United States Congress in the wake of the upcoming midterm elections, they will face a momentous challenge: how to finally deliver on the promises of fiscal restraint that have so often eluded recent Republican majorities.
To do so, they will need to understand how past congressional failures have set us on the road to reckless spending and how dire the consequences will be if we don’t change paths soon.
In 1995, Congress came within inches of passing a Balanced Budget Amendment.
In that moment, we stood on the precipice of long-term fiscal responsibility. But the amendment failed — by one vote.
Fast-forward to the present and it becomes obvious that the fateful decision not to discipline our spending habits has saddled the nation with an unsustainable economic burden. Since the Balance Budget Amendment failed, our national debt has climbed to more than $13 trillion.
By 2020, the total gross federal debt, including liabilities for Social Security and Medicare,– is anticipated to reach 122 percent of GDP. Even without factoring in entitlement obligations, this will translate to a debt burden of more than $170,000 for every American family. …
Senik goes on to note:
If this trend continues unbroken, the United States will find itself poised for the same kind of decline that has beset nations like Greece and states like California. But there’s still a limited window left for us to stave off disaster.
Any serious approach to our economic travails will have to tackle three issues simultaneously: the need for balanced budgets, the danger of tax increases during a time of recession and the prevention of an expansion of the nation’s debt load. The current national consensus for common-sense budget reforms provides leaders in Washington the impetus and the opportunity to address all three.
What’s needed is a Constitutional Amendment requiring 60 percent of the Senate and House of Representatives to vote in the affirmative for any piece of legislation that increases the debt ceiling, raises current taxes or imposes new taxes. The Constitutional Amendment should also require Congress to pass a balanced federal budget annually.
By embracing balanced budgets, these common-sense reforms embrace the legacy of the original Balanced Budget Amendment campaign of the mid-1990s. But they also recognize that balancing the federal ledger is a necessary, but not sufficient, step to getting our fiscal house in order.
Read Senik’s entire piece here.
Interview with CFIF Senior Fellow Troy Senik on CFIF’s “One More Vote” grassroots campaign to force Washington to balance the federal budget annually without leaving a back door open to tax increases.
Listen to the interview here.
The Center for Individual Freedom yesterday lauched its OneMoreVote.org initiative designed to stop the reckless spending in Washington. The campaign was featured in Politico’s “Playbook, MSNBC’s “First Read” and The Hill’s “On the Money”:
OUT TODAY: “The Center for Individual Freedom (CFIF) is announcing the launch of the ‘One More Vote’ campaign and website: OneMoreVote.org. The initiative is a grassroots-driven, online enlistment of activists across America focused on pressuring Congress and the administration to enact fundamental spending and budget reforms. … The One More Vote campaign name and concept is a nod to the Balanced Budget Amendment reform effort, a measure that fell just one vote short of passage. On Twitter: @OneMoreVoteCFIF.”
Per a source, “The Center for Individual Freedom (CFIF) is announcing the launch of the ‘One More Vote’ campaign and website: OneMoreVote.org. The initiative is a grassroots-driven, online enlistment of activists across America focused on pressuring Congress and the administration to enact fundamental spending and budget reforms.”
More from fiscal hawks this week…
The right-leaning Center for Individual Freedom launches on Tuesday the “One More Vote” campaign, seeking to require supermajorities in both the House and Senate for passage of any budget that projects a deficit, any tax hike and any debt limit increase. The name is a reference to the balanced budget amendment, which fell short of Senate passage by one vote in 1997. http://bit.ly/9agHwr
If you haven’t already joined this growing movement, please do so here.
Below is one of the latest cartoons from Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.
View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.
In an interview with the Center for Individual Freedom, Florida Senate President Jeff Atwater dicusses out-of-control federal spending and the need for a Constitutional amendment to require a balanced federal budget.
Listen to the interview here.
From Mark Tapscott, Editorial Page Editor, The Washington Examiner:
Federal Emergency Management Agency deputy administrator Timothy Manning told a congressional panel [Tuesday, October 27] that his organization had spent $5 million during the last 18 months reviewing how it spent $29 billion since 2002, but still doesn’t know what it got for the money.”
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