President Obama says Jesus wants to raise taxes:

"When I talk about shared responsibility, it's because I genuinely believe that in a time when many folks are struggling and at a time when we have enormous deficits, it's hard for me to ask seniors on a fixed income or young people with student loans or middle-class families who can barely pay the bills to shoulder the burden alone," Obama said.

"But for me as a Christian, it also coincides with Jesus' teaching that, for unto whom much is given, much shall be required"

Ah, yes. If I remember correctly, it was at the Sermon On The Mount that Jesus said, "Blessed is the tax collector, for he shall forcibly extract hard-earned wages from the people and funnel it to power-hungry politicians in order to fund a bloated and corrupt spendthrift government that will use the money to engage in cronyism and buy votes". It was either that, or Jesus said, "Blessed are the meek". I can't be certain.

As with so many Obama statements, the one about Jesus is filled to the brim with falsehoods. Nobody is asking "seniors on a fixed income" or "middle-class families" or "young people with student loans" to "shoulder the burden alone". Everybody pays taxes, and the rich already pay the most. Actually, now that I think about it, nearly half of all Americans pay no income taxes. So much for "shared responsibility". How ironic it is that Obama lies in the same sentence in which he quotes Jesus. When I think of Obama, another biblical verse applies – “The tongue deviseth mischiefs; like a sharp razor, working deceitfully. Thou lovest evil more than good; and lying rather than to speak righteousness. Thou lovest all devouring words, O thou deceitful tongue” – (Ps.52:2-4).

When asked about Obama's comment, the President's Press Secretary, Jay Carney, whipped out his own devilish forked tongue to say Obama "wasn't campaigning" when he made the comment. Riiiight. Obama isn't campaigning about as often as fish aren't swimming.

Since our President is pulling out the 'What Would Jesus Do ?' card, I have a few questions.

When the government forcibly extracts the fruits of one's labors beyond that which is called for in the Constitution to fund the government, couldn't that be called stealing ? I seem to remember something in the Bible about "Thou Shalt Not Steal".

When the government raids the Social Security Trust Fund, couldn't that also be called stealing, and doesn't that hurt "seniors on a fixed income", as does Obama's payroll tax cut ?

And what about abortion ? I remember something in the Bible about "Thou Shalt Not Kill", yet, Obama is pro-abortion and ObamaCare forces religion-based healthcare providers to fund things like birth control, which would include the morning-after abortion pill. What would Jesus think about that, Mr. President ?

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) weighed in on ObamaCare's forced religious contraception coverage issue, and in typical Pelosi fashion, she had no idea what she was talking about. Pelosi said she was "standing by her fellow Catholics" in support of ObamaCare's contraception mandate on religious groups. That's nice, except for the fact that the Catholic Church is AGAINST the ObamaCare mandate:

The Obama administration's decision requiring church-affiliated employers to cover birth control was bound to cause an uproar among Roman Catholics and members of other faiths, no matter their beliefs on contraception. "It's not about preventing women from buying anything themselves, but telling the church what it has to buy, and the potential for that to go further," said Sister Carol Keehan, president of the Catholic Health Association, representing some 600 hospitals.

Liberals are always telling me religion should stay out of state business, so it should follow that they believe the state should stay out of religious matters. After all, the First Amendment to the Constitution says "Congress shall make no law…prohibiting the free exercise [of religion]". Yet, liberals are supporting Obama's contraception mandate. Go figure.

Naturally, there will be costs to religious-based healthcare providers, and fines if they don't adhere to the ObamaCare mandate:

Employers that fail to provide health insurance coverage under the federal law could be fined $2,000 per employee per year. The bishops' domestic anti-poverty agency, Catholic Charities, says it employs 70,000 people nationwide. The fine for the University of Notre Dame, the most prominent Catholic school in the country, could be in the millions of dollars.

What effect do you suppose this will have on Catholic charities ? And why doesn't our Jesus-quoting President care about that ?

It's always the same with the big government types like Obama. They always think they can make better decisions with your money than you can. They always impose costs and burdens on the private sector and the business sector. They always infringe on liberty. Religious groups are concerned about where these liberal mandates on the public will end. I can answer that one. They DON'T end. NOT EVER.

Our President, the Great Prevaricator, likes to mislead people. I suppose that shouldn't be a surprise. That's what prevaricators do, they mislead. Obama's statements about who pays their "fair share" of taxes have received lots of press, as have Obama's statements about billionaire Warren Buffett paying less in taxes than his secretary. Let's examine these claims.

According to 2010 tax data, the top 1% of earners made about 24% of the national income (if you include capital gains) and paid nearly 40% of the income taxes. Thus the rich, as a group, are paying nearly double their "fair share" according to the data. The Great Prevaricator conveniently forgets to tell us that part.

Here's Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) to elaborate on the point:

"We have to start with the facts on whether the rich are paying their fair share. We hear that over and over again, 'the rich are not paying their fair share,'" Paul said on CNN's "State of the Union." “The top 1 percent, the millionaires in our country, pay on average 29 percent of their income. That's what they pay on average. The average carpenter who makes $50,000 to $75,000 a year pays between 15 percent and 18 percent. The top 50 percent of wage earners pay 96 percent of the income tax."

These numbers are known as "facts", something the Great Prevaricator would prefer you not know. Instead of dealing with the actual facts, the Great Prevaricator talks about individuals, whose tax burdens can vary widely. That's why Warren Buffett and his secretary become the Obama talking point regardless of the facts. If we're dealing with facts, our tax code is progressive. The rich pay more.

But I'll indulge the Great Prevaricator. Let's talk about Buffett and his secretary for a minute.

First of all, Warren Buffett pays a LOT more in taxes than his secretary does. Let's have no confusion there. On Warren Buffett's 2010 tax return, he paid nearly $7 million in federal income tax. Unless Buffett's secretary is the highest paid secretary in the history of the universe, I guarantee you she pays nothing close to that amount.

The part of Buffett's tax bill Obama wants you to concentrate on is the percetage of taxes paid compared to income. For Buffett in 2010, that came to 17.4% of his income. This is where Obama and liberals become outraged. Obama wants it to be a minimum of 30% for those earning a million bucks or more, and I imagine most Americans would agree with that.

But there are other considerations. If Warren Buffett's earnings were taxed as regular income, he'd pay at a 35% rate (maybe 30% after deductions). I haven't pored through Buffett's tax return, but I'm going to guess a substantial amount of his earnings come from long term capital gains, which are taxed at a rate of 15%. There are reasons why capital gains are taxed at a lower rate. Here are some of those reasons:

The term “capital” refers to produced goods used to produce future goods. Even a corner lemonade stand could not exist without capital; the lemons and the stand are the essential capital that makes the enterprise operate. A recent study by Dale Jorgenson of Harvard University discovered that almost half of the growth of the American economy between 1948 and 1980 was directly attributable to the increase in U.S. capital formation (with most of the rest a result of increases and improvements in the labor force).

Investment (capital) is what fuels our economy. The more capital we invest, the more economic growth we will have. In a free country (which stands in contrast to the centralized Obamacracy the President described in his State Of The Union speech), that capital comes from and is invested in the private sector. Why would we want to discourage it by taxing it and sending that money to the federal government ?

Next, liberals like Obama make the same economic mistake over and over again, by thinking capital only makes rich people rich. That's crazy thinking, because capital investment benefits everyone via job creation and a rising standard of living:

Between 1900 and 2000, real wages in the United States quintupled from around fifteen cents an hour (worth three dollars in 2000 dollars) to more than fifteen dollars an hour. In other words, a worker in 2000 earned as much, adjusted for inflation, in twelve minutes as a worker in 1900 earned in an hour. That surge in the living standard of the American worker is explained, in part, by the increase in capital over that period. The main reason U.S. farmers and manufacturing workers are more productive, and their real wages higher, than those of most other industrial nations is that America has one of the highest ratios of capital to worker in the world.

If capital investment wanes, so does our standard of living, and so does the middle class.

The third reason long term capital gains are taxed at a lower rate is inflation:

capital gains are not indexed for inflation: the seller pays tax not only on the real gain in purchasing power, but also on the illusory gain attributable to inflation. The inflation penalty is one reason that, historically, capital gains have been taxed at lower rates than ordinary income. In fact, Alan Blinder, a former member of the Federal Reserve Board, noted in 1980 that, up until that time, “most capital gains were not gains of real purchasing power at all, but simply represented the maintenance of principal in an inflationary world.

If you bought a stock in 1990 and sold it for 50% more than you paid for it, you might have actually LOST purchasing power, and that's BEFORE the government takes it's 15%. Let's also not forget that investment is capital at risk, and if you lose a million dollars on an investment, that money is just gone. You don't get to reduce your tax burden by a million. You just bet and lost. The end.

The Great Prevaricator doesn't want you to know any of these things. Here's something else he doesn't want you to know – the government doesn't get that much revenue from capital gains taxes to begin with, and…raising the capital gains tax rate may result in LESS federal revenue. Obama's own administration has estimated that increasing the capital gains tax rate from 15% to 20% would bring in $100 billion in federal revenue over ten years. That's $10 billion per year, and that's only if the capital gains tax rate was hiked for EVERYONE. What is $10 billion per year going to accomplish when we have a $1.23 trillion deficit ? Not much, even if the Obama administrations guesstimates are correct. They could easily be incorrect, because there's another thing about capital gains taxes Obama doesn't want you to know – they are the easiest taxes in the world to avoid. When the capital gains rate goes up, you can avoid the tax by holding onto your investment, or even worse, by investing overseas, which the wealthy can do whenever they wish. Thus, a higher capital gains tax rate would have the effect of driving investment AWAY from America. Not too smart.

The Great Prevaricator conveniently forgets to tell you any of these things. He's some piece of work, that guy. We deserve a much more honest President. I can't take much more of people repeating his lies and distortions. If he wants to be an education President, he could start by not making the public dumber and more misinformed himself.

Enough about capital gains. Let's turn to Warren Buffett's secretary. Obama recently claimed she payed twice the tax rate that Buffett did, which by my calculations means she payed an income tax rate of nearly 35%. If what Obama said is true (most of what he says isn't), that would make HER one of the rich, because she'd be in the top tax tier of 35%. What is Obama complaining about ? She'd be one of the people he wants to tax, but Obama says she represents the middle class. If so, I agree with the President. 35% is way too high a federal income tax rate for a middle class person to pay. Let's cut her tax rate to 15% IMMEDIATELY. I'm FOR the middle class. How about you, Mr. President ? Why are you punishing the poor hard-working woman with such confiscatory tax rates ?

In any case, here's another question to ask yourself.

Where does Buffett's secretary get her salary from ???

Answer – It comes from Warren Buffett !!! Thus, in reality, since Buffett is paying her entire salary, he is paying her taxes too, as well as the taxes of all the employees he hires. Obama thinks we're too stupid to make the connection, but we're not all part of the Occupy movement, Mr. President.

And Warren Buffett's company, Berkshire Hathaway, pays taxes too. Obama doesn't mention that part either. If Obama was being honest, he'd say Warren Buffett is generating a tremendous amount of revenue for the federal Treasury through both direct and indirect means. But that's only if Obama was being honest, which he isn't…or maybe he's just a dunce. It seems hard to believe, but he talks like a dunce.

There's one other rather curious thing about Warren Buffett. While he pimps for more taxes for Obama by calling for "shared sacrifice" from the rich, his company, Berkshire Hathaway, owes an alleged $1 billion in back taxes to the federal government, and is threatening protracted litigation with the IRS while Buffett tries to cut a deal to pay less. I'm thinking that if Buffett really believes he should pay more, he would pay it instead of hiring attorneys, ya know ?

My final point about the Great Prevaricator's class warfare tax shuffle is this, and it's a doozy – there aren't enough millionaires in this country to come anywhere near to plugging our $1.2 trillion budget deficit. In 2009, there were 236,883 households that had an income over a million dollars, and only 8,274 made over $10 million. If we took another million bucks away from all these rich folks (which would mean we'd be taxing most of them at a tax rate near 100%), it would rake in $237 billion for the federal treasury, leaving us still with a budget deficit of a trillion dollars. According to the CBO, Obama's 30% millionaire tax proposal would bring in $453 billion over ten years. That's a deficit reduction of $45 billion per year, which would take this year's $1.23 trillion dollar deficit down to $1.78 trillion. Big fricking whoop. Nothing at all would change. Nothing. That's what all the Great Prevaricator's screaming and wailing is basically about…NOTHING. It's all phony cover for all the spending increases Obama wants.

What we really need to do is cut federal spending, like the Republicans keep saying. Spending is at a record-high, and it's why we have record deficits. The Great Prevaricator doesn't want you to know that either. Contrary to his words, Obama isn't putting together "an economy built to last". He's building an economy that cannot possibly last.

Anybody But Obama in 2012. I beg you.

According to ABC News, Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney said he "probably" pays about 15% in federal incomes taxes:

Romney said he “probably” pays only about 15 percent in federal taxes because most of his earnings come from capital gains, which is taxed at a lower rate than traditional income. This means the super wealthy Romney pays a significantly lower tax rate than most middle income Americans.

I was a bit surprised by this, because I know Romney still receives income from Bain Capital, which I figured would be taxed at regular income rates, not the lower capital gains tax rates.

As it turns out, that is not true. Due to a tax loophole, Bain Capital and other private equity firms are taxed at the lower capital gains tax rates for income they receive for managing other people's money:

Managers of private equity firms like Romney are often paid under an arrangement in which they receive both a set fee for their management, as well as a share of the profits that the firm makes for investors. While their management fees are taxed at normal income tax rates, the share of investor gains that go to a private equity manager (called "carried interest") are treated as capital gains, and thus taxed at a top rate of 15 percent. (Hedge fund managers and partners in real estate ventures also benefit from receiving carried interest.)

Here's the problem with that. The argument for taxing capital gains at a lower rate than regular income is that it spurs investment, which leads to economic growth and job creation. I'm completely on board with that concept. The last thing I want to do is punish investment and risk taking, but what's happening with the "carried interrest" of private equity firms being taxed at the lower rate is different. Private equity managers like Romney was are receiving a tax break for income derived from investing other people's money, not their own, and that's a key difference. Because the equity manager is not putting his own money at risk, it seems the income the manager derives from his services should not be considered a capital gain at all, it should be considered regular income. The manager is receiving a fee for services rendered, regardless of how it is structured.

Here's how Peter Orszag put it:

Former Office of Management and Budget Director and current Citigroup Vice Chairman of Global Banking Peter Orszag said that the carried interest loophole is akin to a famous actor's portion of a movie's revenue being taxed as capital gains, a proposition that most people would hopefully find absurd. Citizens for Tax Justice opined that carried interest "is clearly compensation for services and not a return on investment," and that private equity managers "should pay income taxes at ordinary rates on their compensation, just like everyone else, from the folks who sweep their floors or answer their phones to CEO's exercising stock options and professional athletes getting playoff bonuses."

I can't argue with that. Sounds right to me.

Here's why it affects Romney's tax burden:

Thanks to a lucrative retirement package, Romney is still making millions from Bain, much of which is likely being taxed as carried interest. (While Romney has refused to make his tax returns public, he's said that all of his income is taxed at investment rates.) Analysts have estimated that Romney's tax rate is about 14 percent, lower than that of many middle class families.

Romney isn't doing anything wrong, but this tax loophole should go away.

So, why hasn't it gone away ???

The House Of Representatives passed a bill to remove this tax loophole in 2010, but the bill died in the Senate, as it has for three years in a row. I don't have the numbers (I'm not enjoying this Wikipedia blackout), but it seems to me more Democrats are on the right side of this issue than are Republicans, and needless to say, money managers are lobbying hard against it. With our astronomical deficit and debt numbers, this would be one good place to enhance revenue. You won't hear me condone tax increases very often, but in this case, it really does have to do with the rich paying their "fair share", because they aren't.

In trying to decide who should be our next President, we first have to ask if our current President deserves a second term. This should be based upon his performance in office, not on the political party to which he belongs.

Does Obama deserve a second term ?

Let's look at his record.

I have to start in February 2008, when then candidate Obama brought his campaign roadshow to Ohio. I went to see him speak at Youngstown State University. The three biggest cheers Obama received from Ohioans that day were when he 1) promised to rework NAFTA, 2) promised to close Guantanamo Bay within 12 months, and 3) promised to end the Iraq War in 2009.

