Archive for January, 2011

The College Republicans have a tradition of political activism as rich as the Democratic Party is liberal. For many years we have passionately dedicated ourselves to the election of Republican candidates at all levels of government in all 50 states, to recruiting and training millions of future members, voters and leaders of the Republican Party and to aggressively advocating Republican principles in the most radically liberal of climates: the American college campus. This spring will be our 119th.

And this year, like in 1900 when we worked to elect Teddy Roosevelt or in ’52 for Dwight Eisenhower or in ’64 for Barry Goldwater or ’80 for Ronald Reagan or ’04 for George W. Bush, we will be working toward Republican Victory at the ballot box.

You see, College Republicans have been there for 119 years. We’ve been in the middle of some of America’s greatest campaigns, helping to make the very thing we were in the midst of: history. And along the way some historical figures were not only among our ranks, it’s where they got their start in politics. Grover Norquist, Lee Atwater, Karl Rove: all College Republicans.

Not unlike those campaigns of old, this fall the College Republicans will be in the thick of things. We will be there, wherever we are needed, making phone calls, knocking on doors and cheering loudly at rallies. We used to call it deployment, this year we’re calling it Operation Red November, but while the name is different the purpose remains unchanged: to elect Republican candidates.

We understand that the only way to change policy is to change those charged with developing it. That’s why this fall we are hiring field representatives to recruit and mobilize students for GOP candidates in states with competitive gubernatorial and state house elections. College Republicans know that to win in 2012, we must win in 2011. And we’re going to do it, because that is just what we do. It’s our shared purpose.

You know, Ronald Reagan once called the College Republicans “a vital force in conservative politics.” “You are the vanguard of the Republican Party, “ he said, and continued, “I know that the strength of young people’s support for our Party will ensure the continued success of Republican goals as you begin to assume leadership roles in the Party and in our Nation.”

With Ronald Reagan’s words as our guide and in our hearts, we go into our 119th year together, with renewed purpose, unmatched resolve and with one goal: to beat Democrats. Rest assured knowing one thing in this unsure world…that your support of the College Republicans is appreciated and respected, and is paying dividends for the future or our party and our country.

High speed rail can travel up to 160 miles per hour. Pretty darn fast. The only downside is, it wastes taxpayer money almost as quickly.

The budgetary history of government rail projects is an ugly one. In fact, after some cursory research, I could not find one single high speed rail project in the world that didn’t receive an enormous government subsidy. Not one!

Japan is often the country most associated with high-speed rail. The state-owned Japanese National Railways has run an operating deficit every year since the opening of its first high speed line. In the late 80s, after continuous deficits led to a financial crisis, the government privatized the railway. Today, private operators are earning a “profit” but only because rail service continues to receive a generous subsidy.

Europe has faced similar problems. France, by far Europe’s number one high-speed rail carrier, has actually seen a decline in use over time. In 1980 rail accounted for 8.2% of passenger travel, according to research done by the Cato Institute, by 2000 it had declined to 6.3 percent despite the advent of high speed rail. University of Paris economist Remy Prud’Homme told Cato that, “Users pay about half the total cost of providing the service,” and estimates that rail service receives about $100 billion in subsidies each year.

Despite this reality, when Obama sold his stimulus plan he said, “I am always jealous about European trains. And I said to myself, ‘why can’t we have high speed rail?’ And so, we’re investing in that as well.” Apparently jealousy trumps sound-economics in this White House.

The United State’s experience with government run rail is similarly disastrous. Amtrak lost money on 41 of its 45 train lines in 2008, according to a study done by Pew Charitable Trust. The average loss per passenger on trains was approximately $32. One train, serving the east cost from New York to Miami, which you would assume would be one of its more profitable lines, had a $145.23 per passenger loss. It literally costs taxpayers hundreds of dollars every time someone stepped on that Amtrak train.

Don’t even get me started on the Washington, DC metro system. We can’t get escalators to work, trains to run on time, or track maintenance done properly and it still operates with a 68 cents per-passenger subsidy!

Despite this ugly reality President Obama has seemed hell-bent on bringing high-speed rail to the United States. He used a major portion of the stimulus bill to kick-start investment in high speed projects. Now he is after more money. President Obama used his recent State of the Union address to make the case for more “investment.” He said,

“Our goal is to give 80 percent of Americans access to high-speed rail. This could allow you to go to places in half the time it takes to travel by car. For some trips, it will be faster than flying – without the pat-down.”

