Freedom Line Blog

Happy semi-anniversary, ObamaCare!  Just six months ago, your proud papa proclaimed you the vehicle for lasting American voter compliance, errrr, contentment.  Your Uncle Joe Biden elegantly pronounced that you were “a big f***ing deal.” Don’t let the fact that you’re now sinking their party’s majority get you down, though.  To celebrate, why don’t we go out and deny private health insurers the requested premium increases that they’ll need to accommodate their collective new costs of feeding your voracious appetite?  Making them run their businesses at a loss will be great for celebratory laughs!

Many have already chronicled the supreme selfishness and sense of entitlement exhibited by current Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, who was appointed to her seat but recently defeated in the Republican primary by West Point and Yale Law School graduate and war veteran Joe Miller.

As if striving to degrade herself even further, Murkowski offered one of the strangest rationales for her vindictive write-in candidacy:  defense of earmarks.  Yes, earmarks, those symbols of what is wrong with our irresponsible tax-and-borrow-and-spend ruling class in Washington, D.C.  Appearing on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Murkowski accused Mr. Miller of supporting what she called “some pretty radical things,” including earmarks:

He is suggesting to us … some pretty radical things.  You know, we dump Social Security.  No more Medicare.  Let’s get rid of the Department of Education.  Elimination of all earmarks.”

Senator Murkowski’s obvious sense of personal entitlement is unsavory enough.  The same goes for her defense of a a Department of Education that has only witnessed a deterioration in American scholastic achievement during its existence.  But really, Senator Murkowski?  A defense of earmarks?

Over and over again, President Obama and other defenders of trickle-up stimulus labeled 2009’s “Cash for Clunkers” a positive example of federal spending and market manipulation.  Obama himself eagerly called it an “overwhelming success,” and Nancy Pelosi curiously professed that it “has been successful beyond our wildest dreams.”

Economists’ verdict?  Not so much.

Writing for the National Bureau of Economic Research, economists Amir Sufi from the University of Chicago and Atif Mian of the University of California Berkeley report that Cash for Clunkers had no substantive net positive effect:

A key rationale for fiscal stimulus is to boost consumption when aggregate demand is perceived to be inefficiently low. We examine the ability of the government to increase consumption by evaluating the impact of the 2009 “Cash for Clunkers” program on short and medium run auto purchases. Our empirical strategy exploits variation across U.S. cities in ex-ante exposure to the program as measured by the number of “clunkers” in the city as of the summer of 2008. We find that the program induced the purchase of an additional 360,000 cars in July and August of 2009. However, almost all of the additional purchases under the program were pulled forward from the very near future; the effect of the program on auto purchases is almost completely reversed by as early as March 2010 – only seven months after the program ended. The effect of the program on auto purchases was significantly more short-lived than previously suggested. We also find no evidence of an effect on employment, house prices, or household default rates in cities with higher exposure to the program.”

This is Obamanomics and “stimulus” policy in a nutshell:  Billions in spending, but no positive effect.  Future generations forced to pay for it will not be retrospectively amused.

Last month, we highlighted the obscene self-serving nature of big government’s growth.  In “Why We’re Boiling Over:  Federal Salaries Now Twice That of Private Sector,” we detailed how federal workers earn double their private sector counterparts, and how incomes fell throughout America last year except in cities with higher concentrations of federal jobs.

Now, a Wall Street Journal study entitled “Washington Firms Soak Up Stimulus” reports that President Obama’s failed $814 billion “stimulus” package has awarded nearly $2,000 dollars per every Washington, D.C. resident.  That’s three times the national average of $695.95 per person across the rest of the country.  It’s not by coincidence, then, that D.C.’s unemployment rate of 6.3% is over three percentage points lower than the nation’s overall 9.6% rate.

Why is the nation’s fed-up electorate boiling over?  The federal “stimulus” trough provides yet another reason.