Needless to say, none of those things happened. Obama never had any intention of reworking NAFTA. He forgot that promise the minute he left Ohio. As President, Obama has pushed for more free trade agreements, and recently signed free trade agreements with South Korea, Panama, and Columbia. These were the largest free trade deals signed by the United States since NAFTA.

Guantanamo Bay is still open.

The Iraq War ended, but it ended under the timeline established by Obama's predecessor, President Bush. It definitely didn't end in 2009, as Obama promised Ohioans.

Obama lied to my face and to every Ohioan that day in 2008. An inauspicious start. I knew he was lying then, that he was the kind of guy who would tell people whatever they wanted to hear in order to become President. I don't trust those kinds of politicians, which is why I voted for Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Democratic primary. Obama was not only as inexperienced a politico as any who ever ran for President, with zero prior management experience, but he was dishonest as well. I did what I could to defeat him, but alas, it didn't work, and now we're in the toilet.

Obama did keep some of his 2008 promises to Ohioans, like ObamaCare. He also promised to increase federal spending by $874 billion per year that day at Youngstown State, though he didn't put it into those words, because the electorate would have had a negative reaction to that type of honesty. Instead of putting price tags on his spending binge, Obama made all sorts of promises about "investing" in this, that, and almost everything, while never mentioning the costs. This President has never met any spending he doesn't like. Obama has "accomplished" every bit of his spending increase promise, which leads me to the primary reason we shouldn't give Obama a second term in office…he is the most fiscally irresponsible President in American history, bar none.

We have had annual deficits over $1 trillion ever year Obama has been in office. He has run up $4.6 trillion in debt in only 3 years in office. This far outpaces the previous "most fiscally irresponsible" President, George W. Bush, who ran up $4.8 trillion in debt over 8 years in office. Anybody who would vote for a second Obama term after such a record should have his/her head examined. The only people who should be supporting Obama's fiscal recklessness are citizens of China, who stand to gain from our destruction.

And what has all Obama's fiscal insanity accomplished ??? Unemployment is STILL at 8.5%, and it has been over 9% for the majority of Obama's presidency. If you recall, it was 7.6% when Obama took office. We have a huge net job loss during Obama's reign, though to hear him tell it, he is creating all kinds of jobs. That's one reason of many I call him the Great Prevaricator. Unemployment was mostly in the 5% range when Bush was President. Great job, Barry. Not only are you spending us into oblivion and wrecking the future of our country, but we aren't even gaining any temporary benefit from it now. You have managed to be the worst of both worlds. Most amazingly of all, the new ObamaCare spending hasn't even kicked in yet. That starts in full force in 2014. Federal spending is already the highest in the history of the country (barring WWII), and Obama's BIG spending program hasn't even started yet. We are borrowing 43 cents of every dollar the federal government spends WITHOUT ObamaCare spending in place. Imagine what it will be AFTER ObamaCare.

While I'm on the subject of ObamaCare, let's not forget that the Obama admimistration lied about it's costs and effects on the debt. The Great Prevaricator claims ObamaCare will decrease the debt, but he made that calculation by having the CBO measure ten years of revenue against only six years of benefits. That is profoundly dishonest, and sadly typical of the way our government misleads us.

Then the Great Prevaricator has the audacity to pretend increasing taxes on the rich by 5% is going to pay for all his crazy spending increases. That may be his most egregious lie of all. There is NO WAY his numbers come anywhere close to adding up, but I rarely hear a peep about this from the mainstream media. Perhaps there would be a few more media types peeping if 90% of them weren't Democrats. We'd be hearing the truth about the high speed rail to fiscal destruction we are on if the President was a Republican. Of that I have no doubt, but when a Democrat sits in the catbird seat, all we hear about is taxing the rich. I hate to break it to you America, but everyone's taxes will have to go through the roof in one way or another to pay for all this spending and government growth. Those are the facts, even though your illustrious media doesn't want to clue you in to the facts. The prevarication goes far beyond just the White House.

Somebody will also have to explain to me exactly how we are supposed to create jobs in this country going forward when our government spending and taxation levels, our unpaid-for entitlement explosion, and our building Mount Everest of debt are going to drain our pocketbooks and decrease consumer demand for generations to come. How does that work, exactly ??? The unvarnished facts there are, it DOESN'T work. At all. It would be real nice if we had a President who would level with us about these things, rather than the performing circus clown we have in office now.

Just say NO-bama. Change starts at the top. Obama has had his chance, and he failed miserably. It's time to try someone else.

Alternately, you could oppose Mitt Romney and support Obama's reign of destruction because Romney's a Mormon, Romney worked for Bain Capital, or because Romney changed his position on abortion and health care…..but that would make you somewhat of a self-destructive fool, wouldn't it ? We already KNOW Obama is a failure. Romney hasn't had his chance yet. If Romney turned out to be as bad as Obama, we'd be breaking even. But there's a very good chance Romney's policies would be better for the country. I don't know about the rest of you, but when my car falls apart and won't run, I don't try to keep driving it. I get a new one. 2012 is definitely the time for a new car. The Obama-mobile is a lemon.

President Obama is urging Republicans to pass a two-month extension compromise of his payroll tax cut. From the White House:

In the afternoon, the President will continue to urge House Republicans to do what’s right for the American people by allowing a vote on the short term bipartisan compromise passed by almost the entire Senate. If Congress fails to extend the payroll tax cut, the typical family making $50,000 a year will have about $40 less to spend or save with each paycheck.

The President is also pulling at heartstrings:

Obama will point people to a new section of the White House website where they can “share what a $40 paycheck means to them.” In addition, he’ll urge them to make use of a new Twitter hashtag, #40dollars.

The White House has also rounded up a group of citizens “who would see their taxes go up” to appear alongside Obama. Unclear if they’ll recite their assuredly heart-rending tales of prospective woe.

Republicans don't want the two-month extension. They are saying they want the payroll tax extension to last another year, which makes a lot more sense than a two-month extension.

This is all the usual partisan dance, of course, but what I find interesting is when Democrats go on record supporting tax cuts. You see, Democrats are generally the party that increases taxes. Republicans are generally the party that cuts taxes (and Democrats howl every time they do). Obama has turned that reality on it's head, which to me is an acknowledgement by the head Democrat that tax increases DO have a negative effect on people's lives. Obama is in effect advocating a REPUBLICAN position on taxes, thus admitting that the Republicans have been right all along. Obama is admitting that tax cuts stimulate the economy, just as Republicans have said all along. Obama is admitting that tax cuts increase demand, just as Republicans have said all along. Obama is obviously correct about these things. It's basic mathematics. If you have more money in your pocket (via less taxes), you will spend more. It's that simple, so I wonder why Democrats have devoted so much time and energy to denying it ??? Obama has ripped away the ongoing Democrat lie about tax cuts. I only wonder if he realizes he's done it, and how is he going to switch gears and start defending the huge tax increases he proposes starting in 2013 ??? That should be some magic trick. Only the Great Prevaricator has a snowball's chance of pulling it off (with the reality-blurring help of his fawning, Democrat-dominated mainstream media). Should be interesting.

Under the Democratic vision for this country, the only way out of our economic mess is enormous tax increases, precisely the opposite of what Obama is trying to feed us with his payroll tax cut. Let's start with Obama's own ten-year budget proposal, which assumed all the Bush tax cuts would expire. That would be a $3.8 trillion tax increase right there (and Obama's ten-year plan STILL added $8-9 trillion to the debt over a decade). Nothing like having huge tax increases AND a $20 trillion debt, eh ? But maybe the Democrats will abandon that plan, and only promote repealing the Bush tax cuts for the rich, thereby bringing in a whopping $75 billion per year to address our trillion dollar deficits. My calculator says that math doesn't add up at all, but Democrats keep pretending it does. It seems to be their main (phony) talking point, so it must be fooling somebody. "Fair shares" and all that rot.

The Democrats have all kinds of tax increases up their sleeve. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has even proposed paying for Obama's payroll tax cut with a, drumroll please,…TAX INCREASE. Weird:

…Harry Reid's plan to finance a one-year payroll tax cut with a 3.25% income tax surcharge on upper-income Americans that would last for at least 10 years. Mr. Reid knows it can't pass the House, and as we went to press it looked likely to fail even in the Senate.

Reid's plan won't pass the House or Senate, but Democrats like it for it's class warfare value. "Fair shares" and all.

Who would Reid's tax increase affect ??? Here's who:

Mr. Reid's surcharge—which would hit incomes of $1 million and above—would slam small business job creators. Congress's Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that taxpayers will declare about $1.2 trillion of business income in 2013. Only a fraction of those small business owners and Subchapter S companies will have a net income above $1 million, but Joint Tax finds that 34% of that $1.2 trillion is on tax returns with "modified AGI [adjusted gross income] in excess of $1 million." This means about $400 billion of business income would be subject to Mr. Reid's profits surtax.

Mr. Obama's own Treasury Department examined 2007 IRS data and found 392,000 returns with incomes above $1 million. Some 311,00, or more than three out of four, were classified by Treasury as "business owners." Perhaps Democrats can explain how taking money from employers is going to lead them to hire more workers.

We're back to the old Democrat snake oil, where Dems pretend they can fix the economy and create jobs by increasing taxes on the job creators. Duh. Liberal Democrats are good at class warfare, but not so good at implementing policies that will create jobs, which is what really helps the economy. Tricking Americans into believing Democrats are for the "little guy" seems to be their priority, even if the Dem policies end up hurting the little guy the most by eliminating jobs. If the choice is between handouts from Democrats or a job, this little guy will take the job every day of the week and twice on sunday.

Imagine a little over a year from now. 2013 arrives, unemployment is still over 8%, and the national debt is over $16 trillion. Obama is re-elected (cringe) to a second term. Is he really prepared to increase taxes by trillions of dollars ? Is he then prepared to increase taxes by $1.5 trillion more to implement ObamaCare ? Is he really prepared to nuke the economy all over again as it struggles to regain it's footing ? Everything I hear from the Democratic leadership says "Yes We Can". Every fiber of my being says "You Better Not".

Four months ago, one of the largest Tea Party groups, Freedomworks, created a Tea Party Debt Commission to address the red ink in which this country is drowning. Because our current non-leader is doing nothing but fiddling while Rome burns, I'm happy to present the results of the Tea Party's work, the Tea Party Budget.

Here's what the Tea Party Budget will do to our debt picture in comparison to non-leader Obama's non-plan, and in comparison to the House GOP plan.

The ten year Tea Party Budget plan would balance the budget in four years, and then start paying off the debt, reducing it to 75% of GDP by 2021 (as opposed to non-leader Obama's Greece-like 120%). Gone would be the trillion+ dollar deficits. Gone would be America's high-speed rail to fiscal destruction. Gone would be the crippling of our children's futures.

And the Tea Party does it without raising taxes.

Here are some of the features:

“Cuts, caps, and balances” federal spending.

Balances the budget in four years, and keeps it balanced, without tax hikes.

Closes an historically large budget gap, equal to almost one-tenth of our economy.

Reduces federal spending by $9.7 trillion over the next 10 years, as opposed to the President’s plan to increase spending by $2.3 trillion.

Shrinks the federal government from 24 percent of GDP — a level exceeded only in World War II— to about 16 percent, in line with the postwar norm.

Stops the growth of the debt, and begins paying it down, with a goal of eliminating it within thisgeneration.To achieve these goals, our plan, among other things:

Repeals ObamaCare in toto.

Eliminates four Cabinet agencies — Energy, Education, Commerce, and HUD — and reduces or privatizes many others, including EPA, TSA, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac.

Ends farm subsidies, government student loans, and foreign aid to countries that don’t support us— luxuries we can no longer afford.

Saves Social Security and greatly improves future benefits by shifting ownership and control from government to individuals, through new SMART Accounts.

Gives Medicare seniors the right to opt into the Congressional health care plan.

Suspends pension contributions and COLAs for Members of Congress, whenever the budget is in deficit.

The Tea Party budget contains a Balanced Budget Amendment to prevent future Obama-like non-leaders from embarking on courses of fiscal lunacy. It makes the Bush tax cuts permanent.

Here's a very brief description of what is wrong with our federal government:

At the root of these problems is our own federal government — its size, its reach, and many of its policies. Washington is simply too big. Our government is doing too many things it can’t do well, or shouldn’t do at all, with money it doesn’t have. We are borrowing 43 cents of every dollar we spend. Waste and duplication abound. A report published this past March by the Government Accountability Office counted no fewer than 47 job training programs, 56 financial literacy programs, 80 economic development programs, 18 food assistance programs, 20 programs for the homeless, 82 teacher-quality programs spread across 10 agencies, and more than 2,100 data centers. All told, we have nearly 2,200 federal programs. What human being could ever know or monitor them all? Who’s minding this mess?

Perhaps the best summation of this lamentable state of affairs came at our field hearing in Indianapolis,from a young lady named Chloe Minor, age 15: “Government today is making a mess of things. My generation has absolutely no say in the matter. Each of us owes over $44,000 to pay off the national debt. It is obvious to me what is needed in this country is some teenage supervision!”

Yes, when our federal government acts more irresponsibly than any random 10-year old, perhaps teenage supervision is called for. The federal government is a monstrous bureaucratic maze of waste, propped up solely by the continuing rape of hard-working taxpayers. There will NEVER be enough money to feed the ravenous maw of ideologically-driven non-leaders like Obama. The only sane course of action is to rein in our own government. Otherwise, we're headed for the same fiscal collapse that is now threatening Europe. Who could possibly want to follow that path ?

Contrast the Tea Party budget with the failure of the Not-So-Super Committee's weak efforts:

..if the Super Committee succeeds, it will reduce spending by about $1.2 trillion over the next decade, from a steeply rising baseline. Our plan, by contrast, would reduce spending by eight times that amount, $9.7 trillion. Or to put it in percentageterms, assuming they meet their full charge without gimmicks or double-counting, the Super Committee plan would slightly reduce ten-year spending from $44 trillion to $43 trillion, a 2.3 percent trim. Our plan would reduce ten-year spending from $44 trillion to $34 trillion, a 23 percent reduction.

This is what is needed to get our nation off the financial suicide train.

The Tea Party budget was based upon principles in the Tea Party's Contract From America platform, as follows:

1. Protect the Constitution
2. Reject Cap & Trade
3. Demand a Balanced Budget
4. Enact Fundamental Tax Reform
5. Restore Fiscal Responsibility & Constitutionally Limited Government
6. End Runaway Government Spending
7. Defund, Repeal, & Replace Government-Run Health Care
8. Pass an ‘All-of-the-Above’ Energy Policy
9. Stop the Pork
10.Stop the Tax Hikes

All the savings details are too long for me to list here, but you can find all the details at the Tea Party Budget link above.

Because no balanced budget or debt reduction is possible without touching the third rail of politics, the Tea Party budget does address Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid. Here's what they do with Social Security:

The Challenge. Social Security is going broke, and beginning about 25 years from now will only have enough funds to pay about 75 percent of promised benefits. Benefits are also comparatively meager, and cannot be passed down to one’s heirs, should one die before reaching retirement age.

Our Answer. Successful experiments have proved that we can make this program sustainable and actually improve benefits. How? By harnessing the power of compound interest.Three decades ago, Chile embarked on a bold transformation of its retirement security system. Today, that system is the envy of the world, giving seniors far better benefits than the old, government-run system ever did. Soon after the Chilean reform got underway, three Texas county governments opted out of Social Security in favor of personal accounts. Today, county workers in those three jurisdictions retire with much more money and have significantly more generous death and disability supplemental benefits than do Social Security participants. And those three counties—unlike almost all others in the U.S.—face no long-term unfunded pension liabilities. All state and local governments should have the option of opting into the “Galveston model.” And all young people should have the option of opting into a better future with personal accounts like those found in Chile. The Tea Party Budget embraces the Chilean/Galveston approach, specifically by enacting a modified version of Rep. Jeff Flake’s (R-AZ) SMART Act. That bold reform allows new workers born after 1981 to invest one-half of their payroll taxes (7.65%) in a SMART Account, which they can use to fund their retirement and health care costs in retirement. If they prefer, they can give up their account and opt back into traditional Social Security at retirement.Thanks to this modern approach, our plan:

Improves benefits.
Doesn’t increase the retirement age.
Doesn’t means-test benefits.
Doesn’t cut benefits for people in or nearing retirement.
Doesn’t touch the existing Social Security Disability Insurance program.
Shores up the long-term solvency of traditional Social Security by slowing the growth of benefits (with “progressive price indexing”).
This reform — which we expect to be very popular — reduces federal payroll tax receipts by about $500 billion over the ten-year period—an excellent investment on a better system, and one that is fully paid for in this plan.

