Freedom Line Blog

Byron York eviscerates the common liberal meme that former President George W. Bush was worse on spending and taxes than President Barack Obama.  After showing that Bush’s tax cuts increased federal revenues and shrank deficits while Obama has increased the national debt at twice Bush’s pace, York ends with a resounding rebuke of the common “eight years of Republican rule” canard.

None of this is to say that George W. Bush had a good record on spending. He didn’t, and he’s fair game for criticism. But is it honest to condemn reckless spending in “eight years of Republican rule” when Democrats controlled the Senate for four of those years and the House for two? Is it honest to talk about the “cost” of the Bush tax cuts when federal revenues increased significantly while they were in effect? And is it honest to refer to Bush’s ballooning deficits when deficits actually trended down for much of his presidency — at least before Democrats won control of Congress?

Of course Obama partisans would like to pin the president’s troubles on Bush. But they should get their facts straight first.

This week’s edition of the Liberty Update, CFIF’s weekly e-newsletter, is out. Below is a summary of its contents:

Ellis:  Connie Mack: Trying to Balance the Budget a Few (Trillion) Pennies at a Time
Lee:  What Constitutes “Poverty” In America Today
Senik:  Out of Balance: Why the Critics Are Wrong About the Balanced Budget Amendment
Hillyer:  Smaller Torts Make for Savory Politics

Freedom Minute Video:  The President’s “Balanced Approach”: Still More Government Than We Can Afford
Podcast:  The Judicial Fate of ObamaCare
Jester’s Courtroom:  Cross Makes Plaintiffs Physically Ill

Editorial Cartoons:  Latest Cartoons of Michael Ramirez
Quiz:  Question of the Week
Notable Quotes:  Quotes of the Week

If you are not already signed up to receive CFIF’s Liberty Update by e-mail, sign up here.

In a rare moment of candor yesterday, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney admitted, “the White House doesn’t create jobs.”  That’s a refreshing contrast from Obama’s previous “jobs saved or created” nonsense, but he can certainly say that again.

Today, the Labor Department reported that unemployment remained essentially unchanged last month at 9.1%, with only 117,000 new jobs created.  Keep in mind that the economy needs approximately 125,000 new jobs per month just to keep the unemployment rate steady, and 200,000 per month to reduce the rate by a single percentage point over an entire year.  In other words, the economy continues to create far too few jobs to significantly reduce the unemployment rate.

Also keep in mind that Obama promised in February 2009 that if we passed his “stimulus,” unemployment would top out at 8% back in the fall of 2009, and be down to around 6% by now.  Instead, we have witnessed a post-war record number of consecutive months at or above 9% unemployment.  Over the same 30-month period that have passed since Obama’s “stimulus” promise, Ronald Reagan’s policies reduced unemployment from 10.4% to 7.1%.

The White House may not create jobs, Mr. Carney, but history shows that its policies can foster growth or, in your case, wreak havoc.

In an interview with CFIF, Todd Gaziano, Director of the Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at the Heritage Foundation, discusses the outlook for the 26-state lawsuit against ObamaCare, which is soon to be decided at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit.

Listen to the interview here.

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.

Deroy Murdock throws the “pro-choice” label right back at the left. Wow. Good stuff.

Attorney General Eric Holder’s stint at the Justice Department has been ignominious. It seems anytime the DOJ is in the news these days it’s either for incompetence (the Mexican gunrunner scandal) or nefariousness (turning a blind eye towards Black Panther voter intimidation). Time to add another brick to the wall being built around the justice system, with the news that the DOJ recently released a radical leftist terrorist from prison. J. Christian Adams, the former DOJ attorney who brought the Panthers intimidation case has the story at Big Government:

Marilyn Buck was a Marxist terrorist who participated in conspiracies that led to the deaths of multiple police officers.  Buck helped the Black Liberation Army, a violent Marxist offshoot of the black panthers, acquire weapons and ammunition.  She participated in the robbery of an armored car where a guard was murdered.  If that wasn’t enough, Buck was also charged with the bombing of the U.S. Senate, Ft. McNair, the Washington Navy Yard Officer’s Club and a New York City federal building.  In many states, Buck’s behavior might have led to a midnight reservation in the electric chair.

Yet Holder’s DOJ unlocked Buck’s jail cell and set her free last summer. Justice concluded that Buck “expressed a dramatic change from her previous political philosophy.”