I’d laugh if it weren’t such an awful idea. Now Senator John Kerry is offering a bill to provide more grant funding for high speed rail projects, arguing that, “It’s so obvious that if you can bring trips down in time, we would be wasting less time from families, move products faster, raise property values, and create jobs in a larger area.”

President Obama and Senator Kerry are both focused on the wrong thing – time. But in this case time isn’t money, in fact it’s just the opposite. Saving people’s time is no doubt a good thing, but the question we must ask is: at what cost?

Just ask California. Obama gave them $2.3 billion to help launch a high speed rail line that will connect its most populous areas – Sacramento, San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego. Of course that $2.3 billion isn’t going to go along way when some estimates for the project say it will cost as much as $80 billion. Who is going to fill the gap in a state where its budget is in shambles and they had to furlough teachers in order to save money?

The fact is, high speed rail just doesn’t make sense in the United States. We are not Japan, or even Europe, when it comes to the size or population density of our country. With the exception of the Northeast (where we still cannot demonstrate that passenger rail can turn a profit) our cities are too far apart to justify the infrastructure investment required.

Geography is not the only issue. We also have our existing freight railways to contend with. As Steve Forbes explains in a must-read article about the failure of high-speed rail,

“While Europe focused on moving people by rail, we focused on moving freight, which is why the U.S. has by far the best and most efficient freight railroad system in the world.”

Nevertheless, the Administration is undermining this impressive achievement. Transportation expert Robert Poole of the Reason Foundation points out: “[There is an] inherent conflict between high-speed passenger rail and freight rail. Because the service characteristics are so different, you can optimize a rail system for one or the other, but not both.”

High speed rail is simply the wrong choice at the wrong time for America. We are deeply in debt and in dire need of spending discipline. If we really want to “invest” in our future, we should at least do it in something that offers a reasonable rate of return. The history of high speed rail shows that it does not.

by Brandon Greife, Political Director

Watching Republicans and Democrats “debate” the solutions to our economic problems is like watching a bad first date. Democrats are completely uninterested in what Republicans have to say on the subject and are just praying for the night to be over. Republicans, who are either unaware or don’t care that their date isn’t listening to a word they are saying, feel compelled to keep talking, lest their be that awkward silence. And we all know there is nothing worse than that awkward silence followed by, “well, this is nice.” {shudder}.

The end result is that we’re talking right past each other. The big problem is that neither of them is picking up the tab for this awful date. No, that falls to us…the taxpayers.

The problems that require solving are clear and interrelated. First, there is the unemployment rate which remains stubbornly high. Second, is the budget deficit which is hampering our private sector’s ability to invest and our public sector’s ability to spend.

Democrats, for no other reason than it s a political necessity if they want to have any hope of maintaining the presidency, are solely focused on lowering unemployment. The Economist best sums up Republicans thought process, saying,

To the Republicans who now control the House of Representatives, the main problem is the deficit and the cumulative burden of debt it brings with it. The deficit will of course narrow as the economy recovers, but because of the insatiable demands for health care of America’s now-creaky and retiring baby-boomers, unless taxes are hiked it will not dip below 4% of GDP, and it will start to rise again after 2015. That is not sustainable. Not only will borrowing on this scale tend to crowd out more productive investment: the interest on it is already eating up 10% of government revenue, a figure that will rise as interest rates go up. Hence the Republican demand for swift and deep cuts. Get spending down, shift government off the backs of the people, and jobs will return, as the invisible hand works its magic.

In other words, it’s a two-for-the-price-of-one kind of deal. It’s the Groupon of our nation’s biggest challenges. If we lower the deficit our economy will naturally pick up. Bam, problems (plural) solved.

Unfortunately, Republican’s hopes seem darn near impossible, at least until the voters bring in reinforcements in 2012. President Obama, who could have, should have, focused on the deficit in his State of the Union, instead decided to talk about “investments.” I mean, come on, we’re not that dumb. Your not dealing with the cast of the Jersey Shore here. Using the word “invest” to try and hide the fact that your “spending” is about as easy to see through as Lindsay Lohan’s claim that she’s “sober.”