This would mark the beginning of the end for the government-run S.S. scam. No longer would the government be able to steal your retirement funds, then turn around and jack up your payroll taxes in Ponzi-like fashion to cover up their misdeeds. I not only say "yes", I say "hell yes !"

There's lot more to say here, but this is getting rather lengthy. I urge you all to read the details of the Tea Party budget. It's the best plan I've heard to date for fixing this mess, though there's still some room for improvement. Maybe I'll address more aspects of the budget in a future post.

One other interesting note. After the Tea Party produced their plan, they were going to present their recommendations to Congress…until the Senate Rules Committee, headed up by Chuck The Schmuck Schumer (D-NY), took away their microphones and locked them out minutes before the hearing was scheduled to start. Fascist jerk.

While the Occupy movement sits around in drum circles spouting inanities like "Capitalism Is Evil" and "Abolish Money", the Tea Party is actually doing work and coming up with solutions. The only problem I see with the Tea Party people is, there aren't enough of them…YET.

Every person in the country must immediately send President Obama an additional $650 !!! And then y'all have to keep sending that much or more to Obama every single month.

That's how much additional tax money it will take for us to cover the $203 billion federal debt increase for October 2011. Y'all have that much lying around, don't you ? Remember, Obama's only trying to "help" you !!! (become poorer) He's "turning the economy around" !!! (and around and around and around).

The federal government’s debt increased by $203,368,715,583.63 in the month of October, according to the U.S. Treasury.

That equals about $650 per person for each of the 312,542,760 people the Census Bureau now estimates live in the United States.

At the end of September, the total national debt stood at $14,790,340,328,557.15, according to the Bureau of the Public Debt. By the end of October, it had risen to $14,993,709,044,140.78.

The debt increased far more this October than it did last October. Between the last day of September 2010 and the last day of October, the debt rose from $13,561,623,030,891.79 to 13,668,825,497,341.36—for an increase of $107,202,466, 449.57.

October is the first month of the federal fiscal year. If the debt were to increase by an average of $203 billion for the remaining 11 months of the year, the national debt would increase by $2.436 trillion for the year.

No worries. What's a measly $2.436 trillion per year in additional taxes between friends ? A $15 TRILLION federal debt is chicken feed. Let's crack open those piggy banks, college funds, 401K's, savings accounts, and credit cards, my fellow Americans, and pitch in to help our spendthrift, cash-strapped President. If we can't raise the dough, we can always ask our Chinese friends for a loan, like we've been doing. They have our best interests at heart. And you older Americans can comfort yourselves with the knowledge that there is an imaginary $2.5 trillion Social Security Trust Fund sitting out there, filled to the brim with IOU's, just waiting to be filled with fresh taxpayer cash !!! Your government is looking out for you, just like Bernie Madoff would !!!

When the citizens ask, "Can the government destroy the future of the country ?", Obama replies, "Yes We Can !!!"

Vote for Obama in 2012…if you have a death wish, are a masochist, or are just too plain stupid to know any better.

The United States has been reducing tax rates for the last 40-50 years. Here's a chart of the top marginal tax rates over time:

As you can see, individual income tax rates, corporate income tax rates, and capital gains tax rates have dropped sharply through the years. All these rates are much lower than they were in the 1950's and 1960's.

Now let's bring supply side economic theory into the discussion:

Supply-side economics is a school of macroeconomic thought that argues that economic growth can be most effectively created by lowering barriers for people to produce (supply) goods and services, such as lowering income tax and capital gains tax rates, and by allowing greater flexibility by reducing regulation. According to supply-side economics, consumers will then benefit from a greater supply of goods and services at lower prices. Typical policy recommendations of supply-side economics are lower marginal tax rates and less regulation.

Supply siders, mainly conservatives, argue that lower tax rates result in economic growth, and that economic growth will actually RAISE tax revenue, despite the lower tax rates. Opponents of supply side theory, mainly liberals, say that's the craziest thing they've ever heard.

Now look at the above tax rate chart above. If the supply siders are right, federal tax revenue should be going up over time despite the lower tax rates. If supply side opponents are right, federal tax revenue should be dropping, because virtually all federal tax rates have been reduced.

Now for the answer. Here are federal tax revenues over time:

Federal tax revenues have gone up, despite the lower tax rates.

And the winners are – supply siders.

I know some other factors come into play, such as inflation and population growth, but…federal revenue has gone up…way up…at the same time tax rates were going down…way down. I'm sure there's some point on the Laffer curve where taxes would be too low to produce revenue increases, but it doesn't appear we've reached it.

The verdict of history is in. Tax cuts lead to economic growth. I only wonder why some people keep trying to deny it. The correlation is pretty obvious.

"Middle-class families shouldn't pay higher taxes than millionaires and billionaires. "That's pretty straightforward. It's hard to argue against that." – Barack Obama, on monday.

Yes, it would be hard to argue against that…if it was the truth. But it's not the truth. Our President is a big fat liar. Here's AP Factcheck:

President Barack Obama makes it sound as if there are millionaires all over America paying taxes at lower rates than their secretaries…The data tell a different story. On average, the wealthiest people in America pay a lot more taxes than the middle class or the poor, according to private and government data. They pay at a higher rate, and as a group, they contribute a much larger share of the overall taxes collected by the federal government.

Obama says the top !% should pay their "fair share" of taxes, leading us to believe the rich are getting away with something. Wrong. From 2010 IRS data, it is known that the top 1% of earners in this country pay 38% of the federal income taxes, while making 20% of adjusted gross income, which means they are paying nearly double their "fair share". The top 20% of earners pay 87.3% of the federal income taxes. On the other end of the scale, nearly 50% of the workers pay no income taxes. The top 5% of earners pay more in income taxes than the bottom 95%. Enough of this "fair share" nonsense. Obama's tax proposal has nothing to do with fairness. Plus, the top 1% have a median income of $380,000 per year, not millions and billions. There are very few people in the million dollar earning range. In a country of 310 million people, only 236,000 have incomes above a million bucks. That's 0.007% of the population, and they already pay 20% of total federal income taxes. If anyone thinks taxing those few folks more is going to close a $1.6 trillion deficit and pay for the rest of us, you better think again.

In his latest speech, which comes on the heels of his speech proposing $447 billion in new stimulus measures, the President has proposed $3 trillion in deficit reduction. According to the Prez, his deficit reduction will consist of $1.5 trillion in spending cuts and $1.5 trillion in tax increases, but as usual with this President, things are not what they appear to be. Let's take a closer look at that proposal.

On the spending side, Obama is counting as cuts $1 trillion in savings on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. There's some major deception by the big fat liar here:

$1 trillion saved by ending combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Republicans and some independent budget analysts say this is a gimmick because the troop drawdowns were already under way and amount to an accounting adjustment.

In other words, Obama is counting as savings $1 trillion in military spending that was never going to happen anyway. The real savings here is zero. The President is not the only big fat liar in this area. The Republicans also counted the phantom military savings as deficit reduction in their House budget proposal.

Obama's plan is really a $2 trillion deficit reduction package, 3/4's of which consists of various tax increases. Here are the rest of Obama's proposed spending cuts:

MEDICARE AND MEDICAID: $248 billion in reductions to Medicare. About 90 percent of the Medicare cuts would be squeezed from service providers such as drug companies, hospitals and nursing homes. Starting in 2017, the plan would significantly increase what many seniors pay for premiums, copayments and deductibles. Medicaid and other federal health care programs would be cut by about $73 billion. Among the proposals would be measures designed to reduce federal Medicaid payments to states.

OTHER MANDATORY SPENDING: $260 billion in cuts to other mandatory spending programs, including $33 billion by ending income support payments to farmers. The plan also would reduce federal workers' paychecks by 1.2 percent over three years, saving the government about $21 billion over 10 years. The plan estimates savings of nearly $78 billion by reducing waste and abuse in federal programs.

All I can say is, if a Republican President proposed cutting Medicare/Medicaid payments and raising premiums, copays, and deductibles, every liberal from coast to coast would be screaming about how the Republicans don't care about seniors and the poor. Remember the reaction to the Ryan plan ? And don't forget that ObamaCare already allegedly cuts $500 billion from Medicare. Also, notice the 2017 start date for the increased costs to seniors. Those would conveniently start right AFTER Obama completed his second term. What courage. And liberals, did y'all notice that Obama wants to cut the salaries of federal workers ? What about collective bargaining rights ? Oh wait. Those federal workers don't have them. Never did. When will you launch the 'Recall Obama' campaign, like you did to legislators in Wisconsin, or the 'Repeal SB5' campaign, like you did in Ohio ? Hmmm ? I can't hear you….

On the tax side, Obama wants to end the Bush tax cuts for couples making over $250,000, limit tax deductions for the wealthy, and end some corporate loopholes and subsidies. This comes on top of the $1 trillion in spending cuts the super committee is working on as a result of the August debt deal. The rosiest way to look at all this is, if the entire $3 trillion in revenue increases and spending cuts over ten years is enacted, our annual deficit will drop ALL THE WAY DOWN TO $1.3 TRILLION !!! Hurrah !!! Mission Accomplished !!! Four More Years !!! Four More Years !!! It's not exactly Morning In America, but AT LEAST IT'S NOT THE GREAT DEPRESSION !!!

I just thought of something. Doesn't conventional economic wisdom say one shouldn't raise taxes during a recession ??? I thought so, and here's what one of the leaders of our country said a couple years ago…

"The last thing you want to do is raise taxes during a recession, because that would just suck up, take more demand out of the economy, and further put businesses in a hole" – Barack Obama, August 2009.

Yes, I agree. Maybe somebody should introduce this Barack Obama to that other Barack Obama guy. Who knew there were two of them ?

If any of you are wondering why I haven't mentioned the proposed Buffett Rule…it's because there ISN'T a proposal:

…the administration said it wanted the Buffett Rule to be a guiding principle for tax reform. But that was it on details. "We're not going to give the Congress a detailed proposal for how to meet that specific principle now because there's lots of different ways to do that," Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said Monday.

Perhaps on another day, once the administration figures it out.

My PC crashed the day before Obama's "jobs" speech, where we discovered that our spendthrift President wants to fork over another $450 billion in hard-earned taxpayer cash for Stimulus II, the American Jobs Act. Because the federal government doesn't actually pay for anything anymore, the bill for Obama's latest spend-o-rama will come due on some future date, to be paid by some future put-upon taxpaying schlub, assuming there are any taxpayers left by then. Oh wait. I nearly forgot. Obama said every penny of Stimulus II is paid for. It's easy to forget that, mainly because Obama didn't say how it will be paid for. He just waved his magic future spending cut wand and commanded the congressional Super Committee to add another $450 billion to the $1.5 trillion in spending cuts the bipartisan committee will never agree upon. No problem. Heck, I don't know why Obama didn't just order that committee to cut $14.6 trillion from future spending and payoff the entire national debt. That would really solve our problems…but only if you believe in magic like Obama does. Using Obama's "it's all paid for because I told them to pay for it later" (ill) logic, everything the federal government has ever done is paid for, because it all will be paid by someone, somehow, someday. The two trillion dollar question is HOW, but our President can't be bothered with such trivialities, not when there's an election to win.

While I was off the grid, our feckless President urged Congress to pass his jobs bill immediately. He took to the campaign trail, leading his shrinking base in choruses of "pass the bill", even though the bill hadn't even been presented to Congress yet. The Prez ain't much of a details guy. We are seeing more evidence of that as we learn the White House pressured the OMB to approve the Solyndra deal in time for VP Biden's photo op, despite the OMB's objections, and despite a credit agency's estimate that Solyndra would run out of money in September 2011, which is exactly what did happen. That cost the put-upon taxpaying schlubs another half billion bucks, but it almost seems like we're talking about Monopoly money these days, the numbers are so large. I remember a time when a half billion dollars seemed like a lot of money, but that was before the Great Fiscal Insanity descended on America like a plague of locusts. Nowadays, a half billion dollars sounds almost like spare change. I'm sure all you put-upon taxpaying schlubs out there can cough up that much dough, can't you ? After all, you are the backstop for every collosal waste of money that any politician in Washington D.C. can dream up.

The Prez is out on the trail, talking about all those infrastructure jobs again, all those roads and bridges that are falling apart. I wonder how that can be the case after Obama's $817 billion Stimulus I allegedly addressed that very same problem over the last two years. I mean, the Department Of Transportation's entire 2011 budget is only $79 billion. After Stimulus I, those "shovel-ready projects" should have fixed us up, no ? The President's words today say otherwise, but I guess y'all aren't supposed to remember what Obama said last year or the year before. If you do remember, the White House will call it a smear, which you can report to Obama's internet snitch line. When I'm finished with this post, maybe I'll report myself. Then again, I don't want the Feds raiding my house like I was some kind of Gibson wood-buying desperado. Perhaps I'll make a donation to the Re-elect Clueless Obama campaign instead. A very small donation.

If I do report myself to Obama's snitch line, I guess I better have some advice for the President, so here it is….Mr. President, we don't need another $450 billion in temporary stimulus measures that will wear off a year from now. That will change nothing over the long haul. All it will do is put us put-upon taxpaying schlubs even deeper in debt. What we need are permanent changes to help our businesses thrive and succeed in today's world. Nothing else will work. Get some new economists. The ones you have don't seem to get it, just like you don't get it. Our jobs don't come from the government. Our jobs come from the business sector. Stop treating business like it's your enemy. It isn't. It's the golden goose, and killing it is never a good idea.

Anyone still wondering who is the forgotten man ? If so, it's you, the taxpayers. You are the people who must pay for all this spending madness. The big spenders in Washington D.C. care not a whit for you. They are abusing you at every turn. They take your hard-earned dollars and hand it over to their cronies without a thought given to how it will affect you, the people. Your government isn't serving you. It's robbing you blind. Future generations will suffer because of it, and the big spenders don't care anything about them either. The people are being sold down the river so the big government types can throw your money at any constituency it thinks will garner them some votes. They have divided the nation against itself for the same purpose. Things have deteriorated to a point where everybody in this country has their hand out, looking for the government to bail them out. It's pathetic. It's not the America I love, and it sure isn't just the so-called welfare queens doing it. It's everyone. It's all the corporate CEO's, Wall Street, banks, foreign governments, the United Nations, unions, the military-industrial complex, farmers, health-care hucksters, etc. It's all the lobbyists, lawyers, activist groups, cronies, campaign donators, even the government bailing out itself at taxpayer expense. It's Democrats and Republicans doing it. Everyone expects to be subsidized by the American taxpayer. It's endemic. It's everyone. And we have stood by and let it all happen. It's time to wake up, America, because our time is running out.

President Obama talks about closing corporate tax loopholes and taxing companies who move profits offshore. He calls this 'shared sacrifice". This kind of talk makes for a good class warfare political talking point, and Obama repeats this kind of stuff endlessly, but there's much Obama fails to tell us. Some of what Obama conveniently forgets to say was brought up on CBS' 60 Minutes program last night, in a repeat of a report it aired in March. 60 Minutes reported on corporate tax havens:

"Our government is in knots over ways to lower the federal budget deficit. Well, what if we told you we found a pot of money – over $60 billion a year – that could be used to help out?

That bundle is tax money not coming in to the IRS from American corporations. One major way they avoid paying the tax man is by parking their profits overseas. They'll tell you they're forced to do that because the corporate 35 percent tax rate is high in relation to other countries, and indeed it seems the tax code actually encourages companies to move their businesses out of the countryAmerican corporations. One major way they avoid paying the tax man is by parking their profits overseas. They'll tell you they're forced to do that because the corporate 35 percent tax rate is high in relation to other countries, and indeed it seems the tax code actually encourages companies to move their businesses out of the country.

Obama and his fellow liberals would dearly love to get their hands on that $60 billion in overseas corporate tax revenue. No doubt about that. They talk about it all the time. Some Republicans talk about it too. What the liberals generally don't talk about is WHY all those profits move to overseas tax shelters in the first place. One big reason is the USA's sky high corporate tax rates. What Obama also doesn't mention is that if we do his bidding and remove the corporate tax loopholes, while still leaving our corporate tax rates the highest in the world, the only thing we'd be encouraging is for MORE companies to relocate overseas. Talk about counterproductive. I thought the idea was to attract business to our shores, not to drive it away. Obama might as well take out an ad touting the USA as the 'anti-business capital of the world'. When I hear Obama talking about "shared sacrifice", I think about all the jobs and American wealth he wants to sacrifice. We'd certainly all share in that loss.