File Susan Estrich’s column calling for the ouster of all unqualified candidates from political office in the “Now, She Tells Us” folder.  Writing in a tone that betrays not only her antipathy for grassroots conservatives, but also a strong disrespect for basic moral sentiments, Estrich implies that the Constitution’s qualifications for federal office aren’t sufficient anymore:

In the long run, a healthy democracy needs qualified and able people of every party to function effectively. The tea party movement’s failure to support candidates who meet that standard may help Democrats avert disaster, but it’s hardly a recipe for a strong political system.

Maybe it’s time to put a “strong political system” on the back burner in favor of “a healthy fiscal system;” especially if a strong political system translates into a fondness for complexity, nuance and compromises that maintain the status quo.

Though I doubt Estrich would have voted for the urbane, highly educated William F. Buckley for any public office, it’s worth remembering that the most famous phrase he ever penned wasn’t a penetrating insight into technocratic policy.  It was a description of National Review as a conservative publication “standing athwart history, yelling STOP…”

Protests from his intellectual descendants notwithstanding, I’d wager that WFB would deeply appreciate the clarity – and the seriousness – with which Tea Party-backed candidates articulate their opposition the federal leviathan.

Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan gives one of the best descriptions of the motivation behind the Tea Party movement to date.

For conservatives on the ground, it has often felt as if Democrats (and moderate Republicans) were always saying, “We should spend a trillion dollars,” and the Republican Party would respond, “No, too costly. How about $700 billion?” Conservatives on the ground are thinking, “How about nothing? How about we don’t spend more money but finally start cutting.”

That laser-like focus, to Noonan, is what connects all Tea Party-backed candidates this election cycle:

That is the context. Local tea parties seem—so far—not to be falling in love with the particular talents or background of their candidates. It’s more detached than that. They don’t say their candidates will be reflective, skilled in negotiations, a great senator, a Paul Douglas or Pat Moynihan or a sturdy Scoop Jackson. These qualities are not what they think are urgently needed. What they want is someone who will walk in, put her foot on the conservative end of the yardstick, and make everything slip down in that direction.

A vast swath of the American people understand the danger our country’s finances – and by extension, our experiment in self-rule – face.  The Tea Party movement is an important element in righting the ship of state before it’s too late.  Hopefully, congressional members owing the movement their election victories will display the fortitude necessary to say no to more spending.

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 his weekly Wonder Land column entitled “It’s the Spending, Stupid,” The Wall Street Journal’s Daniel Henninger describes how “concern” over out-of-control federal spending has reached the boiling point:

They, the voters, are not ‘concerned’ about Uncle Sam’s spending floating toward the moon.  They are enraged, furious, crazed and desperate.”

Heninger rightfully points out that it won’t be enough for voters to simply return Republicans to House and Senate majorities this November.  Rather, something more lasting, tangible, and assuring is needed:

If voters give control of the House to the GOP, the party desperately needs to establish credibility on spending.  Absent that, little else is possible.  Independent voters now know that the national Democratic Party, hopelessly joined to the public-sector unions, will never stabilize public outlays.  In a sense, the GOP’s impending victory is meaningless, a win by default.  If the Republican rookies entering Congress next year don’t do something identifiably real to stop the federal spending balloon, voters two years from now will start throwing the GOP under the bus.”

Enter CFIF’s new “One More Vote” citizen activist campaign.  “One More Vote” refers to the fact that Congress fell just one vote short in the 1990s of passing a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget, and sending it to the states for ratification.  Echoing Daniel Henninger’s commentary this week, the “One More Vote” homepage states that, “Currently, there are several worthy ideas proposed in Congress.  But we need more than ideas.  We need a solution.”  Accordingly, “One More Vote” proposes a Constitutional amendment requiring (1) a federal balanced budget annually, (2) a 60% majority of both houses of Congress to raise the debt ceiling, and (3) a 60% vote of both houses of Congress to increase or create new taxes.

It’s precisely the type of real, lasting and tangible change that enraged American voters described by Henninger demand.  Click on “One More Vote” now, and join the movement.  This time, let’s make sure the change is real.

In Friday’s Liberty Update commentary “The ObamaCare Fit Hits the Shan,” we noted how quickly the negative consequences of ObamaCare are arriving in the form of higher health care spending and insurance rates.