Republicans know what Democrats refuse to admit – our federal government is really bad at spending, er…investing, money. The World Economic Forum, who researched and ranked countries for their Global Competitiveness Report, ranked the US 68^th when it came to the “wastefulness of government spending.” 68^th! That’s well behind Egypt, a nation whose citizens are currently rioting and attempting to throw out their dictator-esque president. To understand just how sad that ranking is just take a look at the nations directly ahead of us on the list: (62) Timor Leste, (63) Tanzania, (64), Algeria (65), Libya (66) Kuwait, and (67) Ghana. I didn’t even know a couple of those nations had functioning governments, much less that they were less wasteful than the US.

Given that we squander what we do spend, any plan to spend more seems ill-advised. So what can we do? How can Democrats and Republicans stop talking past one another and actually get this date from hell over with?

It seems that the main problems Democrats have with any Republican effort is some sort of totemic fear that yanking the rug of government spending out from beneath the economy will lead to collapse. Republicans know that is ridiculous because economics tell us that money will simply be spent, and probably more wisely, by the individuals and businesses our government is taking it from.

But it appears that if we are going to get anything done Republicans must set aside their reason, if only briefly. So how is this for a bipartisan compromise – we agree to only modest deficit reduction efforts (keep the President’s planned spending freeze in place) in return for a definitive plan to deal with our deficit in the medium term.

For that to work, we can’t have some namby-pamby deficit plan. We’ve got to deal with entitlements, taxes, the size of government, I mean…the works. No spending stone left unturned. This would allay the fears of bond-holders, investors, and businesses that we are incapable of dealing with our deficit while also allaying the fears of Democrats that we can’t stop spending before a recovery kicks in.

It’s not ideal, but any solution that will require bipartisan agreement won’t be. Until that is, Democrat’s hand is forced by a collapsing bond market; but by then it will be too late. Yes, this date with destiny is awful. But let’s stop pretending that we’re interested in each other and just get this problem solved. Then we can go back to disagreeing about far less important things than the economic fate of our nation.

by Brandon Greife, Political Director

“Did he really just spend an hour telling us what we already know?”

“Did he literally not offer a single concrete notion as to suggesting how we are going to improve?”

“Is this his opening campaign speech for 2012?”

“What did this speech accomplish?” . . . Bueller . . . Bueller

A telling excerpt from the CBO’s report indicates what the President failed to tackle Tuesday night

“The deficits of $1.4 trillion in 2009 and $1.3 trillion in 2010 are, when measured as a share of gross domestic product (GDP), the largest since 1945 – representing 10.0 percent and 8.9 percent of the nation’s output, respectively.”

That’s not the only bad news. They nonpartisan budget agency also said that Social Security will run a $45 billion deficit this year and will have a 10 year shortfall of $547 billion. Social Security, they say, is entering into an era of permanent deficits, until the Social Security “trust fund” is completed drained somewhere in the next 25 years.

Wow.

To be honest, most conservatives knew we weren’t in good shape. The hope is that the CBO report provides the wake-up call needed to get Democrats to come to the bargaining table to finally reform this broken entitlement.

Unfortunately, if President Obama’s State of the Union was any indication, Social Security is on the road to bankruptcy:

“To put us on solid ground, we should also find a bipartisan solution to strengthen Social Security for future generations. And we must do it without putting at risk current retirees, the most vulnerable, or people with disabilities; without slashing benefits for future generations; and without subjecting Americans’ guaranteed retirement income to the whims of the stock market.”

In other words, yea the program probably needs reformed, but I’m going to go ahead and take all of our options off the table. Well I shouldn’t say “all” our options. He did leave one – raising taxes.

How many times can we go to this policy well before it runs dry? If our only plan to fix our entitlement structure is to raise taxes without substantive reform, then there is no end to our fiscal woes.

We must begin to think responsibly about the size and spending habits of our government. Republican Representative Tom Price put it best saying:

“Today’s CBO projections underscore what Republicans have been telling the Obama administration and its allies in Congress: The pursuit of a big government agenda is reckless, irresponsible and unsustainable,”

We must find a way to make the changes necessary to ensure government programs not only exist for today’s beneficiaries, but exist for tomorrow’s retirees. What incentive does my generation have to pay payroll taxes, or any taxes at all really, if the programs that they go to support are being so poorly managed that we will not get to enjoy them.