Another thing Obama fails to mention is what has happened in the past when the government tried to collect overseas corporate taxes:

Congress tried to put a stop to that with a law passed in 2004, mandating that any company that wanted to move offshore would still have to pay the 35 percent. But because of loopholes in the tax code, companies can substantially lower their taxes by moving chunks of their businesses to their foreign subsidiaries.

The result of the 2004 law was that companies moved even more of their operations overseas. Again, talk about counterproductive.

Here's the reality of the situation in the world today:

"We are dealing with a tax system that is a dinosaur," Cisco CEO John Chambers told Stahl.

One CEO who would talk to us was Chambers. Cisco is the giant high tech company headquartered in San Jose, Calif. He says our tax rate is insane. It's forcing companies into these maneuvers, especially when many other industrialized countries including Canada are busy lowering their tax rates in order to lure our companies and our jobs away.

"Every other government in the world has realized that the U.S. has it wrong. They're saying, 'I'm going to have lower taxes, period.' That's what you see all across Western Europe, that's what you see in Asia in the developed countries," Chambers said.

When asked if he's judged as a CEO on issues like taxes, Chambers said, "Absolutely."

He's been expanding Cisco overseas because of growing demand abroad, but also to lower the company's taxes: their average rate over the last three years was just 20 percent.

Economist Martin Sullivan says it's standard operating procedure for companies like Cisco. "U.S. multinationals are shifting their research facilities, shifting their manufacturing facilities, and shifting some regional headquarters into Switzerland and into Ireland. And those are massive numbers of jobs," he told Stahl.

Sullivan says Ireland taxes corporations at just a third of the U.S. rate, so no wonder the outskirts of Dublin look like Silicon Valley. Many well-known companies are all but obliged to go abroad.

"Well, if you have a 35 percent rate in the United States and, for example, a 12.5 percent rate in Ireland, there's a incentive to move your factory to Ireland," he explained.

"Six hundred American companies are in Ireland and they employ 100,000 people," Stahl pointed out. "Those are jobs that aren't here. And they moved to Ireland because of taxes."

"The U.S. Treasury in effect is subsidizing investment in Ireland," Sullivan said.

"Why isn't everybody in Ireland if it's that great?" Stahl asked.

"Almost everybody is in Ireland," Sullivan said. "All the pharmaceutical companies, all the high tech companies. You're stupid if you're not in Ireland," he replied.

"We notice that you have an awful lotta companies in Ireland," Stahl told Cisco's John Chambers.

"Yes we do," he acknowledged.

By Stahl's count, Cisco has eight companies in Ireland.

"We do what makes sense to the shareholders," Chambers said. "We go where there are incentives in countries that say, 'We want you here, we're going to give you tax advantages, and we want you to add jobs here, etc.' We can no longer in America say, 'This is how we do it, therefore you must do it.' We've gotta change, or we're going to be left behind."

That's good for Ireland, but not so good for us. If our biggest problem is jobs (and it is), then why the hell are we continuing policies that drive jobs away ? That isn't shared sacrifice, it's shared stupidity. And how much money are we talking about that is sitting overseas ???:

Chambers told Stahl Cisco has almost $40 billion overseas that could be brought back to the U.S.

The total amount of money U.S. companies have trapped overseas is $1.2 trillion. Chambers is advocating for a one-time tax break to allow them to bring that money home at a rate of, say five percent. That would, he says, stimulate the economy and create jobs.

As Obama leaves on his bus tour to "pivot to jobs" (about the 15th time he's made such a pivot), maybe this time he could try something that actually would work – dropping the corporate tax rate dramatically. Unless, of course, he really doesn't give a damn about the American people he's hurting.

I found the following current event quotes on The Patriot Post.

Insane The New Sane: "The same politicians who spent $1.7 trillion more than they collected, in just this year alone, say the problem is that private citizens are not paying enough. … [B]ecause the political class has made the national debt so high, it is able to insist that taking a chance on the power of liberty is an irresponsible gamble. Because the government lives so far beyond its means, it would be irresponsible to provide it with reduced means. This is how we have reached the madness of a moment when the national debt is used as an argument against spending reductions, or growth-oriented tax and regulatory policies. The insane problem becomes a weapon against rational solutions." –columnist John Hayward

There's nothing for me to add to that. Well said.

Moron Of The Week: "Isn't the Tea Party — I'm not trying to call them names or anything. I just want to ask a very serious question: Aren't they exactly what the Founding Fathers feared most? Which is people who are ignorant about the way the world works come to power. That is what the Founding Fathers hated the most. They were not for direct democracy" –HBO's Bill Maher

I'm still trying to figure out why Bill Maher has a political television show on HBO. His neverending ignorance on political matters is astounding. In the above quote, Maher not only demonstrates a cluelessness about the Founding Fathers and the original Boston Tea Party (it was about TAXES, Mr. Maher), he also doesn't seem to understand that today's Tea Party is not a direct democracy, it's a protest movement and only one of many political forces in this country. The Tea Party does not govern. Our elected representatives perform that function. That is and always has been a representative democracy. The "serious question" Bill Maher asks here is a complete joke.

Leadership Failure: "Meanwhile, the World's Greatest Orator bemoans the 'intransigence' of Republicans. OK, what's your plan? Give us one actual program you're willing to cut, right now. Oh, don't worry, says Barack Obluffer. To demonstrate how serious he is, he's offered to put on the table for fiscal year 2012 spending cuts of (stand well back now) $2 billion. That would be a lot in, say, Iceland or even Australia. Once upon a time it would have been a lot even in Washington. But today $2 billion is what the Brokest Nation in History borrows every 10 hours. In other words, in less time than he spends sitting across the table negotiating his $2 billion cut, he's already borrowed it all back. A negotiation with Obama is literally not worth the time." –columnist Mark Steyn

The extent of Obama's leadership on the debt limit has been to say he wants revenues raised along with spending cuts, and he didn't even care about spending cuts until the Republicans forced him to care. That's how this President leads…by following.

Hijacking The Tax And Spend Crowd: "Here's the thing about Obama. He ran as a transformational president. He sees himself as transformational. He always has. What occurred between 2008 and 2010 is the Tea Party. And the Tea Party has stopped that kind of transformation from occurring because it has hijacked the Republican Party and the John Boehners of the world who would have cut a deal with the president of the United States. It has hijacked the Republican Party and it has now become substantially just a no-tax party as opposed to a party that cares about the deficit. I think no tax trumps their caring and concern about the deficit." –CNN's Gloria Borger

Poor Obama. His transformational dreams were crushed by the Tea Party. Sniff, sniff. Cry me a river. In reality, it was, well, reality that crushed Obama's unrealistic dreams. Plus, if any party NEEDED hijacking after the big spending, debt accumulating Bush years, it was the Republican party. Thank goodness the Tea Party arrived on the scene and changed the discussion, because without it we wouldn't even be talking about reining in the sole cause of our fiscal unsustainability – big government.

Speaking of which…

The Left Calls It 'The Plan': "Forget all the numbers being tossed around in Washington — the millions and billions and trillions of dollars being taxed, borrowed, printed and spent as the country approaches the Aug. 2 debt-ceiling deadline. … Forget the fact that such 'entitlements' as Social Security and Medicare — social-insurance programs that the public long thought to be actuarially sound — have been exposed as little more than legal Ponzi schemes, paying today's benefits out of tomorrow's borrowed receipts. Instead, just ask yourself this simple question: When did it become the primary function of the federal government to send millions of Americans checks? For this, in essence, is what the debt-ceiling fight is all about — the inexorable and ultimately fatal growth of the welfare state." –columnist Michael Walsh

This reminds me of a USA Today article from a few months ago, titled "Americans Depend More On Federal Aid Than Ever". Here's a piece of it:

Americans depended more on government assistance in 2010 than at any other time in the nation's history, a USA TODAY analysis of federal data finds. The trend shows few signs of easing, even though the economic recovery is nearly 2 years old.

A record 18.3% of the nation's total personal income was a payment from the government for Social Security, Medicare, food stamps, unemployment benefits and other programs in 2010. Wages accounted for the lowest share of income — 51.0% — since the government began keeping track in 1929.

Americans got an average of $7,427 in benefits each in 2010, up from an inflation-adjusted $4,763 in 2000 and $3,686 in 1990. The federal government pays about 90% of the benefits.

"What's frightening is the Baby Boomers haven't really started to retire," says University of Michigan economist Donald Grimes of the 77 million people born from 1946 through 1964 whose oldest wave turns 65 this year. "That's when the cost of Medicare will start to explode."

If you think things are bad now, America, prepare yourselves. You ain't seen nuthin' yet. Unless we change course dramatically, in a decade we'll be looking back at these times as the good old days.

The political left in this country wants the citizenry to be dependent, and, btw, disarmed. A passive and helpless population is more easily controlled.

My closing quote comes from our "transformational" President himself, though it sounds more like politics as usual to me.

Blaming Bush: "We don't need a constitutional amendment to do our jobs. The Constitution already tells us to do our jobs — and to make sure that the government is living within its means and making responsible choices. … We don't need a balanced budget amendment. We simply need to make these tough choices and be willing to take on our bases. And everybody knows it. … It turns out that our problem is we cut taxes without paying for them over the last decade; we ended up instituting new programs like a prescription drug program for seniors that was not paid for; we fought two wars, we didn't pay for them; we had a bad recession that required a Recovery Act and stimulus spending and helping states — and all that accumulated and there's interest on top of that." –Barack Obama

Maybe we wouldn't need a balanced budget constitutional amendment if the government showed any indication it could live within it's means or discipline itself, but it has not done that. When I hear Obama whining about a balanced budget amendment, all I hear is him thinking, 'but how will I spend and borrow more money ? How will I play politics and buy votes ?'

That radical right-wing lunatic fringe known as the Tea Party has led the way to the introduction of House legislation known as H.R. 2560, aka Cut, Cap, And Balance. Wait until you get a load of what these Republican wingnuts are proposing:

H.R. 2560, The Cut, Cap, and Balance Act, is based on the framework first proposed by the Republican Study Committee in June 2011. The bill makes cuts $111 billion in FY 2012, places firm caps on future spending, and – contingent upon House and Senate passage of a Balanced Budget Amendment – grants President Obama’s request for a debt limit increase. The House of Representatives is expected to vote on H.R. 2560 on July 19, 2011.

1. Cut – We must make discretionary and mandatory spending reductions that would cut the deficit in half next year.

2. Cap – We need statutory, enforceable caps to align federal spending with average revenues at 18% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), with automatic spending reductions if the caps are breached.

3. Balance – We must send to the states a Balanced Budget Amendment (BBA) with strong protections against federal tax increases and a Spending Limitation Amendment (SLA) that aligns spending with average revenues as described above.

With each passing day our nation’s fiscal health gets worse, leaving our children and grandchildren falling further into debt. Democrats seem to have given up, proposing even more borrowing in response to our massive debt addiction. With the problem growing larger every day, we must move quickly and unite behind a plan to cut spending and get our budget into balance.

Can you believe it ? These insane-in-the-membrane Republicans actually believe Congress should balance it's budget. They believe we SHOULDN'T bankrupt the country via deficits and debt. They believe there should be a LIMIT to federal spending. Clearly, we have to nip this foolishness in the bud. If we don't, this radical idea of fiscal responsibility may start to catch on, like a virus. The House wingnuts are voting on the Cut, Cap, And Balance plan today, where they will most likely pass it.

Luckily, we also have sane Democrats in Congress and the White House, who know fiscal responsibility is for losers. These sane Democrats know that borrowing trillions upon trillions of dollars forever couldn't possibly have any negative ramifications (unless a Republican is in the White House). These sane Democrats know that spending should never be limited, and endless tax increases are the only answer. What could go wrong ? The sane Democrats know the answer to our economic maladies is found in what I call the Democrat three step approach – 1) Tax, 2) Spend, 3) Repeat. Sane Democrats know their approach can lead only to economic welfare, with an emphasis on the "welfare" part. You citizens won't have to worry about anything if you follow the sane Democrats. You most especially won't have to worry about what to do with all the extra money in your pocket. The sane Democrats will decide what to do with that after they relieve you of your money responsibility to make your own fiscal decisions. I mean, after all, they are smarter than you, and that's why our government is on such solid financial footing today. They went to Harvard.

The sanest Democrat, President Obama, freaked the hell out at the thought of the government having to live within a budget. If anybody knows fiscal responsibility is for the birds, it's Obama. He knows balanced budgets are a threat to the very fabric of the nation, or something. Obama sanely threatened to veto fiscal responsibility. Here's a statement from the White House:

The Administration strongly opposes H.R. 2560, the “Cut, Cap and Balance Act of 2011.” Neither setting arbitrary spending levels nor amending the Constitution is necessary to restore fiscal responsibility. Increasing the Federal debt limit, which is needed to avoid a Federal government default on its obligations and a severe blow to the economy, should not be conditioned on taking these actions. Instead of pursuing an empty political statement and unrealistic policy goals, it is necessary to move beyond politics as usual and find bipartisan common ground.

Take that, you Republican Tea Party wingnuts. Obama don't want to hear about no "unrealistic policy goals" like a balanced budget. What a loony idea. "Politics as usual" demands that these deficits and debt accumulation continue on and on. Obama knows the two parties must "find bipartisan common ground" by continuing with the sane Democrat plan of increasing spending and raising taxes.

Here's the sanest of the sanest Democrat's pronouncements:

The President has proposed a comprehensive and balanced framework that ensures we live within our means and reduces the deficit by $4 trillion

Right on, Mr. President. Reducing the deficit by $4 trillion "ensures we live within our means", except for the other $5-6 trillion of deficits you are projected to run up, of course. But what's $5-6 trillion more in deficits among friends, eh ? We'll keep that on the down low.

Heck, the next thing you know, the wingnut Republicans will be asking the Democrats in Congress to produce an actual budget, which the Dems haven't done in over 800 days and counting. Those radical right-wingers just never stop making irrational demands, do they ?

Remember this in 2012, folks. I suggest you all get bumper stickers to spread the news – Vote For Fiscal Irresponsibility. Vote Democrat In 2012. It's the "sane" thing to do.

The Democrats in Congress may not be able to do their jobs and produce a budget, but they have finally been embarrassed into producing a plan to address our record deficits. All hail the Democrats ! It's about time, since the Dems control the Executive Branch and the Senate. In other words, the Dems are the majority. The Republicans only control the House.

The first thing I noticed about the Democrat deficit plan was…it doesn't get rid of the deficits. Here's the Washington Post's charitable description of the Democrat effort:

Senate Democrats have drafted a sweeping debt-reduction plan that would slice $4 trillion from projected borrowing over the next decade without touching the expensive health and retirement programs targeted by President Obama.

Sounds great, WaPo…as long as you don't actually think about it. The Democrats "sweeping" plan would cut $4 trillion from President Obama's projected 10-year deficits of $9.5 trillion, leaving us with an accumulation of $5.5 trillion in new deficit spending over the next decade. With interest, that would increase the national debt by another $7.5 trillion or so. That doesn't exactly solve the problem, does it ? Keep in mind that the all-time debt runner-upper champion, prior to Obama, was President Bush II. Bush ran up the debt by around $5 trillion over 8 years. Obama has already run up the debt by $4 trillion in 2 1/2 years, and the Dem "deficit plan" would add another $7.5 trillion to this. Normally, such a plan would be referred to as "going from the frying pan into the fire" rather than being hailed as an achievement, but politics leads people to make silly claims.

Being a Democrat deficit-reduction plan, it's pretty easy to figure out what their major recommendations would be – tax increases and cuts in defense spending.

…Senate Democrats are proposing to stabilize borrowing through sharp cuts at the Pentagon and other government agencies, as well as $2 trillion in new taxes, primarily on families earning more than $1 million year, according to a copy of the plan obtained by The Washington Post.

"stabilize borrowing". LOL. Good one. Do you get the feeling this WaPo article was written by a Democrat ? If not, this next part should convince you:

With debt-reduction talks under way between Obama and congressional leaders, Senate Democrats are unlikely to adopt the blueprint. However, it has gained broad support among those eager to chart a path to solving the nation’s budget problems without making politically painful cuts to Social Security and Medicare.

See, the Democrats aren't going to actually adopt their own deficit reduction plan (because actual leadership by the Dems would create political risk), but the Dem poseurs want to show they can solve our budget problems without dealing with SS or Medicare, according to this WaPo writer. Never mind that the Democrat deficit reduction plan DOESN'T solve the budget problems, and that's precisely BECAUSE it doesn't deal with SS or Medicare, which comprise the majority of the budget.