Well, Kathleen Sebelius, President Obama’s Health and Human Services Secretary, seems to believe that she can terrify the economic laws of supply and demand into deference.  Attacking private health insurers for doing nothing more than adjusting their bottom lines to meet business realities imposed by ObamaCare mandates, Sebelius ordained:

There will be zero tolerance for this type of misinformation and unjustified rate increases.  We will not stand idly by as insurers blame their premium hikes and increased profits on the requirement that they provide consumers with basic protections.”

Karen Ignagni, who leads America’s Health Insurance Plans, provided an Economics 101 primer that Sebelius should have received in college by saying, “It’s a basic law of economics that additional benefits incur additional costs, and the impact on premiums depends on the type and amount coverage policyholders had before.”

Simple economics aside, who does Sebelius think she is?  A Soviet-era commissar who can cow American citizens and businesses by thundering such threats?  Ms. Sebelius, you’re about to receive a true lesson in “zero tolerance” when Americans head to the ballots in November.

This week, the Congressional Budget Office announced that the nation’s budget deficit has already reached $1.3 trillion, with another month to go in the 2010 fiscal year.  At 9.1% of gross domestic product (GDP), that makes it the second-largest deficit outside the World War II years, second only to last year’s deficit that reached 9.9% of GDP (mainly because GDP was lower in 2009 than 2010).  In a generous act of understatement, the CBO attributed this mind-boggling amount to lower revenues and “elevated spending associated with the economic downturn and the policies implemented in response to it.”  Another round of “stimulus,” anyone?

To put that in perspective, take a look at this straightforward bar graph.  President Bush’s final deficit was approximately $450 billion, which Obama tripled in his first year alone.  Now, Obama’s second deficit continues that unbearable amount.  Furthermore, efforts to scapegoat Bush for Obama’s first deficit fail, because such things as the $800 billion “stimulus” was Obama’s initiative, not Bush’s.

So President Obama brought us a crippling $814 billion “stimulus,” and now his promised “Summer of Recovery” has come and passed.

Undeterred, he nevertheless instructs us that what America needs is another $50 billion, or 1/16th the original stimulus amount, in new highway, airport runway and rail construction.  Obama proclaims that “this will not only create jobs now, but will make our economy run better over the long haul.”  So let us get this straight.  Obama turned the $450 billion deficit that he inherited into consecutive $1.4 trillion and $1.3 trillion deficits for his first two years in office, commenced a regulatory onslaught against the private sector, threatened growth-killing regulations like “Net Neutrality” and union card-check, demonized the business community that creates jobs, signed stifling new burdens like ObamaCare into law and appears ready to oversee the largest tax increase in history this January 1.

But according to him, the basis of our economic malaise is…  lack of pavement?

Moments ago, the Department of Labor reported that the nation’s unemployment rate jumped again to 9.6%.

As we reference in today’s Liberty Update commentary, this means that unemployment has now risen from 8.2% to 9.6% since Obama signed his $1 trillion “stimulus” bill in February 2009 (with the promise that unemployment would not exceed 8% under his spending plan).  By contrast, unemployment plummeted from 10.4% to 7.2% during the same timespan following the Reagan tax cuts.

This reconfirms what works:  more individual freedom, lower taxes, lower spending, less government.  It also reconfirms what doesn’t work:  more government control, higher taxes, more spending and more regulation.

Imagine the excitement at MSNBC studios when word broke yesterday of a gunman threatening to detonate bombs and shoot people at the Discovery Channel studios in the Washington, D.C. area.  Surely, the violent nature of the vicious Tea Party was finally manifesting itself!  For months, MSNBC’s primetime lunatic lineup of Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow have ranted like Jack Nicholson’s character in The Shining falsely assuring us of the violent undercurrents within the Tea Party movement.

Quoting Thomas Jefferson?  Racism!  A rally in Washington, D.C.?  Inciting violence!