Adams’ piece goes on to chronicle how a stunning amount of vacous letters written on Buck’s behalf by leftist elites, primarily from academia, secured her release. Sadly, it’s no suprise that the insular world of the university was able to produce so much sympathy for Buck. What is shocking — and inexcusable — is that such pabulum was enough to convince the federal government to put a terrorist back on the streets.

Marilyn Buck doesn’t deserve her freedom. And Eric Holder doesn’t deserve his job.

U.S. News & World Report summarizes a great one-page handout from the office of Senator John Barasso (R-WY):

At Tuesday’s GOP Senate caucus lunch, the lawmakers said that they will renew their efforts, supported by business groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. In a memo Barasso handed out to the lawmakers, he claimed that the administration in July only has put in $9.5 billion in new regulatory costs by proposing 229 new rules and finalizing 379 rules. Among those he cited were EPA, healthcare reform, and financial regulatory reform rules.

If you’re a Tea Party activist, or someone looking for a compact fact sheet describing the growth in government, check out Senator Barasso’s handout. (pdf)

Dan Walters, the dean of California political journalists, is sounding the alarm over a series of moves by the state’s Democratic machine to restrict conservative access to statewide ballot initiatives.

As California Democrats see it, conservatives are poised to unleash a torrent of ballot measures to rein in government spending and regulations, as the state continues to suffer double-digit unemployment and annual budget deficits.  With Democrats controlling all levers of government, there’s only one area where their tax-and-spend liberalism could be challenged: at the ballot box.

To eliminate that threat, Democrats in and outside government are pushing to criminalize paying signature gatherers per name collected, and issuing radio ads linking petition-signing with identity theft.  Last week, Democratic Governor Jerry Brown vetoed the criminalization measure, but others are waiting the wings.

The motivation behind the Democrats’ ploy is protecting the public employee union members who live off legislative largesse, be it sweetheart pension deals, deferred compensation, or over-generous overtime pay.

With Californians waking up to the fact that economic growth isn’t possible without serious reforms, it’s becoming clearer by the day that the liberal Democrats running the state are not governing in the taxpayer’s best interest.  So to the statist’s mind, it’s far better to cut off debate than face reality.

Lanny Davis, former special counsel to President Bill Clinton, writes in TheHill that the “Penny Plan” by Rep. Connie Mack (R-FL) is a “simple and creative” way to balance the budget.

…since the “balanced” solution of both increased revenues and spending cuts is supported in virtually every poll by substantial majorities of all voters, including large numbers of Republicans, Democrats need to find a spending cut formula that they can live with. The Mack Penny Plan seems a good place to start — it is simple, it makes common sense, and with some adjustments protecting the poor and the unemployed, it could be seen as fair even to many of the most liberal Democrats.

Ignoring Davis’ call to undermine the elegance of Mack’s Penny Plan by creating vague exceptions for the poor and unemployed – as I wrote recently, the attraction of Mack’s plan is its uniform treatment of all budget items – it’s welcome news that a high-ranking Clintonista can sense good policy when he sees it.

Earlier in his column Davis warned his fellow liberals that it would be “a moral stain on our generation if we leave this red-ink legacy for generations to come to deal with.”

Davis is right.  Let’s hope he urges his fellow Democrats to back Mack’s Penny Plan so we can get on the road to fiscal solvency as soon as possible.

There are few things more annoying than trying to compete against someone who won’t play the game.

In today’s Wall Street Journal, House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) expresses the frustration of many conservatives who want a real debate about the purposes of government and our ability as a nation to fund them.  Ryan rightly chides President Obama for failing to engage in specifics about how to focus policymakers’ attention on the debt, not just its ceiling.

It is mystifying to me that the president continues to shut out Ryan’s “Path to Prosperity” proposal as a middle ground between bankrupting Medicare and Medicaid and eliminating them altogether.

One would think The One could see a Clintonian moment when presented.  But rather than see Ryan’s willingness to preserve the social safety net for what it is – a path to a long-term bipartisan solution – the president can’t see past his own partisan nose.

Yet instead of laying out his own vision, President Obama continues to offer speeches instead of specifics.  Lots of us want a debate about the ends of government, and how we structure our economy to pay for it.  If the leader of the Democratic Party won’t engage in a serious debate about it, maybe the Democrats should get someone who will.