One Democrat did comment on the plan:

“The very strong feeling was we needed to get this into the conversation, because it provides an alternative view,” said a Senate Democrat familiar with the blueprint, who spoke on condition of anonymity because it has not been publicly released. “What’s striking is how modest the changes need to be to get us back on track.”

Running up $5.5 trillion in new deficits over the next decade will "get us back on track" ? I assume this anonymous Democrat must be a co-sponsor of Barney Frank (D-MA) and Ron Paul's (R-TX) bill to allow states to legalize marijuana. He's definitely smoking something. The only way the Dem plan could be considered "on track" is if you believe returning to Bush-level deficits is on track. I do not. We'll only be on track when our budget is back in the black.

The real reason Senate Democrats produced a deficit plan is a political one. They want to counter the current negotiations between President Obama and House Republicans (legislation must originate in the House):

On Friday, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) visited the White House to brief Obama and Vice President Biden on the blueprint, which differs significantly from the framework under discussion with House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) and other leaders.

“I explained to the President and Vice President how the Senate Budget Committee Democrats developed a plan that achieves $4 trillion in deficit reduction in a balanced and fair way,” Conrad said in a statement. “It is my hope the plan will help influence the bipartisan negotiations and help them reach a comprehensive and balanced deficit reduction agreement.”

By "balanced deficit reduction", the Democrats mean, 'let's raise taxes". By "fair", they mean raise taxes on the wealthy. They know the Republicans will not agree to raising taxes in such a weak economy, with unemployment at 9.2%. Speaker Of the House John Boehner (R-OH) just said he would accept a smaller debt ceiling deal of $2 trillion in spending cuts rather than raise taxes.

I suppose I shouldn't be too critical of what's going on. At least both the Democrats and Republicans are now proposing ways to reduce deficits and debt, rather than increasing them radically, as both Bush and Obama have done. That is a step in the right direction.

Here are some details of the Democrat plan:

Under the blueprint, the top income tax rate would rise to 39.6 percent for individuals earning more than $500,000 a year and families earning more than $1 million. That group, which constitutes the nation’s richest 1 percent of households, would also pay a 20 percent rate on capital gains and dividends, rather than the 15 percent rate now in effect.

In addition to raising rates for the very wealthiest families, the blueprint proposes to obtain fresh revenue by targeting offshore tax havens and corporate shelters. It would also scale back the array of tax breaks and deductions known as tax expenditures, perhaps by focusing on the wealthiest households, which claim an average of $205,000 in tax breaks each year on average income of $1.1 million.

The blueprint would take nearly $900 billion from the Pentagon over the next decade — the same amount recommended by Obama’s fiscal commission. It would slice more than $350 billion from domestic programs. And it would produce interest savings of nearly $600 billion attributable to reduced borrowing.

Only about $80 billion would be cut from Medicare, Medicaid and other federal health programs, and nothing from Social Security

As usual, the Democrats want to go after corporations and investment capital, but that also goes after job creators and wealth producers, not a great idea right now (when are liberals ever going to learn that you can't be pro-job and anti-business at the same time ?). No wonder White House spokesmen have been saying people don't care about the unemployment rate or GDP growth. They must think we're pretty dumb. I think those White House spokesmen are pretty dumb, because we do care, at least those of us who haven't been brainwashed into believing corporations and investment capital are evil.

The problem with politics is politicians…or is it the other way around ? Whatever it is, it prevents people from thinking clearly. To see politics at work, you don't have to look any further than our muddled, bureaucratic nightmare of a tax code. The last I heard, it was about 67,000 pages long, and it is filled with all sorts of arcane rules, tax credits, exemptions, etc. It seems politicians have been talking forever about making the tax code simpler, but it only gets bigger and more complicated every year.

Much political debate centers around marginal tax rates. How much the wealthy should pay is the hot topic these days, but I'd like to present a different angle on taxes. I propose that we get rid of ALL tax credits and exemptions, and replace it with a flat income tax rate. Obviously, I didn't think of this idea. It has been proposed before, but the more I think about it, the more I like it. Here's why.

Before I could endorse a flat tax (with a couple twists), I checked to see what the flat rate would have to be in order to meet or exceed current federal income tax revenue. That meant I had to find the total wages paid to American workers. I had a lot of trouble finding that number. I thought I'd find it at the Bureau Of Labor Statistics, but after looking at a half dozen or so wage graphs, the number still eluded me. I finally found a number at www.tax.com. That source indicated total reported wages paid to workers is about $6 trillion. I'm going to use that number. I hope it's accurate.

According to www.usgovernmentrevenue.com, total federal income tax revenue in 2010 came to $1.090 trillion. We'll round it to $1.1 trillion. That means a flat tax rate of 20% would produce federal revenue of $1.2 trillion, netting us an extra $100 billion toward reducing the deficit (forgive my static tax analysis. It's all I can do). It's important to remember that our unemployment rate is sky high right now. Officially, it's 9.1%, and in reality it's at least 17%. If we could get unemployment back into the 5% range, as it was before the recession, I figure we'd net another $400 billion in federal revenue. That's would be a $500 billion deficit reduction already, and the flat tax would help in that area. The $1.1 trillion we collect in federal income taxes currently includes business income taxes, which are currently taxed at a maximum rate of 35%. Corporations on average pay about 25%. A 20% flat tax would give give businesses a significant tax cut, which will stimulate job creation, helping us to get unemployment back to the desired 5% range.

I said there would be twists to my flat tax, and here's the first one. For high income wage earners, I do believe it's justifiable to say they should pay a little more to assist in helping the poor and disabled. To this end, any individual (business income is excluded) earning $250,000 or more would pay a flat tax rate of 30%. This would raise yet more revenue for the government and cut further into the deficit. According to factcheck.org, 2% of American households earn over $250,000, and their earnings comprise 24% of all income. Therefore, the extra 10% flat tax surcharge for these folks will raise an additional $144 billion in tax revenue ($6 trillion x .24 x. 10). Oh wait. No, it won't. I have to exclude the business income from that number. I'm not sure how much that will reduce revenue. My best guess is 25%, meaning the 10% surcharge. will raise an additional $108 billion or so.

So far, I've raised revenue by $608 billion, once unemployment returns to the 5% range.

I have one more twist. You probably noticed I would be taxing all income earners at the 20% rate, which would include very low income earners who need a break. So, I'll lower the flat tax rate to 10% for those earning less than twice the poverty rate (about $25,000 per year). This group represents about 47% of all wage earners. According to data I've read, this group earns about 13% of all income, so reducing their flat tax rate will reduce government revenue by approximately $80 billion ($6 trillion x .13 x .20 x .5).

My net figure from the 10-20-30% tri-level flat tax results in $528 billion more in federal revenue after unemployment returns to the 5% range. With unemployment at 9.1%, it still results in an extra $128 billion in federal revenue this year, increasing revenue by about the amount of the Bush tax cuts.

There will be objections to this type of plan from both the left and the right.

The left will hate the fact that the bottom 47% of wage earners, who currently pay no income tax, would now be paying 10%. Sorry, but no more free rides. We're in a debt crisis AND a jobs crisis, and we must climb out.

The right will hate the fact that this plan raises taxes at all. Again, sorry, but we're in a debt crisis AND a jobs crisis, and we must climb out. I'd prefer that these tax rates were lower myself, but that won't happen until government spending is reigned in. Spending is the lion's share of the problem, but fixing the tax code would be a good start.

Personally, I like the business tax cuts to stimulate job creation. I was tempted to make the business rates even lower to stimulate more jobs, but I figure I've already made liberals mad enough by reducing corporate tax rates, and by reducing rates for the wealthy to 30% (but remember liberals, the wealthy won't get any more deductions. They will actually have to pay that 30%, unlike now. I believe my flat tax structure would result in the wealthy paying more in taxes than they do currently).

But what really sold me on this tri-level flat tax is the effect it would have on politics. It DE-POLITICIZES the tax code. There would be no more tax breaks for this group or that group. That will reduce the influence of lobbyists and special interests, leading to less corruption. Exxon doesn't get it's tax credits ('hurrah !' says the left), and neither does anyone else. People won't get tax credits for NOT working ('hurrah !' says the right). As a result, politicians wouldn't have as much opportunity to pander. Hopefully, that would make them more honest. The 67,000 page tax code could be thrown out the window and rewritten into something much shorter, more sensible, and understandable. Of course, we'd have to prevent the politicians from changing the tax code after it was implemented, and we'd have to prevent them from exempting their buddies from having to pay the taxes. Perhaps a constitutional amendment stating that the rates could never exceed the 10-20-30% maximums except in cases of national emergency, and also stating that all taxes must be applied universally ??? Hey, as long as I'm dreaming, I may as well dream big.

P.S. – In an ideal world, everyone would be taxed at the same low rate (I seem to remember something about equal protection under the law, among other concepts) after making some provisions for the poor and disabled, but we don't live in an ideal world. We live in a politicized world, and I'm trying to come up with something that might have a snowball's chance of being implemented. This was the best compromise I could think of that would reduce the deficit some while stile having a beneficial economic effect. It's hard to raise any taxes without having some negative effect, and I'd rather not do it, but, like I said, this is a compromise…something the Republicans and Democrats just failed to accomplish.

Here's why, by the numbers.

Total federal revenue for FY2011 will be about $2.2 trillion.

Here are the three biggest federal expenditures YTD:
Medicare/Medicaid – $815.1 billion
Defense including wars – $698.5 billion
Social Security – $711.8 billion

Medicare, Defense, and Social Security expenditures YTD comes to $ 2.225 trillion. These three areas are consuming ALL the revenue the federal government takes in. There is no money left for anything else. The other $1.6 trillion the federal government will spend this year is all borrowed. This is known as the deficit. The federal government is borrowing 40 cents out of every dollar it spends.

The federal government has spent beyond it's means for a long, long time, which is why we have a $14.4 trillion federal debt, but the government isn't even coming close to paying for itself these days, and President Obama isn't making any realistic efforts to address the problem. His 10-year budget proposal added another $9-13 trillion to the debt, and his budget assumed economic recovery, the implementation of ObamaCare, an end to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and a reversal of the Bush tax cuts for the top 2%. Obama's budget still leaves us on the road to nowhere. Incredibly, Obama tried to peddle his 10-year budget plan as one that reduces the deficit, as if it was fiscally responsible. It is anything but that. Obama is the Nowhere Man.

As bad as things are now, they are about to get much worse. We have future unfunded entitlement liabilities in excess of $114 trillion. $79.1 trillion of that is Medicare. This means we have made enormous future entitlement commitments that we have not funded. And as everyone knows, health care costs are going up much faster than the economy is growing. Those unfunded entitlement liabilities are going to get a lot larger.

The Government Accounting Office (GAO) put out this chart in 2008 comparing entitlement growth to GDP growth. This shows how entitlement spending will rise:

Entitlement spending is growing three times faster than GDP, and the GAO's projection was made BEFORE ObamaCare was implemented. ObamaCare created massive new entitlements. It adds 20 million new people to Medicaid. Obama, like Bush before him, added to the entitlement problem (Bush's Prescription Drug plan has an unfunded future entitlement liability of $19 trillion. That's in addition to the $79 trillion Medicare/Medicaid liability).

Politicians like to create programs and promise people all kinds of things, but politicians don't like to pay for those programs and promises. Politicians want all the pleasure without any of the pain. It helps them get elected, but what they are ultimately doing is selling this country down the river with their unsustainable schemes.

A Heritage Foundation chart shows, using a 30-year tax to GDP average of 18%, Medicare/Medicaid, ObamaCare, and Social Security will consume ALL federal revenue by 2049. There won't even be room in the federal budget for Defense spending.

In summary, entitlements are doubling and tripling in size beyond economic growth. Historic levels of taxation can no longer support them and the rest of the government. We have massive entitlement commitments we have not funded….and we are ALREADY $14.4 trillion in debt, with a $1.6 trillion deficit this year, and no end to the deficits in sight.

Anyone who doesn't recognize this problem is engaging in willful blindness…which leads me to the Democrats. They are busy ripping apart Republicans who have proposed measures to deal with this coming fiscal crisis, like Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), but the Democrats are proposing no solutions of their own that will address the problem. Shame on them. If they don't like Ryan's plan, or any other Republican plan (there are several), then how about the Democrats do the jobs they were elected to do and come up with their own plan(s) ! The Dems think ripping the GOP's ideas will give them an advantage in the 2012 elections, and that's all they care about. They hope nobody will notice they have no solutions of their own. As an example, listen to how Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz answered a question put to her about how the Democrats will address the problem:

There is the message of Democrats. They got nuthin', other than demonizing Republicans. The citizens of this nation deserve a lot better than that.

Even though I write about politics, I hate politics. More precisely, I hate most politicians. I have never seen a bigger bunch of lying thieves in my life than the people we elect to run our country. It would take a hearty dose of sodium pentathol to get most of them to tell the truth. I think the first definition of the word 'politician' in the dictionary should be 'professional liar'. Mirriam-Webster should be notified immediately.

Not that I'm cynical or anything.

And when I think about our current President, the word 'politician' springs immediately to mind. With all the problems this country faces, we badly need a leader in the Oval Office right now, but instead we have a politician. We have a politician who cares more about his political party than he does about solving the problems of our country.

Obama rips Republican proposals to eliminate the deficit/debt to shreds, but if you notice, he proposes nothing of his own to eliminate the deficit/debt. He only proposes measures to massively increase the deficit/debt, as he did with his 10-year budget proposal. That's not a leader. That's a politician.

Obama formed a Deficit Commission in 2010 to make it appear he was committed to addressing the deficit/debt, and then he completely ignored the recommendations of his own Deficit Commission. That's not a leader. That's a politician, putting forth a smoke screen.

Obama is STILL talking about eliminating the Bush "tax cuts for the rich". What he doesn't tell you is, he could have eliminated those tax cuts any time he desired in 2009 or 2010. The Democrats had complete control of the Executive and Legislative branches of the federal government for those two years. As much as Democrats whine about the rich ONLY paying a 35% federal income tax rate, the highest rate, you'd think they would have reversed those tax cuts on day two of Obama's presidency, but they didn't. Why not ? There are two main reasons. First is the fact that reversing the Bush "tax cuts for the rich" won't come anywhere near to solving our deficit/debt problem, and the Democrats all know it. Secondly, the Democrats WANT to keep that issue alive so they can use it as a weapon in the 2012 elections. If they had reversed those tax cuts, it would not be an issue (and the deficits/debt would still be going up by trillions year after year). Democrats want to keep using that issue as a smoke screen. These are not the actions of leaders. They are the actions of politicians.

Obama's own life doesn't even match his class warfare rhetoric. Here's what the President said about taxing the wealthy:

"I believe that most wealthy Americans would agree with me. They want to give back to the country that's done so much for them. Washington just hasn't asked them to."

But on Obama's own tax return, our wealthy Prez made every effort to pay LESS in taxes to the government:

"[I]n 2009, Obama took itemized deductions of $514,819, a foreign tax credit of $59,372, and a deduction for interest on his home of $52,195. He was also able to take a deduction for $49,000 he contributed to his self-employed retirement fund. If he had not taken these deductions, he would have paid taxes on an additional $675,386, which in his income bracket would have meant he owed somewhere in the neighborhood of $200,000 more in taxes at the top marginal tax rate of 35 percent. Furthermore, he instructed the Nobel committee to donate his entire $1.4 million Nobel Prize directly to 10 charities, thereby avoiding the necessity of declaring the money as income on which he would have owed an additional $490,000 in taxes. If the president is so appalled at the rich and their ability to hire accountants to take advantage of each and every deduction, why doesn't he simply take the standard deduction on his tax return, like most Americans?" –columnist Linda Chavez

Clearly, the President doesn't have the strength of his own stated convictions. That's because he's not a leader. He's merely a politician.

So here we are, $14.3 TRILLION in debt, with the highest single year deficit in American history at $1.65 TRILLION, and all our President can do is conjure up doomsday scenarios of what wil happen if the Republican spending cuts go through. Here are a couple excerpts of Obama ripping proposed Republican spending cuts:

"Worst of all, this is a [Republican] vision that says even though America can't afford to invest in education or clean energy; even though we can't afford to care for seniors and poor children…Under [Republicans'] vision, we can't invest in roads and bridges and broadband and high-speed rail. I mean, we would be a nation of potholes, and our airports would be worse than places that we thought — that we used to call the Third World."