So imagine their thermonuclear reaction had yesterday’s Discovery Channel gunman in fact been a Tea Partier.  Instead, it turned out to be a dimestore Unabomber imitation who called babies “filthy human children” and drafted a manifesto remarkably similar to Al Gore’s Earth in the Balance.  Notably, he also reportedly made it a habit to aggressively antagonize peaceful anti-abortion demonstrators.  We won’t hold our breath awaiting MSNBC’s inquiry into the violent methods of the militant environmentalist movement.  Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of people behaving as well as a church picnic will surely continue to elicit pyrotechnics of paranoia from the MSNBC gang.

During the national debate over ObamaCare earlier this year, President Obama attempted to soothe Congressional Democrats worried about their reelection prospects by proclaiming an enormous difference between November 1994 and November 2010.  In his ever-humble words, Obama assured them, “you’ve got me.”

Replace “you” with “they,” and Obama had it just about right.

Today, even The Washington Post acknowledged that Republicans have achieved their largest lead ever on Gallup’s generic Congressional ballot (which asks respondents which party they support generally).  According to Gallup, 51% of registered voters support Republicans, whereas 41% support Democrats.  That marks the widest GOP margin in the history of Gallup’s generic polling, which began in 1942.  By comparison, 1994 and 2002, years in which Republicans achieved substantial gains, the margin was only 5%.  Even more ominously for Obama and Democrats, Gallup polled registered voters, as opposed to “likely voters.”  This is a year in which Republicans and their supporters are much more motivated to vote, meaning that the electoral margin is probably even wider.

How ironic that Republicans are now the ones assuring themselves, “we’ve got Obama.”

As ObamaCare’s new mandates and costs approach, public hospitals that often constitute healthcare of last resort are closing.

Over 1,000 of the nation’s 5,000 hospitals are publicly owned, established by philanthropic contributions in order to provide free or reduced-cost care to the poor.  Unfortunately, as noted by The Wall Street Journal, these caregivers simply do not possess the scale to withstand ObamaCare:

Local officials also predict an expensive future as new requirements – for technology quality accounting and care coordination – start under the health care law enacted in March.  Moody’s Investors Service said in April that many stand-alone hospitals won’t have the resources to invest in information technology or manage bundled payments well.  Many non-profits have bad credit ratings and in a tight credit market cannot borrow money, either.  Meanwhile, the federal government is expected to cut aid to hospitals…  ‘By the nature of their small size, their independence and their political entanglements, they are poorly equipped to survive,’ said James Burgdorfer.”

So once again, the Obama-Pelosi-Reid regime collides with the law of unforeseen and unintended consequences, at the expense of Americans already stretched thin.

Are liberals becoming so desperate and deranged that they’re no longer intellectually capable of recognizing their comic hypocrisy?  Exhibit A:  The Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson.

Opponents of the proposed Ground Zero mosque in New York accept proponents’ right to build there, but correctly point out that having a right to do something doesn’t make it the right thing to do.  According to Robinson, however, opponents are guilty of “lies, distortions, jingoism, xenophobia.”  Robinson also claims that “opportunistic” mosque opponents “obviously do not” understand that “we have a Bill of Rights that protects our freedoms against the whims of public opinion.”

That was Robinson on Tuesday, August 17 – just last week.

Fast forward one week, and Robinson is singing a different tune.  Perhaps what remained of his intellectual hard drive was wiped clean.  In his commentary today, Robinson labels Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally this weekend on the national mall in Washington, D.C. an “in-your-face” event, and says it “is obviously intended to be a provocation.”   And just like the mosque opponents he demonizes, he suddenly emphasizes the difference between having a right and doing what’s right:

Let me state clearly that Glenn Beck has every right to hold his absurdly titled ‘Restoring Honor’ rally on Saturday.  But the rest of us have every right to call the event what it is:  an exercise in self-aggrandizement on a Napoleonic scale.”

Obviously, Robinson’s substantive critique of the Restoring Honor rally is no more rational than his attacks on Ground Zero mosque opponents.  It’s remarkable, however, how quickly Robinson began to distinguish a right to do something versus doing what he considers to be the right thing.  It’s possible, of course, that Robinson suddenly saw the light and understood the folly of his attacks against Ground Zero mosque opponents.  Unfortunately, it’s more likely that he merely suffers from hypocrisy and severe intellectual vertigo.