One of the biggest decisions that conservative members of the new congressional debt commission will need to face (and this assumes that all six GOPers are conservative; if not, Mitch McConnell and John Boehner should crawl under rocks forever) is whether to try to swing for the fences with a “grand plan” or whether to try to reach the required savings numbers (all of which are subject to the fallacy of misplaced concreteness, but that’s a story for another day) via policy changes that will be as invisible and thus as little frightening as possible.

From a policy standpoint, what’s needed is both approaches at once — i.e., a “super grand plan” that achieves far more savings even than those required under this week’s deal. That’s how big the long-term problem is.

But for now the super grand plan is pie in the sky. The choice is between merely grand, on the one hand, and small ball on the other.

From a political standpoint, the advantage of a grand plan is that it requires buy-in from the moderate Dems and thus takes away the left’s ability to demagogue it. The disadvantage is it lets the leaning lefties look reasonable and, if Obama signs off, reinforces the (false) image he wants to portray as a moderate. It also would probably require some policy compromises that mean the end result won’t actually work as well as conservatives might otherwise hope.

The advantages of small ball are that it avoids a huge fight, thus potentially locking in whatever advantages the right seems to have now over Obama, and it leaves to conservatives — if they sweep the 2012 elections — the ability to implement REALLY good policy reforms in 2013. Disadvantages? It continues to allow the left to lie about what the GOP plans are, and thus to demagogue those purported plans.

What do I mean by “small ball?” Formula changes. Things like a “chained CPI,” or inflation adjustor, that saves money over time — except that the design of the “chain” would be ratcheted up, in terms of savings, from what the Gang of Six proposed. A quick and easy solution for savings would be to suspend all inflation adjustments government-wide for one year, or perhaps all inflation adjustments up to 3% (if inflation exceeds 3%), and call it a one-time “correction” for 30 years of ever-so-slightly (on average) overstating the true inflation rate. Another small-ball move that actually is almost sure to be part of any package, big or small, will be to tie the Medicare eligibility age to that of Social Security, which is rising slowly for the next 15 years or so. To save more money, that eligibility-age hike (for both programs) could be accelerated just a tad, so that the new age of eligibility reaches 67 (from 65) a year sooner than it would under current law.

Anyway, things like that are “small ball” in that they are almost imperceptible, but when all combined they add up to significant savings over time.

I don’t know which approach is best — grand plan or small ball. But it’s a choice that will need to be made soon.

More on this in future posts.

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.

With the debt ceiling debate now officially behind us, most Americans will be tempted to simply exhale and move on from the psychological exhaustion of the past few weeks. Like many other conservative pundits (including our own Quin Hillyer), I have misgivings about the final agreement but generally agree that it was the best deal possible given the constraints (including Republican control of only one house of Congress).

Still, that doesn’t mean we should avoid learning the lessons of the recent dust-up, one of which is artfully put by the Atlantic’s Gregg Easterbrook (not exactly a doctrinaire conservative) writing today for Reuters:

The deal raises the federal borrowing ceiling by $2.4 trillion. This means Congress will immediately spend another $2.4 trillion. That basic point is being overlooked.

You’ve got a debt ceiling on your credit card. The ceiling is there for emergencies, and all responsible borrowers work to stay below their credit ceilings. Experience with the national debt ceiling, by contrast, shows that every dollar of available debt is always spent. Announced in doublespeak as a “savings” plan, this deal guarantees the national debt will rise another $2.4 trillion. The moment the deal becomes law, members of Congress from both parties will see an added $2.4 trillion in the cookie jar and begin raiding.

Easterbrook is right. One of the main points of contention in the recent debate was whether the President would have to come back to Congress for another debt ceiling increase within the next year or whether it would be extended into 2013 (the latter won out). But that fight misses the point. We won’t be seeing real reform until new increases in the debt ceiling become unnecessary. Until then, we’re stuck arguing over what speed to drive on the road to perdition.

Not to beat a dead horse, but the next item of business for conservatives should be to make the case for, and pass legislation enabling, economic growth. To do this, those on the right need to bury the hatchet of the last two weeks, stop attacking each other, and work together again. Moderate Republicans are not the enemy; they may just not be sufficiently friendly. Or, from the mainstream conservative standpoint (i.e. John Boehner), the Tea Partiers aren’t the enemy; they just act like it sometimes.

In actual goals and actions, there is far more that unites the right than that should divide it. Pick up the pieces, consolidate whatever gains were made, and move on. Growth is the answer. Tax reform is the means.