According to Obama, we will become a Third World country if the Republican cuts are enacted. Well, I have a question for our President. What kind of country will we become if we keep borrowing 40 cents out of every federal dollar spent, as we are doing now under Obama's "leadership" ? What kind of country will we be when the debt is $20 TRILLION or $25 TRILLION, and the people we are borrowing from realize we are a terrible credit risk ? It's coming, sooner rather than later. This President's "leadership" is like the captain of the Titanic saying the real danger to the ship would be in changing course and NOT hitting the iceberg. With all due respect, I don't think so Skippy.

The President is basically endorsing the unsustainable status quo. That may be smart politics. It may even win elections for Democrats in 2012, as a popular backlash against Republican spending cuts manifests itself….but it sure as hell ain't leadership.

If you want to know how much of a tax increase it would take to close our federal budget gap (that would take a $1.65 TRILLION tax increase this year), here's Mark Alexander of the Patriot Post to put it in perspective:

Stop reading this and add up all the paychecks you received from January 1 through April 12 of this year. Now, write a check for that amount to the government. In essence, you have done just that, for as the Tax Foundation recently announced, April 12 was this year's Tax Freedom day, meaning "Americans will work well over three months of the year, from January 1 to April 12, before earning enough money to pay this year's tax obligations at the federal, state and local levels." According to the Cato Institute's Dan Mitchell, this is the good news. "The bad news is that Tax Freedom Day only measures the direct and immediate impact of taxation. It doesn't measure the overall burden of government." If the federal government were to collect enough taxes this year to fund all its spending, Tax Freedom Day wouldn't come until May 23.

In order to fully fund our federal government, we'd have to work another month and half each year just to pay our federal taxes. And this doesn't even count the taxes necessary to cover the state and local government budget shortages. It's not a stretch to say we'll soon be working half the year just to pay the government unless spending is seriously curtailed. Government has grown and grown and grown over the years, and our current fiscal nightmare is the result. It would take oppressive, economy-killing tax increases to merely tax our way out of it. That is the truth. Working half the year for the government is basically what the Democrats are offering as a "solution", and things will only get much worse as the baby boomers retire and Medicare/Social Security expenses start to skyrocket. The Democrat model is European socialism, which is a very odd thing to model when you consider the European socialist countries are all going broke too. Modeling failure isn't very intelligent. When our President starts to get serious about our fiscal challenges, that's when you will know you have a leader instead of a politician. Until then, good luck America. You'll need it. Wear a lifejacket, because we ARE going to hit the iceberg. Hope the water isn't too cold. And until we find a leader and unite behind him/her, you can also expect to hear a blizzard of obfuscation, finger pointing, blame shifting, lies, spin, equivocation, and outright BS from all the usual politicians.

I don't know a softer way to put this. When it comes to federal spending and revenue, left-wingers are shameless liars, or morons. The standard talking point from the left goes like this - the Bush tax cuts caused huge deficits, and are the major reason we have a $1.6 trillion deficit today.

In a word – Bull.

This is the easiest of all the phony talking points of the left to debunk. All you have to do is look at the government's actual spending and revenue numbers during the Bush years. It's right there in black and white for all to see. In fact, this phony talking point it SO easy to debunk that it is mystifying as to why the mainstream media hasn't set the record straight yet (okay, it's not THAT mystifying. As anyone paying attention knows, the mainstream media is in the pocket of the Democrats and not prone to airing inconvenient truths).

I'm going to compare year 2000 federal spending and revenue numbers to year 2007 spending and revenue numbers in order to eliminate the effects of the Great Recession from the equation. That's the only fair way to measure, because the recession has caused a serious drop in revenue to the government, something along the lines of $400-500 billion annually.

First, let's look at revenue.

In 2000, pre-Bush, the revenue of the federal government was $2.025 trillion dollars.

In 2007, after six years of Bush tax cuts, the revenue of the federal government was $2.568 trillion dollars.

This means that following the Bush tax cuts, the revenue to the federal government increased by $543 billion PER YEAR over six years, an increase of nearly 27%, much more than the rate of inflation. That's a big jump in revenue, yet the lefties want us to believe our deficit problem is due to a revenue shortage from the Bush tax cuts. Not hardly. Revenue went way up under Bush, prior to the recession.

Now, let's look at spending.

In 2000, pre-Bush, the federal government spent $1.789 trillion.

In 2007, the federal government spent $2.729 trillion.

In six short years, the federal government was spending a trillion dollars more every year than it was previously. That's a spending increase of over 52%. A huge jump. Way, way, way, way, way more than can be accounted for by inflation.

Yet the lefties would have us believe the Bush tax cuts is the problem. We should all be laughing at the stupidity of such a silly and easily refutable talking point.

The worse news is, the government's spend-a-palooza only just began under Bush. Following 2007, things got even crazier on the spending side. The federal budget for 2011 is expected to be over $3.8 trillion. That means we've added ANOTHER trillion per year in spending over the last four years, with most of that being done under President Obama. In a single decade, federal spending has gone up by $2 trillion PER YEAR. In light of this, anybody who thinks taxes are the problem should be checked for Alzheimers or something. A drug test would also be in order.

Yet liberals would have us believe the problem is revenue (taxes). In a normal world, those liberals would be laughed right out of the country. We'd be comparing their intellects unfavorably to Homer Simpson. But this is not a normal world. This is the world of politics, where some folks can be convinced that the ludicrous is reasonable. I call those folks liberals, for lack of a better word. I'd rather call them idiots, but, you know, I don't want to be overly cruel. Idiots are people too.

The inescapable truth is, FEDERAL SPENDING IS THE REASON WE HAVE A $1.6 TRILLION DEFICIT, along with the recession. There are no other reasons. It's the spending side that went way out of kilter, not revenue. My blogger pal the Reverend likes to repeat the intentionally misleading lefty talking point that federal revenue is at a 60-year low. He declines to mention that is due to the Great Recession, not the Bush tax rates. I've just shown that revenue increased following the Bush tax cuts.

Here's another interesting fact regarding revenue and taxation. Our left-feathered fiends keep harkening back to those good old days when the top tax rates were in the 70-90% range. Don't ask me what is good about confiscatory tax rates that high. I can't tell you. Sounds pretty horrid to me, but I believe in freedom and equality, unlike liberals.

Anyway, the following graph shows the percentage of tax revenue compared to the top marginal tax rates over time:

Notice that tax revenue remains relatively constant compared to GDP, regardless of the top marginal tax rates. This puts the lie to the left's "soak the rich" talking point. It doesn't work. When marginal tax rates were much higher than they are now, federal revenue still checked in at about 19% of GDP. In order for a tax increase to be effective, it can't only apply to the top 2%, as the liberals desire. Rich people can easily change their behavior in response to tax rate increases. The only way a tax increase can effectively raise more revenue is if it is broad-based, applying to most, if not all of the citizenry. Liberals miss the boat here too, by constantly arguing for increasing taxes only on the wealthy, arguing against taxing anyone else. As I said, that will not work. History instructs us.

The most effective way to raise federal revenue is not via minor tax rate manipulations anyway, even though you'd think it was if you listen to the endless left-right arguments over Clinton-era tax rates versus Bush-era tax rates. The most effective way to raise federal revenue is via something known as job creation. Implementing policies promoting job creation are the best thing we can do. What would be very bad is to implement huge tax increases now. That would be like throwing an overhand right into the face of an already staggering economy. That's only desireable if we're looking to score a knockout. I'd rather opt for economic revival.

We'll find out on wednesday what President Obama thinks. He's going to present his deficit reduction plan, because he wants to continue the illusion that he's leading this country. Obama's leadership style is this – he stands on the station platform until he sees which way the train is heading, then he runs after it, jumps on the train, and pretends to be the engineer.

Speaking of deficit reduction plans, the Congressional progressive caucus has released a sort of a plan, finally, though it's really more of an outline. I'm sure it took them almost an entire day to come up with it. I think we should call it the Tax The Hell Out Of Everything Plan, because it aims to drive federal revenue up to 22.3% of GDP, far above the 18-19% historical average. If that 3-4% difference sounds small, it isn't. Federal taxation has never reached 22.3% of GDP in all of American history, with the exception of WWII. In other words, the "progressives" want to "progress" us to the highest tax burden in American history. But they do it because they love us, or something. Thanks progressives, but please STOP loving me so much, before your love leaves me penniless.

If we can't call the progressive plan the Tax The Hell Out Of Everything Plan, maybe we could call it the Let's Destroy The Rest Of Our Jobs Plan. Either one works for me.

We're over six months into FY2011 (the government's fiscal year runs from October 1-September 30), and Congress has still not passed a budget for FY2011. There will be a government shutdown at midnight unless Congress can pass a budget or another temporary continuing resolution (CR) today.

First, I must say…Heckuva job, Congress. Thanks for NOT doing the job we elected you to do. Thanks for proving to me once again how well-founded is my skepticism of the government, as if the $14 trillion federal debt and the $1.6 trillion deficit wasn't proof enough already. If I find any solace from a government shutdown, it will come from the fact that members of Congress won't get their paychecks (at least I hope they won't).

The last action I heard about was the CR that passed the GOP-led House yesterday. It contained $12 billion in spending cuts, would fund the Department Of Defense for the rest of the year, and fund the rest of the government for another week. President Obama said he would veto it if it reached his desk. Democrats voted against it, saying they wanted the one-week CR to maintain spending at current levels. So much for all the Democrat calls for compromise I heard on the airwaves yesterday, but even if the CR did pass, the budget issue would not be resolved. The standoff continues.

If you want to know how things deteriorated to this level, I can answer that in one word – politics (which is another reason I distrust the government). Our politicians care more about their parties than they do our country. This goes for both parties, but I have particular animus toward the Democrats in this regard. Remember, the Dems had total control of Congress and the Presidency until January. They could have done their job and passed the FY2011 budget any time they wanted to, but they didn't. Why not ? Because they knew if they passed the big spending budget they wanted to pass, it would lessen their chances in last fall's elections. As Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY) said on Fox News last night, the Dems didn't pass a budget because it was "a political hot potato". In other words, the Democrats put the well-being of their party above the well-being of the country. But their self-serving political stunt didn't work. Republicans made big gains in Congress and took control of the House. Now, Congress is locked in an ideological battle of wills. The Dems could have easily avoided the current shutdown scenario, which makes me wonder if what's going on now wasn't the Democrats backup plan all along. Democrats knew spending had to be cut, but they want the Republicans to take the heat for it, because particular spending cuts, especially to domestic programs, aren't popular, even when they are necessary.

On the core issue of spending cuts, I agree with the Republicans a lot more than I do the Democrats. Obama's ten-year budget proposal that increased federal spending by $9 trillion, increased taxes by $2 trillion (it reversed the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, among other tax increases), and increased the federal debt by $13 trillion over the next decade was an epic failure of leadership, a complete joke. Obama looked at the biggest long-term problem we face as a country, and then he punted the ball. He abdicated all responsibility. I can't begin to take him seriously since then. I no longer care what he has to say on economic matters. I just want him out. I will vote for a ham sandwich over Obama for President in 2012. He's not a leader. He's a coward, or worse (you can fill in your own Obama motivation here).

Spending must be cut. That is undeniable. Anyone with a shred of honesty has to admit that much. We are living in a fictitious economy fueled by debt. The federal government is borrowing 40 cents out of every dollar it spends. It is beyond obvious that it isn't sustainable. We're on a high-speed rail to financial destruction, yet we can't get Congress to agree on $61 billion in spending cuts, which represents less than a 2% cut from a $3.8 trillion federal budget. Hard to believe.

That being said, I do have some problems with the GOP's cuts. They all focus on domestic spending, which certainly must be cut, but of the GOP proposals I've seen, NONE of them cut the Defense budget. This is outrageous. While I certainly support funding the troops in the field, as we must do, there is much to be cut in the area of Defense. We have nearly 500 military bases in about 100 countries around the world. There's no reason for this. WWII is long over. The Cold War is over. It's time for us to stop being the policeman of the world. We can't afford it any longer. When Republicans cite the Constitution as it's justification for the federal government to "provide for the common defense", they are correct. However, the framers meant that the federal government should defend THIS country, not South Korea, Japan, Europe, etc., etc. Our first President, George Washington, warned against "foreign entanglements". Later, President Eisenhower warned against the "military industrial complex". Today's Republicans and Democrats should take note of our fiscal situation and make some major Defense adjustments. I'm all for defending this country, and when we were attacked on 9/11 it was appropriate for us to go after the terrorists and their state-sponsored supporters in Afghanistan, but enough is enough. The Deparment Of Defense needs to be cut like everything else. It will take an all hands approach to correct the course of our ship of state.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said the GOP's budget policy riders are interfering with a budgetary agreement between the two parties. Reid said Republicans were “focusing on ideological matters that have nothing to do with funding the government". Said policy riders include defunding ObamaCare, defunding Planned Parenthood, and weakening the EPA's ability to regulate carbon emissions. I don't know what world Reid lives in, but in my world, DEFUNDING ObamaCare and Planned Parenthood have everything to do with funding the government. Ideology is certainly involved, just as ideology was involved with funding these programs in the first place, but, I repeat, WE ARE $14 TRILLION IN DEBT AND HAVE A $1.6 TRILLION DEFICIT. Everything should be on the table. We have to reinvent our idea of what government can and should do for us. If we don't, we face a certain finanial meltdown. Thems the facts.

In closing, I hear Democrats and liberals across the land moaning and crying over the Republican spending cuts, such as Rep. Paul Ryan's plan to cut $6 trillion in spending over a decade (which actually doesn't go far enough fast enough), but I ask you this…has anyone heard a plan from the Democrats in Congress or the Executive branch to fix our debt/deficit problem ??? Anyone ??? I haven't, and the last I heard, Democrats were also supposed to be our governmental leaders. Rather than leading, it seems they've chosen to bury their heads in the sand and throw dirt at Republicans to gain a partisan advantage. I'm not sure how I'm supposed to admire such behavior, which is why I don't. Put up or shut up, Democrats. I've heard enough of what the Democrats are against. They should man up and present their own plan to right our fiscal ship, before we collectively sink into the sea. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country.

As for anyone's particular political beliefs, they should be secondary right now. Everyone is going to have to accept some spending cut they don't like. Yes, it would be fan-frigging-tastic if we could give every citizen in the country everything their little heart desires for free, but that ain't realistic. In fact, that gimme attitude is a large part of the problem.

"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion.
The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is
wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts
they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions,
it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. …
And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not
warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of
resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as
to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost
in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from
time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
It is its natural manure." – Thomas Jefferson

Yesterday, I mentioned how the more power we cede to the government, the more corrupt that government becomes.

Today, I have a prime example of it with one of the latest government power grabs, known colloquially as ObamaCare. Contained in ObamaCare is a $5 billion slush fund (thanks, taxpayers !) known as the Early Retirement Reissuance Program (EERP), which is supposed to help companies pay the costs of health care for their early retirees. The Obama administration has already spent $1.7 billion of the money, and the recipients read like a list of Obama's biggest supporters and top campaign donors, with labor unions and deep-pocketed favored companies like General Electric and General Motors getting the money. The money isn't going to companies with a financial need, it's going to cronies. In other words, it's another giant taxpayer ripoff, coming to you courtesy of the Democrats. Six of the top ten recipients were labor unions.

Recipients of ERRP funding include the United Auto Workers union, which secured $206,798,086 in taxpayer money, AT&T, which took in $140,022,949, and General Electric (GE), which raked in $36,607,818. GE has made headlines recently for not paying any U.S. taxes last year. IBM got $12,989,690 in taxpayer money.

Verizon pulled $91,702,538 in taxpayer cash, too, and General Motors received $19,002,669. More than $6 million went to different Teamsters groups nationwide, and millions more went to the United Mine Workers, United Food and Commercial Workers, the AFL-CIO and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME).

Let's look a little closer at some of these ObamaCare ERRP recipients.

The most money, nearly $207 million, went to the United Auto Workers, who already got a $3.4 billion sweetheart deal from Obama's General Motors bailout. GM itself, which was previously bailed out by the taxpayers to the tune of $50 billion, just got $19 million more from the taxpayers via ERRP. GM recently announced a 2010 profit of $4.7 billion, but somehow they still needed the taxpayers to cover that $19 million for ERRP. Thanks, Obama. In related news, the sales of Obama's favorite car, the GM Chevy Volt, stink (what a shocker), and GM is looking for yet another government handout to assist with that in addition to the government handout they already got for the Volt, a $7,500 tax credit per vehicle.

