Freedom Line Blog

Stephen Moore of the Wall Street Journal in an interview with the Daily Caller frames the tax debate in terms both Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan should use when attacking President Barack Obama’s soak-the-rich economic policies:

“Fairness is a good principle but should not be put ahead of growth,” Moore said when discussing his new book, Who’s the Fairest of Them All?: The Truth about Opportunity, Taxes, and Wealth in America.  “There’s nothing fair about making everyone poor.”

A hat tip to my father-in-law and former flight instructor Grady Conner for sending along a link from Flying Magazine that reproduced the National Business Aviation Association’s response to President Barack Obama’s debate night swipe at corporate jets:

In an open letter to Obama, NBAA head Ed Bolen said the remarks show that the president is out of touch with reality.

“Your comments seemed to illustrate a complete lack of understanding about the importance of business aviation in the U.S., and appear to be at odds with your stated interest in promoting job growth, stimulating exports, driving economic recovery and restoring America to its first-place position in manufacturing,” Bolen wrote.

Bolen was referring to Obama’s response to a question from debate moderator Jim Lehrer about tax policy, in which Obama stated: “Why wouldn’t we eliminate tax breaks for corporate jets? My attitude is if you got a corporate jet, you can probably afford to pay full freight, not get a special break for it.”

Bolen first countered those remarks in a statement issued to news organizations before the Wednesday night debate had concluded, which noted that the business aviation industry is responsible for 1.2 million American jobs, and contributes $150 billion annually to the U.S. economy.

For those scoring at home, the 1.2 million American jobs maintained by the business aviation industry dwarf the 300,000 non-farm payroll jobs created since President Obama took office.  (And that’s being charitable.  The CNN fact checkers who determined that number didn’t count government jobs.  If they had, the Obama economy would actually have 400,000 fewer Americans working today than in January 2009.)

As a devotee of stimulus, the President should appreciate that tax breaks for corporate jet purchases help stimulate people to buy such aircraft, which in turn help employ 1.2 million domestic workers and generate $150 billion.

Then again, maybe the President just resents the fact that free people in an open market can do a better job stimulating the economy than government experts.

Politico on why the Obama campaign is using former President Bill Clinton so often:

As the campaign acknowledges, Clinton brings credibility to the connection between an Obama presidency and a strong economy, reinforcing the idea that there’s a straight line between Obama’s proposals and Clinton’s legacy of budget surpluses and middle class prosperity.

It’s only a credible connection if you don’t consider the wildly differing contexts.

As Tim pointed out earlier this month, “the so-called “Clinton surpluses” didn’t arrive until 1998, four years after Newt Gingrich and the Republicans captured Congress for the first time in four decades, and six years after Clinton was elected.  Given the fact that Congress controls the budget under our Constitution, it is therefore disingenuous for Clinton and his apologists to claim sole credit.”

Thus, if in 2012 the Obama camp really wants to make the case that a national economic recovery is just around the corner, it should have prayed for a complete conservative takeover of Congress in 2010.  Had he been faced with an entire branch of government – not just the House – passing real budgets, chances are the Obama White House would have had a Clintonesque opportunity to make a deal.

Instead, Obama has had no incentive to move to the middle for the sake of compromise because Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has been willing to abdicate his chamber’s constitutional responsibility to pass a new budget for the last three years of Obama’s term of office.  And so the President dithers while the economy sputters.

Call it the Clinton Conundrum.  Both Clinton and Obama are doctrinaire liberals whose policy impulses created pushes to nationalize health care.  Both prefer to raise taxes and spend money.  But Clinton, unlike Obama, was saved from oblivion when Republicans took over both houses of Congress in 1994 and (implicitly and unintentionally) made him an offer he didn’t refuse: either adopt our reform agenda or face defeat in reelection.  Clinton accepted and has benefited ever since.  Obama’s choice was between Senate Democrat dithering and House Republican reform.  He sided with his party and hasn’t governed since.

If Barack Obama wants Bill Clinton’s success, he’ll have to adopt Bill Clinton’s policies.  In large part, that means adopting conservative budget reforms so that he can claim credit for a rebounding economy.

Following Quin’s lead, the Wall Street Journal offers some ideas on how to reframe Mitt Romney’s 47-percent-of-Americans-see-themselves-as-victims-and-will-vote-for-Obama-no-matter-what:

“I want Americans to be less dependent on government not because it costs too much. We will always help Americans who need our help. I want Americans to be independent so they can realize the pride of accomplishment and the dignity of work and contribute their God-given talents to build a better country.

“I think the success of a Presidency should be measured by how many fewer people need food stamps, how many fewer need disability, not how many more people are added to the rolls. I don’t want to take food stamps away from Americans in need. I want fewer Americans to need food stamps.

Sometimes I wonder if President Obama shares that view. He and his economists keep saying that food stamps and unemployment benefits are a form of ‘stimulus.’ Well, we’ve sure had a lot of that kind of stimulus, and all we have to show for it are more people on food stamps and more people on welfare and more people looking for work. I think a real stimulus is a job, and I intend to help Americans create more of them.”

Read the whole editorial here.

Conventional wisdom (pardon the pun) holds that presidential election season doesn’t begin in earnest until the conventions conclude.

If that’s the case, Barack Obama begins his job extension tour with a faceplant.

Economists expected our economy to add 135,000 new jobs in August, but today’s unemployment report shows just 96,000.  Not only is that a steep decline from last month’s already-lackluster 141,000 number, it’s significantly below the 200,000 per month we must see to keep pace with population growth and substantively reduce the festering unemployment rate.  Moreover, another 368,000 Americans simply dropped out of the workforce altogether in August, nearly four times the number of new jobs.  Finally, the unemployment rate remained above the 8% level that the Obama Administration promised in January 2009 we would never reach in the first place, establishing a new record 43rd consecutive month.  In fact, it promised that we would be down to approximately 5% by now.