Oh, for the halcyon days when the vice presidency was a sinecure, in the (paraphrased) words of John Nance Garner, “not worth a bucket of warm (spit).” The current presidency and the two preceding it, however, have seen our nation’s deputy-executive take on growing prominence and prestige. Which was all well and good until Joe Biden arrived on the scene. Here’s how Politico reports Biden’s take on the conservative negotiating stance during the debt ceiling debate:

Vice President Joe Biden joined House Democrats in lashing tea party Republicans Monday, accusing them of having “acted like terrorists” in the fight over raising the nation’s debt limit, according to several sources in the room.

There are two lessons here. The first is that “terrorist” is the new “nazi”; an epithet that the boorish and unimaginative throw around with no regard to the gravity of genuine evil and suffering. The second is that Biden is an extraordinarily imprudent man. While comments like his don’t deserve an airing anywhere, an experienced politician like the VP should know that they’re especially dangerous in a room full of potential leakers — especially when the consequence of a leak could be to dismantle the legislative coalition needed to pass an essential piece of legislation.

With news that the House has passed the compromise debt agreement, Biden has dodged the bullet of having his words derail a grand bargain. But he’s far from being out the woods. Now that he’s alienated the lion’s share of the Republican Caucus, don’t expect to see the VP chairing any more bipartisan task forces on Capitol Hill in the future. The vice presidency may now return to its historical role — attending state funerals and welcoming Girl Scout troops to the Rose Garden. Who said nothing good would come out of the debt ceiling debate?

The International Business Times chronicles another blow to the meaning of American citizenship:

The Illinois DREAM Act would make undocumented students eligible for private college scholarships and would allow them to enroll in state college savings programs. The California DREAM Act, signed last week by governor Jerry Brown, granted undocumented immigrants at public universities greater access to privately funded scholarships. The California state legislature is debating a more controversial measure to allow undocumented immigrants to pay in-state tuition, which Brown has signaled he supports.

George Soros, the leftwing hedge fund billionaire and part-time Hungarian Bond villain, announced last week he’s opting out of the regulatory straitjacket he demanded of his industry.  Taking advantage of a little-known loophole in the Dodd-Frank financial “reform” law, Soros is evading the kind of “transparency” he championed for others.

Per Michelle Malkin:

Under Title IV of Dodd-Frank, hedge funds were required to abide by new registration and reporting requirements in an attempt to better police systemic risk (not that the feckless Securities and Exchange Commission has ever been able to fulfill that mission). To evade the regulations, Soros and other firms have used a recently passed rule allowing so-called family offices to shield themselves from both registration and disclosure rules that would have subjected Soros Inc. to a new “Financial Stability Oversight Council.”

But what would Soros want to hide?  More Malkin:

Soros and his family shelled out $250,000 for Obama’s inauguration, $60,000 in direct campaign contributions and untold millions more to liberal activist groups pushing the White House agenda.

…

Over the past year, Soros provided coveted support for Obama and the Democrats’ Byzantine financial “reforms” under the sweeping Dodd-Frank law. He preached to financial publications around the world about the need for increased regulatory controls over his industry. And in November 2008, while paying obligatory lip service to concerns about going too far, he submitted a statement to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform that recommended: “The entire regulatory framework needs to be reconsidered, and hedge funds need to be regulated within that framework.”

That is, unless you’ve got creative lawyers and a disingenuous president’s ear.

Here was my take on things, this morning, at The American Spectator.

Short version: I think the debt deal DOES, in effect, protect pretty well against tax hikes, but it does not protect enough against defense cuts of an unwisely large size.  But the ultimate fate of defense, and indeed of all of this, will depend on the 2012 elections — and in the meantime, the change in direction of government spending will probably be noticeably helpful. Conservatives have every right to grumble about this result. But wise conservatives will certainly not reject it out of hand. In short, it’s a close call that probably will attract slightly more conservative votes than it will repel.

Michael Barone and our own Quin Hillyer, among others, remind us that conservatives are winning the broader debt limit debate.   But that’s not the only battle in which we conservatives are winning.

A Gallup survey released today shows that we also continue to win the battle for the hearts and minds of the American people.  According to the poll, more Americans again identify themselves as “conservative” (41%) than “moderate” (36%), and almost twice as many call themselves conservative than “liberal” (21%).  For two decades now, conservatives and moderates have battled for the plurality, but each could consistently claim twice as many adherents as liberalism.  For the third consecutive year, however, conservatives can claim greater numbers than moderates.

That certainly isn’t the sort of change that Barack Obama might have predicted on January 20, 2009.