That struggling small business startup company known as AT&T was the second biggest ERRP recipient, raking in a little over $140 million for it's $15.4 million in lobbying efforts in 2010. I'm sure AT&T needed that money from the taxpayers, seeing as how AT&T only made a little over $19.8 billion in net profits in 2010, and only around $55.5 billion over the last four years. You may not know it, but AT&T is the biggest political campaign donor since 1990. They work hard for their taxpayer cash.

President Obama's buddies at General Electric got over $36 million in ERRP funding from the taxpayers. As I mentioned yesterday, GE made $14 billion in profit in 2010 and paid no income taxes on that money. GE was a top Obama campaign donor during the 2008 election, coughing up nearly $500 million in campaign cash for our ethical President with the change you can believe in. Clearly, that was money well spent by GE. You may remember that the government (that's the taxpayers again) guaranteed $340 billion of the debt of GE's financial services arm a couple years ago.

Verizon was the third largest ERRP recipient, getting a little over $91 million in taxpayer cash. Verizon spent $16.75 million lobbying our politicians in Washington D.C. in 2010. Verizon clearly needed it's $91 million in taxpayer ERRP cash, because Verizon's $106.6 billion in 2010 revenues only generated net cash just north of $33 billion.

See how this works ? Government takes over a segment of our society, in this case health care, and then government gives preferential treatment to it's friends at taxpayer expense. That's how it's supposed to work, right ? The government is supposed to be for sale to the highest bidder, right ? Isn't that how every banana republic operates ? The government is supposed to treat the taxpayers like it's personal ATM, and hand out taxpayer cash like candy to it's rich cronies, right ? And we're supposed to bend over and take it up the tailpipe every time we turn around, right ? We're even supposed to listen to one political party tell us that the resultant $14 trillion in debt and $1.6 trillion in annual deficit is no big deal, as they keep right on bending us over and extracting more cash from us and our children, because it will help the bottom line of Obama's jobs advisor Jeff Immelt, who heads up GE.

No, I don't think so. This is so sick and twisted, and it has to stop, by any…means…necessary. The government's corruption is right out in the open for all to see. Thomas Jefferson is starting to make a whole lot of sense to me right now.

Oh, and guess what else. That $5 billion slush fund that Obama and company are handing out like candy to their rich friends was supposed to last until 2014, but at the current rate of expenditures, it will run out in 2012. Then the Obamas will no doubt come back for more. Bend over, America ! Here it comes again ! Feel the CHANGE !!! That didn't hurt too awful much, did it ? Quit cryin', ya baby ! Who's your daddy now ??? Let me hear you say it…O-bam-a, O-bam-a, O-bam-a….

The New York Times recently noted that General Electric (GE), the largest corporation in America and second largest in the world, according to Forbes, made a boatload of tax-free money in 2010:

[GE] reported worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, and said $5.1 billion of the total came from its operations in the United States.

Its American tax bill? None. In fact, G.E. claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion.

No taxes on over $5 billion in profits ? How can this be ? Here's how:

…low taxes are nothing new for G.E. The company has been cutting the percentage of its American profits paid to the Internal Revenue Service for years, resulting in a far lower rate than at most multinational companies.

Its extraordinary success is based on an aggressive strategy that mixes fierce lobbying for tax breaks and innovative accounting that enables it to concentrate its profits offshore. G.E.’s giant tax department, led by a bow-tied former Treasury official named John Samuels, is often referred to as the world’s best tax law firm. Indeed, the company’s slogan “Imagination at Work” fits this department well. The team includes former officials not just from the Treasury, but also from the I.R.S. and virtually all the tax-writing committees in Congress.

GE tries to minimize it's tax burden. So does almost everyone else, including all you who are reading this. Almost nobody tries to pay more taxes than they absolutely must, not even the rabid left-wingers and socialists who constantly call for tax increases. They also pay as little as they can. Paying more goes against one's own self-interest, so people won't do it.

As readers of this blog know, I advocate lowering (or eliminating) America's 35% corporate tax rate due to it's counterproductive economic effects. That 35% rate will soon be the highest corporate tax rate of any country in the world, after Japan implements plans to lower it's rates. Our tax rates put us at a competitive disadvantage in the global marketplace. The fact that GE engages in elaborate accounting maneuvers to "concentrate it's profits offshore" proves the point. Maybe some of you still tend to think of GE as the American company that makes appliances, but the appliance manufacturing business is but a small part of GE today. GE is a worldwide multinational conglomerate that employs 287,000 people and makes about half it's profits from financial services. One of GE's subsidiaries is NBC, meaning that all those corporate-bashing, left-wing talking heads over at MSNBC are being paid by the largest corporation in the country. To put it another way, those pseudo-lefties are all happily working for The Man. To me, that is some funny stuff. 'Watch the Che Guevara Show at 9pm Eastern, sponsored by Exxon and Fukushima'. Truth really is stranger than fictiion. Btw, several reactors at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan were designed by…General Electric.

'…welcome to MSNBC. And now back to Rachel Maddow for a report on how evil soulless corporations are destroying the environment, after which Rachel will go to the bank to deposit her big fat paycheck from an evil soulless corporation that is destroying the environment'. Ka-ching.

But I digress. Getting back to corporate tax rates, it's clear that GE's taxes aren't that high (less than zero is really low. I have never advocated negative taxes, aka subsidies), in spite of our high corporate tax rates, but that's because GE jumps through all kinds of hoops to avoid paying them. GE moves it's profits offshore and hires an army of former government bureaucrats who know the ins and outs of our ridiculous tax code to figure out ways around it. For GE, the costs associated with all these business moves are less than the gain.

I want to point out here that GE has about as much in common with the millions of corporate tax filers in America as I do with, well, GE. Literally. Some years ago I ran a corporation that was in reality a small company consisting of myself and my wife. I was the CEO of that company, but President Clinton never appointed me as his financial advisor on jobs, as Obama did with GE's Jeff Immelt. That was clearly Clinton's loss. I don't hold it against him. I was probably snubbed because I didn't go to Harvard, or as I like to call it, Golden Ticket University. That was probably the reason, though I can't be certain I just want to show that there can be light years of difference between one corporation and another, but they are all pretty much subject to the same tax rates, whether it be my little company or GE. In fact, my little company paid a higher effective corporate tax rate than GE is paying now, and needless to say, I wasn't making billions in profit. Damn, I wish I HAD gone to Golden Ticket University. Just look what it did for that skinny black druggie kid from Hawaii. Oh, well. C'est la vie.

Anyway, when I advocate for lower business taxes, I'm not really thinking of corporate behemouth's like GE, though the same principle does apply to them. I'm thinking of the millions of small business entrepreneurs struggling to build good lives for themselves and their families, entrepreneurs who provide jobs for people so other Americans can also have good lives. Business is where America's wealth comes from, and I'm sick of seeing government bureaucrats throwing up unnecessary financial roadblocks to success.

This leads me to another observation. When the New York Times says GE doesn't pay taxes, that is actually not true, because those 287,000 people employed by GE all pay taxes individually, and GE pays their wages. Therefore, all the taxes paid by those 287,000 are in reality coming directly from GE. In addition, all the dividends and capital gains reaped by GE's shareholders are also taxed. And I can't even begin to estimate all the taxes paid by the ancillary jobs GE creates. When a repairman comes to your house to fix your GE refrigerator, GE made his job possible too, just like IBM and Microsoft made my computer jobs possible. I repeat, business is where our wealth comes from. Not from the government. This is a first principle.

What the government does wield is power, which is why we have an absurd 67,000 page IRS tax code filled with loopholes, credits, and more convoluted bs than you could ever imagine. That's why GE hires an army of people to file it's 24,000 page tax return, and that's why GE also hires an army of lobbyists to gain tax advantage on Capitol Hill:

The [tax] shelters are so crucial to G.E.’s bottom line that when Congress threatened to let the most lucrative one expire in 2008, the company came out in full force. G.E. officials worked with dozens of financial companies to send letters to Congress and hired a bevy of outside lobbyists.

The head of its tax team, Mr. Samuels, met with Representative Charles B. Rangel, then chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, which would decide the fate of the tax break…That day, Mr. Rangel reversed his opposition to the tax break, according to other Democrats on the committee.

The following month, Mr. Rangel and Mr. Immelt stood together at St. Nicholas Park in Harlem as G.E. announced that its foundation had awarded $30 million to New York City schools, including $11 million to benefit various schools in Mr. Rangel’s district. Joel I. Klein, then the schools chancellor, and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who presided, said it was the largest gift ever to the city’s schools.

That is how the game is played in power circles. And liberals wonder why I advocate for limited government. This is why. The more power we cede to the government, the more corrupt it will be. We've already given it too much power. The more power we give the government over us, the more graft, bribery, extortion, etc. will exist to push the government to grant favors, as it did with GE. Big government types complain about the influence of lobbyists and special interests, but at the same time they advocate the very expansion of government control that creates and magnifies that influence. If there was nothing to be gained from the federal government, we wouldn't have armies of lobbyists descending on Washington D.C. If we dismantled our ridiculous 67,000 page tax code filled with special favors and replaced it with something simple and equitable, everybody could save a lot of time and money.

And if we had the lowest business tax rates in the world rather than the highest (NO business taxes ideally), then companies like GE wouldn't move so much money offshore. They'd be more inclined to keep it here, where we want it. And other businesses would be more inclined to move money and jobs here, where we want them. It would enable our own small businesses to pay better wages and/or hire more people, and those hired people will all pay taxes to the government. This is not rocket science, and it isn't based on political ideology. It's just common sense.

Lowering business tax rates isn't the total answer, of course. It's just part of the solution. While GE's outrageous negative tax situation is nowhere near typical of corporate taxes, it does raise other issues. GE has been moving jobs and revenue offshore to avoid taxes and for other reasons (to avoid unions ?), but there is a lot more to that discussion. Taxes isn't the end-all be-all. I wish I could tell you how many of GE's 287,000 employees work in the United States, but I don't have that information. Multinational companies like GE can move jobs offshore for reasons other than taxes, there is no doubting that. We all know it's cheaper to produce goods in India or China than it is here, but to me, that is only MORE reason for us to have lower corporate taxes. How many strikes do we want against us in the business world ? We can't compete by saying 'hey businesses, come to America where you will have to pay American workers higher wages, and then if you can still manage to make a profit, we'll tax the crap out of you, unless you bribe the government for special treatment, of course'. How attractive is that ? Let's get smart for a change, and at least make the tax aspect more attractive. Maybe we should adjust our trade policies as well to favor American job creation, though I admit I'm no expert on trade policy. I'm always conflicted over the free trade vs. protectionism argument. I do know the United States is a HUGE market, and will be for a few more years yet before the government bankrupts all of us with debt. All companies want to be in our market, so we have some cards we can play, if our politicians are smart enough to play them (and I apologize for using the words 'politicians' and 'smart' in the same sentence).

Maybe President Obama can bring his many years of international business, trade, and foreign policy experience to bear on the situation…………. Gotcha ! Thought I'd close with a joke.

Before we get around to fixing Ohio, we have to identify Ohio's problems.

1) Ohio has an $8 billion budget shortfall.

Here's how the Cleveland Plain Dealer described the problem last March:

COLUMBUS, Ohio — The state of Ohio is steering straight toward a cliff. At the bottom of that cliff is a hole nearly $8 billion deep.

Ohio leaders have less than a year to throw on the brakes and change course before it's time to draft another two-year state budget. And they will have to do it without federal stimulus dollars and other state nest eggs worth almost $8 billion that were used to prop up the current budget.

Ohio took $4 billion in federal stimulus dollars in 2009 to close the budget gap. Obviously, those stimulus dollars were not an actual solution to Ohio's economic problems. They were just a crutch to prop up Ohio temporarily in the hope that Ohio's economic ship would self-correct. Unfortunately, even though those stimulus dollars are gone, the economic problems remain (along with the stimulus debt we still have to pay for).

2) Ohio is losing jobs.

One of the main reasons for Ohio's $8 billion budget deficit is the fact that Ohio has been losing jobs, causing state tax revenue to fall. Here's another excerpt from last March's Plain Dealer article:

Weak economy hits Ohio hard: The national economic downturn has rocked Ohio especially hard, leaving the state in economic tatters with an unemployment rate now hovering at nearly 11 percent — a level not seen since September 1983.

The more than 640,000 Ohioans out of work have punched a massive hole in the state budget, with state income tax collections — which provide about one-third of the revenue for the state's general-revenue fund — having dropped by 18 percent over the last two years.

A year later, and Ohio's unemployment rate is still 9.2%, higher than the national average. Ohio's unemployment rate now is still higher than it was in January 2009.

Beyond the job losses from the recession, Ohio has lost nearly 600,000 jobs over the last decade, making it the 3rd worst state in the nation for job losses. Only Michigan and California were worse. The state with the best job creation record over the last decade was Texas, followed by Arizona.

3) State spending and taxation.

Even though Ohio has been hemorrhaging jobs, state spending has continued to climb. The state of Ohio spent $68.4 billion in 2000. That soared to $106 billion in 2010. This happened at the same time as Ohio's tax revenue base was shrinking from the job losses. And as anyone from Ohio knows, Ohio didn't just start losing jobs recently. Ohio manufacturing jobs have been disappearing for about 35 years. Our tax base has been dwindling for a long time, and as a result, we've seen tax increase after tax increase to keep up with state spending. According to the Tax Foundation, Ohio has gone from one of the nation's best tax climates to one of the worst over the last 30 years, as you can see in this chart:

In the Tax Foundation's 2010 Index, Ohio ranked 47th in the nation—one of the worst business tax climates in the country. All of Ohio's neighbors rank better on this index.
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These are the problems facing Ohio. We have massive budget shortages going forward, job losses, increasing state government spending, and dwindling tax revenues, along with some of the highest state tax rates in the entire country.

What should we do ???

We could increase taxes by $8 billion to cover the budget shortage, but how smart would that be when we already have high tax rates, job losses, and an unfriendly business climate ? Doesn't sound very smart to me at all. Sounds like that would only drive even more jobs away, leading us right back to the same place we are now, only worse. Raising taxes is what we've BEEN doing. As we should all be able to see, THAT HASN'T WORKED. Maybe some people haven't noticed, but Ohio doesn't have the best weather in the country. Having Ohio known as the "shitty weather, high tax" state isn't exactly going to induce people to come here. We NEED taxes to be low in this state, or business can just relocate somewhere else. It's that simple.

We want to attract jobs to Ohio, don't we ? Of course we do. We don't want to drive them away, unless we're suicidal. I hear people say Governor Kasich's SB5 legislation will kill the middle class. To those people, I say, are you freaking kidding me ? We've BEEN killing the middle class for years by losing all our jobs. Kasich is actually trying to get jobs back to this state. However, in the meantime, he has to do something about that $8 billion budget hole. Sorry, but he can't call the magical budget fairy and make that shortage disappear. Cuts have to be made at the same time that we start making Ohio a place businesses will actually want to come to. We are lagging way behind, due to the terrible leadership we've had in the past (both parties). Kasich is trying to change that, but he's taking a beating in the polls for it. Maybe Ohio IS suicidal.

“Ohio needs to be made competitive again,” Kasich said at a downtown ceremony. “Ohio has been and still remains under siege. So you need to look at Senate Bill 5 and all these other reforms … as an opportunity to set the stage to create a platform for job creation, for entrepreneurship.”

By reducing Ohio’s state and local government expenses, Kasich argued, Senate Bill 5 could make the state more attractive to businesses and economic development investors, “so that we don’t have …everybody moving across the bridge to the other side of the river.”

Whether you agree with Kasich's specific budget cuts or not (the unions don't agree, the Democrats don't agree), cuts do have to be made, and the only areas where meaningful state budget cuts can be made are in pensions, health care, education, or welfare. Those are just the facts. Those areas represent the majority of the state budget.

Liberal groups, as usual, are framing everything in terms of class warfare, saying Kasich is catering to the rich at the expense of the middle class. I say, such rhetoric is not helpful and is in fact extremely counterproductive. There is no warfare. This is as close to a classless society as you will find. There are just varying levels of individual success (and who would want it any other way ? It's called 'opportunity'). Our businesses must be profitable in order to employ workers. That's how it works. That's how the middle class is created in this country and in our state, through the successes of our businesses. It will always be so. All government revenue comes from successful businesses in this country. We must do everything we can to insure they remain successful so they can pay decent salaries to our workers…unless you prefer buying everything from China as you work at your minimum wage job.