“Four more years?”  Today’s news makes that an increasingly difficult sell.

No president in modern history has been reelected with unemployment above 7.2%, and even that occurred in 1984 when the rate had plummeted in just a few months from over 10%.  Accordingly, today’s unemployment report makes for an ugly hangover for Obama and his fellow Democratic conventioneers as they board their planes for home.

Jonah Goldberg on the difference between conservatives and liberals as stewards of the economy:

At least Reagan argued that the economy would prosper if he were allowed to liberate it from the scheming of self-styled experts. Clinton ran out in front of a parade of free-market successes and, like Ferris Bueller, acted as if he was leading the parade.

In his manifest hubris, Obama believed it was just that easy. He, too, could simply will a vibrant economy into being through sheer intellectual force. But, unlike Bill Clinton, he wouldn’t sully himself by playing “small ball.” Obama would be “transformative.”

This reminded me of Mitt Romney’s acceptance speech last week when he said, “President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans and heal the planet. My promise… is to help you and your family.”

Free markets and strong families.  Sounds like a good combination to me.

Tomorrow the latest jobs report will be announced by the Labor Department.  Tonight President Barack Obama will accept his party’s (re)nomination for President of the United States.  The Wall Street Journal says that sometime before he delivers his acceptance speech he will know what the numbers say.

This could prompt a side-game for political junkies:

Assuming the president gets a briefing on Thursday before his speech, what might he do with it? He isn’t exactly getting on stage, for one of the most important speeches of his career, to recite Labor Department data. But he conceivably could tweak his adjectives in describing the economy if the employment report is a surprise in either direction. Good luck trying to figure that out while you’re watching.

But don’t let that stop you from trying!

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.

If Barack Obama insists on blaming Republicans in Congress for today’s economic malaise or deficits, then shouldn’t Democrats in Congress be held even more responsible?

Republicans today control just one-half of Congress, whereas Democrats won overwhelming control of both houses of Congress in November 2006.  That was fully two years before the financial crisis and recession (Obama’s all-purpose “mess we inherited” alibi), and our deficit stood at a miniscule $161 billion.

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.

Early this week, the liberal group Americans United for Change and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees launched a $280,000 ad campaign targeting some Republicans who voted to extend all of the Bush tax cuts for all Americans.  The ad charges them with voting “to give people like Donald Trump a tax break worth $150,000 a year…” [Emphasis added]

In response, the Donald took to Twitter and fired back with the following:

To the geniuses at ‘Americans United for Change’: the more you tax me the less people I employ. Get it?

That’s the problem, Mr. Trump.  They don’t get it.

In an interview with CFIF, Congresswoman Nan Hayworth, M.D. (NY-19), the only female physician serving in Congress, discusses why repealing and replacing ObamaCare will provide immediate relief for millions of Americans who are desperate to find jobs and the need for a flatter, fairer and simpler tax code to relieve burdens on small business owners and employers, strengthen the economy and grow jobs.

Listen to the interview 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.

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.

Read all about it.

Reasonable people agree that the U.S. tax code is too bloated and complex.  We also agree that our businesses and economy cannot withstand the January 1, 2013 tax cliff catastrophe that Barack Obama and his Congressional accomplices are willing to allow in the name of class warfare.

Fortunately, there’s something you can do about it.

The House will vote soon on H.R. 8 and H.R. 6169, the “Job Protection and Recession Prevention Act” and the “Pathway to Job Creation through a Simpler, Fairer Tax Code Act of 2012,” respectively.   In conjunction, stated simply, the two bills would:  block the scheduled January 1 tax increases by extending current income tax rates for one year;  maintain marriage penalty relief;  continue the $1,000 child credit;  continue the critical 15% top rate on dividends and capital gains;  maintain the estate tax at its 2011 and 2012 parameters (indexed for inflation);  provide for higher Section 179 small business expensing limits;  preserve education-related benefits;  provide a two-year AMT patch for 2012 and 2013;  and provide a clear pathway to comprehensive tax reform in 2013 by implementing expedited procedures to enable lawmakers in both the House and Senate to overcome technical hurdles that cause bills to languish during the legislative process.

For this to occur, however, members must hear from you.  Please call your representative immediately and demand their support for this critical legislation (members and contact information accessible via CFIF’s “Take Action” link 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.

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.

Joel Kotkin sees the groundwork being laid for a grand political restructuring (i.e. perestroika) in California now that each branch of the state’s ruling class is fracturing.

Environmentalists are split over Governor Jerry Brown’s decision to shield the multi-billion dollar high-speed rail train from California’s tough environmental review process.  Facebook’s disastrous IPO means liberals in Sacramento can’t bank on tech industry riches to finance tax hikes.  And with serious pension reform being enacted in San Jose and San Diego last week public sector unions are no longer guaranteed to win every election.

All that’s needed now is a Democratic leader to stand up and acknowledge that California’s system is broken and needs major restructuring.

Too bad Jerry Brown is no Mikhail Gorbachev.  The latter risked a revolt from his party to save his people from economic disaster.  Brown just announced a truce with the public employee unions to raise taxes even higher than he originally envisioned.

Nevertheless, Kotkin predicts that California is fast approaching a moment where the citizenry will be poised to reward “a coherent vision – from either Independents, centrist Democrats or Republicans – that can unite business, private sector workers and taxpayers around a fiscally prudent, pro-economic growth agenda.”

If that sounds impossible, remember that the Soviet Union fell without a shot being fired.  All that’s needed is the right man with the right message at the right moment.