Mr. President, we demand reform, not glib statements that gloss over Social Security’s problems. If you really want to “strengthen” Social Security, you will work to put it on sound financial footing, not simply pay it lip service.

by Brandon Greife and Jordan Hicks

I’ve had the opportunity to spend a lot of time in the Deep South attending school in the state of Alabama. On several occasions, I’ve made the trip over to Oxford to watch the University of Mississippi Black Bears attempt to play football, and enjoy a cold beverage or two in the Grove.

But I’m not here to talk college football, I’m here to talk about the highway system in Mississippi. Have you seen it? Leaving Alabama (whose highways aren’t exactly a gem) and seeing the “Welcome to Mississippi” sign, it’s like going back in time seventy years. The highways are concrete with an unexplainable yellow tint, ghastly cracks and pot holes every eight feet. There is however, the occasional twenty foot patch of normal, new age asphalt probably paid for by money gained from implementing the sale of alcohol on Sundays. Veering away from the cracks and potholes mentioned is a daunting task, as the medians and shoulders on the road probably haven’t been mowed since Ole Miss last played in the SEC Championship game…. I also know about these treacherous jungle shoulders due to my unfortunate encounters with the local police, guess they don’t like Roll Tide stickers, or speeding.

Something interesting about these police though; despite the fact that their cruisers and work place (the highways) are of different eras, the day they retire they will make upwards of $90,000 dollars a year in pension money. Other public workers, such as firefighters and school teachers, can expect a similarly cushy retirement plan.

Now, I don’t want to make it sound like this is completely a bad thing. These folks have put in years of service while performing the necessary (and sometimes thankless) task of protecting our lives or teaching our children.

The question is not the service they’ve provided; it’s whether their retirement plans will prevent the government from continuing to offer their services. Public sector pensions are creating enormous financial difficulties for our states and municipalities. How big? One recent estimate by the former chairman of New Jersey’s pension fund says the shortfall comes in around $2.5 trillion.

Increasing pension costs are having a major impact on states’ ability to meet other challenges. Consider the following two points made by Economics21: (1) State and local spending has doubled as a share of the economy over the past 50 years and (2) This spending is increasingly directed away from traditional state and local responsibilities, like road and infrastructure. E21 writes:

Over the past 60 years, state and local government expenditures have doubled as a share of the economy, from 7.7% of GDP in 1950 to 15.5% in 2009. Since 1950, state and local spending has grown at an 8.1% annual rate, fast enough to double the size of state and local government every 8 or 9 years.

Now, if this spending was used for important projects like building schools, paving roads, or installing a smart grid, perhaps we would be more understanding of their spending binge. But as E21 points out, this is just not what is happening.

Data from the BEA shows that Gross state and local investment – spending on things like roads, hospitals, prisons, highways, ports, and transit systems – has virtually flat-lined as a share of GDP since 1950 while the rest of the state and local spending has increased by 130% since then (see green “Non-investment expenditure” line in graph below). In 1950, gross investment was equal to 26% of all state and local spending. Since 1990, gross investment has fallen to just 15% of all state and local spending.

So our state government are spending more than ever before, but they’re not using it to build things. The question becomes, where is our money going?

The biggest driver of the increased public sector outlays is Medicaid spending. A close second is all-in employee compensation, especially pension funding.

So when President Obama says that we need to increase funding for transportation initiatives to “fundamentally overhaul” our “woefully inefficient” transit system, it is not an issue of money. When he says that our “crumbling infrastructure is creating a “crisis” that “is endangering our future prosperity,” remember where our money is going.

It’s not going to roads, bridges, rail projects, or an energy grid. It’s not going to expand the internet to rural areas. It’s going to fund the growing pensions of retired public sector workers.

Infrastructure projects don’t need more taxpayer money, they just need our money to be better managed by states. State spending has doubled while investment in transit systems has remained flat! It’s not that we’re paying too little, it’s that our government is mis-spending so much.

So as I drive through Mississippi and see the pot-holes that mar their streets or the shoulders that remain in disrepair, I can’t help but wonder where their tax dollars are going. Sure Ole Miss may be an SEC rival, but we’re brothers in arms when it comes to fighting for more effective use for our tax dollars.

for those who have earned them,” Also; Governor Christie recently vetoed a bill that would add $3.1 billion to New Jersey’s pension fund.