In CFIF’s Liberty Update last week, we highlighted how President Obama isn’t so much “pulling us out of the ditch,” but rather setting our nation’s car on fire.  Instead of spending his time claiming credit for our inevitable cyclical rebound, Obama should recognize that his policies of higher spending, taxation, regulation and debt are only subduing it. To illustrate, we contrast the remarkable gross domestic product (GDP) growth during the Reagan recovery delivered by tax cuts, reduced regulation and a stronger dollar versus our current stagnation and possible “double-dip” recession.

Comparing unemployment trends then versus now provides another vivid illustration of the toxic effect of the Obama-Pelosi-Reid economic agenda.  From December 1982 to June 1984 – the first 18 months of the Reagan recovery – U.S. unemployment plummeted rapidly from 10.8% to 7.2%.  In contrast, over 13 months since our current economic rebound commenced in July 2009, U.S. unemployment has stagnated from 9.4% to its current 9.5%.  Of course, it is theoretically possible that unemployment will plummet by three percentage points over the next five months to match the Reagan recovery, but not even Joe Biden is silly enough to predict that.

It’s no mystery how to unleash America’s economic vigor and bring recovery:  less government and more economic freedom.  It’s just a matter of electing leaders who will actually pursue it.

As discussed in this week’s Liberty Update, the next great wave of Tea Party enthusiasm needs to wash over local political offices as soon as this year’s federal midterm elections conclude.  A column in the St. Petersburg Times notes that several of Florida’s highest profile Tea Party candidates are mounting what looks to be losing campaigns in the run-up to next Tuesday’s statewide primary elections.

The reason is simple: it’s just too hard to compete for votes and money when running against candidates from the two established parties.  Far better, the columnist suggests, to turn the Tea Party’s attention to city and county races where much of the real world of governing takes place.

Mike Alexander and the Pasadena (CA) Patriots couldn’t agree more.  Like Mike’s wife Patricia likes to say, “Starting at 6 a.m. on November 3^rd, we are going to focus on all the municipal elections here in Los Angeles County: county supervisor, city council, school board, you name it.”  Tea Party enthusiasts would do well to check out Alexander’s TEA PAC organization for ideas on how to turn activist energy into winning elections.

Ohhhh, so ~now~ they tell us?  White House allies are instructing operatives to abandon the claim that ObamaCare will reduce healthcare costs and the deficit.  Instead, they now seek to persuade the electorate that we can “improve it.”

According to Politico, the messaging conference call and PowerPoint presentation acknowledges the failure of the promises shamelessly fed to the public by ObamaCare advocates:

The presentation’s final page of ‘Don’ts’ counsels against claiming ‘the law will reduce costs and the deficit.’  The presentation advises, instead, sales pitches that play on personal narratives and promises to change the legislation.”

If this doesn’t make you angry and ready to line up at dawn to vote this November, have your pulse checked.

The latest survey of 53 economists by The Wall Street Journal offers a clear message.  Namely, no more government “stimulus,” and extend the soon-to-expire Bush-era tax cuts for everyone, not just those earning under $250,000 annually.

Of 48 polled economists, 30 flatly rejected calls for any form of additional fiscal or monetary “stimulus.”  Only 6 economists encouraged more Obama-Reid-Pelosi style fiscal stimulus, only 5 suggested additional monetary stimulus from the Federal Reserve and just 7 suggested both.  On the issue of taxes, fully 32 of the polled economists called for extending all of the current lower tax rates, in a sharp rebuke to Obamanomics.  Only 3 economists supported an end to the Bush-era tax cuts, and only 11 agreed with Obama and Timothy Geithner in their campaign to raise taxes on those individuals and small businesses reporting income over $250,000.  Unlike Obama and Geithner, economists recognize the destructive effect that raising taxes on individuals and small businesses in the top income segments will have.

As Stephen Stanley of Pierpoint Securities summarized, “the economy needs government to get out of the way.”  Well said.