You want to fix Ohio ? Here's the only way – attract new businesses to Ohio by making Ohio an attractive place to do business. That means low business and corporate taxes, even if the word 'corporate' does induce a howling Pavlovian response of outrage from mind-controlled liberal robots. Ignore their drooling, because new business means new jobs, which will renew the middle class and increase revenue to the state for government services. THAT is how we pay our teachers, police, and firefighters better, not by taxing the hell out of an increasingly strapped citizenry in a lousy economy. The liberal class warfare rhetoric is for losers. Prosperity is JOB ONE. Somebody should tell the unions that we are ALL struggling now. It's not just them. They should be happy they have decent jobs. A lot of us DON'T. When we return to prosperity, that's when they will too. We're all in this together.

Our great leaders address the pressing problems of their times. That's what George Washington did. So did Abraham Lincoln, FDR, Truman, JFK, and Reagan. Taking on their responsibilities is what made these leaders great.

The most pressing problem of our time is DEBT. Some would say it's jobs, but that's only in the short term. It's the debt crisis that will ultimately sink our ship of state if we do not address it. It is the job of our leader, our President, to confront this crisis of our time.

Yesterday, Barack Obama proved he is not a great leader. Instead, the President released his new 10-year budget and proved he is no leader at all. It almost makes me sick to report this. National Review has the lowlights from Obama's budget request:

$3.73 trillion — total spending this year (25 percent of GDP, highest levels since World War Two).

$46 trillion — total spending over the next decade.

$8.7 trillion — total new spending over the same period.

$26.3 trillion — Total new debt, including entitlement obligations, predicted by 2021. [Note from King - This doesn't mean the federal debt would increase by this amount, because we don't include future entitlement obligations in our debt numbers]

$7.2 trillion — Total deficit predicted by the end of the decade.

$1.1 trillion — How much the White House estimates the proposal will reduce the deficit over the next ten years.

$4 trillion — How much the president’s deficit commission recommended reducing the deficit over the next ten years to avoid financial catastrophe.

$1.6 trillion — The projected annual deficit for 2011 (11 percent of GDP), up from $1.3 trillion in 2010.

$2 trillion — Amount the budget will raise taxes on business and upper-income families over the next ten years, which includes letting the Bush-era tax rates expire in 2012 (for incomes $250,000 and up).

$50 billion — Amount the administration plans to spend this year on infrastructure and transportation “investments.”

$30 billion — Amount dedicated to a “National Infrastructure Bank to invest in projects of regional or national significance to the economy,” including the much-touted high-speed rail initiative.

$77.4 billion — Funding allocated for the Department of Education, a 22 percent increase from 2010 levels, and a 35 percent increase from 2008 levels.

$29.5 billion — Total spending on the Department of Energy, a 22 percent increase from 2008 levels.

$9.9 billion — Funding allocated for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), a 30 percent increase from 2008 levels.

$150 billion — Total amount the White House plans to spend next year on research and development programs.

8.2 percent — Predicted unemployment rate in 2012.

Zero — Political risk the president was willing to assume by proposing meaningful reform to entitlement programs. That said, Republicans haven’t exactly been willing to stick their necks out either, at least not yet.

Jake Tapper of ABC News summed it up best when he said, "At no point in the president’s 10-year projection would the U.S. government spend less than it’s taking in.” The LOWEST deficit projection over Obama's 10-year budget is $607 billion. Obama's LOWEST deficit projection is higher than any in the history of the country prior to 2009 when Obama took office.

Even Andrew Sullivan of the Atlantic, an Obama fan, had something intelligent to say on the subject – "To all those under 30 who worked so hard to get this man elected, know this: he just screwed you over. He thinks you're fools. Either the US will go into default because of Obama's cowardice, or you will be paying far far more for far far less because this president has no courage when it counts. He let you down. On the critical issue of America's fiscal crisis, he represents no hope and no change. Just the same old Washington politics he once promised to end".

Exactly. The swarms of young people who flocked to the polls to elect Barack Obama in 2008 were in effect signing their own economic death warrants.

After this abdication of responsibility by Obama, 2012 can't get here fast enough for me. I wrote recently that the new "centrist" Obama sounded good, but we'd find out from his actions whether he had really changed, or whether it was just words, political doubletalk. Now we know it was just words, and nothing more.

Here's a newsflash for liberals – Obama's 10-year budget includes allowing the Bush tax cuts for those making over $250,000 to expire in 2012. It didn't make much difference, did it liberals ? We're still headed into debt hell with or without those tax cuts. I hate to say I told you so, but…I told you so.

After failing miserably to address our biggest economic problem, President Obama had the audacity of non-hope to say his budget represents "tough choices and sacrifices". Surreal.

Speaking of surreal, listen to how the Associated Press begins to describe Obama's budgets:

WASHINGTON – Putting on the brakes after two years of big spending increases, President Barack Obama unveiled a $3.7 trillion budget plan Monday that would freeze or reduce some safety-net programs for the nation's poor but turn aside Republican demands for more drastic cuts to shrink the government to where it was before he took office.

This is why the American public is so misinformed. The AP characterizes it as "putting on the brakes after two years of big spending increases" when Obama just proposed INCREASING federal spending by nearly $200 billion this year over 2010 levels. That doesn't put the brakes on anything. It presses the gas pedal.

The bottom line is – Obama's 10-year budget plan would add $13 trillion in debt over the next decade, and that's the rosy scenario, because Obama's plan assumes complete economic recovery. Obama's "rosy" scenario would have our national debt at about $27 trillion in ten years. Does anyone remember Obama's first 10-year budget plan ? That one added $9 trillion to the debt over ten years. Now, it's up to $13 trillion. Maybe the AP can tell me again how that equates to "putting on the brakes", because my calculator is telling me just the opposite.

Think about this – Obama has already added about $4 trillion to the debt in a little over two years. If he could serve for 10 more years, by his own projections he'd add about $17 trillion to the debt in twelve years. Here's the kicker. THE ENTIRE ACCUMULATED DEBT IN THE HISTORY OF THE COUNTRY WAS ABOUT $10 TRILLION BEFORE OBAMA BECAME PRESIDENT. Democrats were rightly upset that the country ran up $5 trillion in debt under the alleged conservative Bush, but now Obama makes Bush look like the model of fiscal responsibility by comparison. That is no easy feat, but Obama has embraced enough fiscal insanity to accomplish this in only TWO YEARS.

Time for a new President, America. This one isn't a leader. He's just a politician, and not even a wise one. He's ruining the country at breakneck speed. The Tea Party movement is right.

The Congresssional Budget Office projects the 2011 federal deficit will be $1.5 trillion. Funny how this came out the day AFTER the State Of The Union address. Purely coincidental, I'm sure.

The Washington Post knows where to place the blame:

The still-fragile economy and fresh tax cuts approved by Congress last month will drive the federal deficit to nearly $1.5 trillion this year, the biggest budget gap in U.S. history, congressional budget analysts said Wednesday.

The economy has certainly played a part in reducing revenue to the government (by about $400 billion per year), but the only "fresh tax cut" Congress enacted last month was President Obama's temporary payroll tax holiday, estimated at $112 billion. All the other "fresh tax cuts" the Post is referring to weren't tax cuts at all, they were simply extensions of current tax rates that have been in place for years. There was also a tax increase in the recent tax deal. The estate tax will go from 0% to 35%.

But what infuriates me about our media is this – they almost never identify the REAL source of our trillion+ dollar deficits. The real source of our record deficits is – government spending. It's so obvious that it takes an entire liberal media to obfuscate the fact.

Allow me to explain as simply as I can.

In FY2007, the federal government spent $2.729 trillion. We had a deficit of $160 billion that year. This was after the Bush tax cuts had been in place for years and we were fighting two wars.

In FY2010, the federal government spent $3.456 trillion (down from Obama's requested FY2010 budget of $3.720 trillion). The deficit was $1.29 trillion.

What this reveals is – as federal spending increased by $730 billion per year between 2007 and 2010 (during a non-inflationary time), the deficit increased by roughly $1.1 trillion per year during the same time period. Spending increases, not tax cuts, accounted for the overwhelming majority of the deficit (over 70% of it). The rest ($400 billion) was due to falling recession revenues. I suppose we could have enacted massive tax hikes during the Great Recession to cover the difference, but that would have done much harm to the American people and the economic recovery effort, as most everyone except economically-challenged left-wingers agrees.

Thanks to the historic failure of the outgoing Democrat-led Congress to do it's job and pass a budget for FY2011, we don't have a budget. We're operating on a series of short term spending authorizations. President Obama did release a FY2011 Budget Request back in February 2010, but he has spent a lot more money since that time, so why bother even mentioning it ? What we know is that we face a $1.5 trillion deficit this year.

Keep that $1.5 trillion deficit figure in mind as you listen to this from the previously linked Washington Post article:

Lawmakers scrambled Wednesday to respond to the darkening budget picture, with Republicans pressing their call for sharp and immediate cuts in domestic spending. Twenty-one Senate Republicans, meanwhile, unveiled a plan to amend the U.S. Constitution to require balanced budgets, a top priority of the tea party movement.

Democrats resisted both initiatives, arguing that amending the Constitution, a lengthy process that requires a vote in all 50 state legislatures, would do little to address the current problem. They dismissed as "drastic" a proposal by House Republicans to slash $100 billion from the current budget, arguing that cuts of that magnitude would endanger a million jobs on public- and private-sector payrolls at a time when the unemployment rate already stands at 9.4 percent.

Un-freaking-believable. Democrats think a $100 billion cut in spending, following the aforementioned $730 billion annual increase in spending over the last few years, is "drastic". This is after federal spending literally DOUBLED over the last decade, going from $1.789 trillion in 2000 to twice that much now. That spending explosion is why we have trillion dollar deficits. That's why we have a $14 trillion national debt. There is NO OTHER REASON, and it's about time we face up to it, even if Democrats would rather not.

According to a recent Gallup poll, even the majority of Americans don't want to face the truth. They are against most spending cuts:

Americans don't want many spending cuts, but if you ask Americans if they want their taxes raised, they also say no, they don't want that either. Americans want government services, they just don't want to pay for them.

I call this Adventures In Denial. It can't last much longer. We're going broke because of it.

"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have…The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases." – Thomas Jefferson

When President Obama agreed to extend the Bush tax cuts by two years, left-wingers were very irate that taxes weren't going up (what kind of people want taxes to go UP, anyway ?). Sen. Bernie Sanders of the United Soviet Socialist Republic of Vermont spoke in opposition to the Bush tax cuts for eight and a half hours on the Senate floor. Here's the gist of the feelings of both Sanders and liberals in general:

Sen. SANDERS: The folks, the Democrats in the House, are putting up a fight. And I think what they are saying very loudly and clearly is what I believe – is that it is basically absurd to be giving huge tax breaks to the richest people in this country, including many millionaires and billionaires at the same time as we have a record-breaking deficit of $13.7 trillion national debt, at the same time as we are ignoring many enormous problems facing our country, including a crumbling infrastructure, an educational system which needs a lot of support, and the fact that we have the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major country on Earth.

According to Sen. Sanders, the problems with this country are…we aren't taxed enough, and the government isn't spending enough. Those are his alleged reasons why we have huge deficits and debt, along with crumbling infrastructure, a lousy educational system, high childhood poverty, etc. If only we could tax and spend more, as the liberals and socialists desire, we could surely solve these problems, correct ???

Well, it occurs to me that we HAVE taxed and spent quite extensively to solve these problems over the years. We have many programs in place to combat childhood poverty, and we spend more money on education than any other country in the world. Unlike Sanders, I believe government taxing and spending has become so profuse that it has actually become a large part of the problem. Let's look at some historical numbers to see who is correct, Sen. Sanders or myself:

First, let's look at taxation (government revenue). Sen. Sanders thinks taxes are too low. Here is a chart depicting overall government revenue compared to GDP (the entire economy) over the years:

As you can see, taxes are anything but low. They have gone up, up, up over the years, taking an ever larger bite out of every citizen's wages and driving up the prices of every product the citizens purchase. In 2007, prior to the revenue killing recession, taxes were consuming 37.2% of the entire American economy. If that isn't more than enough to fix our infrastructure, have a good educational system, and eliminate childhood poverty, then something is seriously amiss.

Sen. Sanders thinks government spending is too low, but the truth is, even though taxes have increased enormously over the years, they weren't enough to keep up with profligate government spending. To say the government has been spending like drunken sailors is an insult to drunken sailors. The next chart shows how overall government spending has skyrocketed:

In 2010, government spending is consuming an incredible 45.65% of our entire economy, yet the government STILL can't deal with infrastructure, education, and childhood poverty ? Give me a break already. The taxpayers are being played for fools. You will notice the two spikes in government spending in 1917 and 1941. Those were spending levels during WWI and WW2, respectively. We were dedicating our entire economies to fighting those world war efforts then. Now, we are approaching WWII spending levels even though there is no World War taking place. That is simply astounding to me.

You will notice a slight dip in government spending relative to GDP in the 1990's. That's when President Clinton and his Republican Congress worked together to slow the rate of increase in government spending. That led to some balanced budgets at the end of the 90's, and also gives us a strong clue as to how to fix our current problems. Hint – We do the OPPOSITE of what Sen. Sanders proposes. We cut spending.

It is readily apparent from these two charts that government revenue is not the problem. The taxpayers already contribute more than enough for the government to perform it's functions. Taxes have never been higher. The problem is government spending. No matter how much the taxpayers contribute to our government, it is NEVER enough, and the problems NEVER get solved. Sen. Sanders wants us to believe reversing the Bush tax cuts for the rich will attenuate the problem. With all due respect to Sanders, that is insane. We have a current deficit of $1.34 trillion for 2010. The Bush tax cuts for the rich would only address $70 billion of that each year over the next 10 years. That $70 billion is about 5% of the 2010 deficit. Reversing those Bush tax cuts won't accomplish much of anything. It's a drop in the bucket. $70 billion is less than the amount of new spending President Obama signed into law in the last week. Since Obama has been President, we have accumulated well over $3.5 trillion in new debt in less than two years, and federal spending has increased by about $800 billion per year over 2008 levels, yet we're supposed to believe $70 billion from the Bush tax cuts is the problem ? What an insult to the collective intelligence of the people. I don't know how politicians say these things with a straight face, much less how some people are gullible enough to believe them.

In spite of the highest overall tax rates ever, our government institutions are broke at every level. The federal government is nearly $13.9 trillion in debt. Our states are another $1.15 trillion in debt. Our local governments are another $1.695 trillion in debt. We have paid $3.29 trillion in interest on all this debt.

As depressing as this all is, the real truth is even worse. The only reason our economic picture looks as "bright" as it does is due to an accounting trick. Our government does it's accounting using the cash accounting method. If the government used an accrual method of accounting, the picture becomes a lot bleaker. The truth is, we have accumulated $2 trillion in new government liabilities in 2010 alone, according to new Treasury reports. In reality, our deficit is a whole lot more than the $1.34 trillion reported, because we have accruals in the form of unfunded liabilities and interest on the debt that should be included. Those are growing at between $1-2 trillion every year.

In summary, suggesting we tax more and spend more, as Sen. Sanders and liberals would have us do, is sheer economic lunacy. Those recommending such a course should be confined to mental institutions. Their recommendations equate to pouring water on a drowning man. Maybe we don't have the perfect socialist utopia Sen. Sanders envisions, but bankrupting the coutry is no solution, and bankruptcy is the path we're headed down. We currently have over $55 trillion in unfunded government liabilities in the future. That's what we've accrued. Next, we'll have ObamaCare spending and taxation kicking in to drive taxes and spending even higher. If we keep heading down this same path, eventually every single citizen in the United States will be destitute, as the government sucks an ever larger portion of everyone's wages away to pay for itself. As Jefferson said, a "government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take away everything you have." That is not only what may happen if we continue along this path, that is what WILL happen if the spendathon continues. That is what will have to happen. Nothing is free. Maybe that's what Sen. Sanders wants, but it sure as hell wasn't what Thomas Jefferson wanted, and it sure as hell isn't what I want. If I wanted to live in Cuba, I'd move there. There's a real good reason why nobody does that. There's a real good reason why everyone immigrates to America instead. It's called liberty (what's left of it), and Bernie Sanders doesn't know a damn thing about it.

P.S. – The economic facts presented here are not liberal, conservative, or centrist. The facts are not ideological. They are merely the facts.