These pensions have become increasingly burdensome to State and local governments, and need to be reformed now. Taxpayers have compensated for the misspending of our government too much recently….Lets not have to pay anymore for the mistakes of others.

by Brandon Greife and Jordan Hicks

Violence is erupting throughout Egypt.

Pro-democracy forces, led by Nobel winner Mohamed ElBaradei, engaged in protests over poor economic growth and simmering discontent over November’s “blatantly” rigged parliamentary elections that left the opposition party with a measly 3 percent of the seats.

What has the Obama’s administration’s response to all of this been? “Our assessment is that the Egyptian government is stable,” said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. President Hosnie Mubarak, is “looking for ways to respond to the legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people.”

Since then, an online campaign has erupted. As Mike Giglio wrote for the Daily Beast,

“Protest organizers combined an Internet savvy with hard tactics on the ground. They got online supporters to coordinate with friends and family by text and word-of-mouth as well as join with traditional activists to put up flyers and reach out to people on the street.”

In an effort to stifle the pro-democracy movement, which has used social networking sites to organize its followers, Mubarak shut down internet service. This did little to stop the protests. As the Washington Post described the scene of what is being called “Angry Friday,”

In the capital, tear gas blanketed much of downtown, as demonstrators sought to converge on the centrally located Tahrir Square. They were met by police wielding clubs and water cannons.

. . . Mohamed ElBaradei, a political reform advocate and Nobel Peace Prize laureate who returned to Egypt from abroad to participate in the protests, was confronted by police with water cannons. When ElBaradei’s supporters surrounded him to protect him, police beat them with batons.

Sadly, Washington has stayed silent throughout the ordeal. The best the Obama administration could muster was the seemingly half-hearted line, “We support the universal rights of the Egyptian people, including the rights to freedom of expression, association, and assembly”

This isn’t enough for Egypt’s pro-democracy forces. As opposition leader Eddin Ibrahim told the Washington Post, “Clinton’s statement on Tuesday reflected what the policy has been for two years . . . What we hope for is explicit support for the demands that are being put forward.”

Did you catch that swipe at Obama’s handling of Egypt? Whatever his faults, George Bush was a staunch defender of Democracy. Through his “freedom agenda” program Bush gave grants to pro-democracy groups, withheld hundreds of millions in aid over anti-democratic statements, and used its sway to force multi-candidate presidential elections.

But as the Washington Post editorialized today, the Obama’s administration’s assumption “that the damage done to relations by George W. Bush’s ‘freedom agenda’ was a mistake that needed to be repaired.” Obama’s embrace of Mubarak, the Post writes, “may be remembered as one of the most shortsighted and wrongheaded policies the United States has ever pursued in the Middle East.”

”People want moral support,” Shadi Hamid of the Brookings Doha Centre told the Sydney Morning Herald. ”They want to hear words of encouragement – right now they don’t have that.” That seems like the least we could do at this point.

by Brandon Greife, Political Director

We’re in deep trouble. There is simply no other conclusion you can take away from yesterday’s CBO Report.

In their “Budget and Economic Outlook,” the CBO said that the 2011 deficit will hit $1.48 trillion – nearly 40% higher than estimates the CBO made earlier in the year. That’s even larger than the $1.41 trillion deficit we racked up in 2009. It also represents the second highest percentage of the nation’s output since World War II, lagging only behind last year in terms of size.

How did we get to this point? As Rep. Paul Ryan explained in the Republican’s Response to the State of the Union:

There is no doubt the president came into office facing a severe fiscal and economic situation.

Unfortunately, instead of restoring the fundamentals of economic growth, he engaged in a stimulus spending spree that not only failed to deliver on its promise to create jobs but also plunged us even deeper into debt.

The facts are clear: Since taking office, President Obama has signed into law spending increases of nearly 25 percent for domestic government agencies – an 84 percent increase when you include the failed stimulus.

All of this new government spending was sold as “investment.”

The CBO’s report and Rep. Ryan’s response, make President Obama’s demands for more “investment” all the more absurd. Our government should not be looking for more ways to spend, it should be looking for ways to save. The CBO has already warned that, “a growing level of federal debt would also increase the probability of a sudden fiscal crisis, during which investors would lose confidence in the government’s ability to manage its budget.”

Our growing debt has real consequences. On the one hand, the CBO predicts that large budget deficits would reduce national saving and domestic investment which “would lower income growth in the United States.” On the other hand, as the debt grows, it becomes increasingly more difficult to solve the problem without raising taxes to a level that would substantially harm our economy.

Without immediate action we are approaching a Catch-22 that inevitably leads to dampened economic growth.

So we urge you to call, write, or email your Congressman. Let them know that we cannot afford President Obama’s “investments.” As this year’s $1.5 trillion deficit attests, we simply must stop trying to spend our way out of this recession. It’s time we demand fiscal accountability in Washington, it is clear they are not going to do it on their own.

To find contact information for your Congressman go HERE

by Brandon Greife, Political Director

Ronald Reagan famously said, “The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant, but that they know so much that isn’t so.”

President Obama’s State of the Union address seemed to prove Ronald Reagan’s point. Throughout his speech Obama made reference to our growing debt and deficit. He made it clear that he understands that there is a problem that will require a solution.

The bad news is, he honestly (we hope) believes that Obamacare actually helps to alleviate the threat of ever-increasing healthcare spending. In his speech Obama argued,

“[Tackling our deficit] means further reducing health care costs, including programs like Medicare and Medicaid, which are the biggest contributor to our long-term deficit. The health insurance law we passed last year will slow these rising costs . . .”

That simply “isn’t so.” But don’t take our word for it. In testimony before the House Budget Committee yesterday, the Chief Medicare Actuary, Richard Foster, said that the law wouldn’t hold costs down. As the Associated Press reported,

Foster was asked by Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Calif., for a simple true or false response on two of the main assertions made by supporters of the law: that it will bring down unsustainable medical costs and will let people keep their current health insurance if they like it.

On the costs issue, “I would say false, more so than true,” Foster responded.

As for people getting to keep their coverage, “not true in all cases.”

This is not the first time Foster has rebutted the President’s rosy claims about the impact of Obamacare. In his State of the Union Obama once again made the claim if we are going to make cuts “let’s make sure that we’re not doing it on the backs of our most vulnerable citizens. And let’s make sure that what we’re cutting is really excess weight.”

Apparently Obama forgot that the cuts Obamacare made to Medicare may end up hurting “our most vulnerable citizens.” As Richard Foster argued last April,

“A sustained reduction in payment updates…would cause Medicare payment rates to grow more slowly than…providers costs of furnishing services to beneficiaries. Thus, providers for whom Medicare constitutes a substantive portion of their business could find it difficult to remain profitable.”

This, Foster argues, could end up “jeopardizing access to care” for seniors.

President Obama may not be ignorant, but he sure knows a lot that just isn’t so. His healthcare reform bill doesn’t reduce the costs of Medicare and Medicaid, it potentially makes them worse. Obamacare doesn’t “strengthen” Medicare, it makes unrealistic cuts that will hurt seniors. This isn’t reform, this is regression.

by Brandon Greife, Political Director

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President Obama’s State of the Union Address was one of the most anticipated speeches in recent memory. Many were guessing just how close to the middle he would shift with an election year looming in the near future. Most people also wanted to know his plans on tackling the enormous debt that his party has racked up over the last couple years. Most importantly, people wanted to take something…anything…away from the words of the President that would provide some sense of security and optimism.

President Obama had an opportunity to knock one out of the park; his recent climb in the polls triggered what many suggested as the momentum necessary to garner increased bipartisan support. Support that could not only help his campaign hopes in’12, but also get the ball rolling for Republicans and Democrats to actually start agreeing on something…..better yet, start accomplishing things tangible for the American people.

Instead, the speech boiled down to meaningless campaign banter and a few meager jokes (we’ll give him points for originality – we had never heard a joke with “smoked salmon” as the punchline).

What was he thinking? Did his advisers run out of ideas? Did his speechwriters think they were trying to win a beauty pageant? It sure felt like it. We needed to FEEL that President Obama was going to take action to get this country back to where it belongs. But instead of a plan of action, we got more promises.

Mr. President, I know your statistics indicate that we’ve created one million jobs over the past year; I realize the stock market is slowly climbing; I recognize you believe your self- titled health care bill is going to save us money.

But want to know what else I know?

Government is spending at an unsustainable rate. Our debt is already at unprecedented levels with no end in sight. Congressman Jason Chaffetz of Utah summed it up best stating “the message fell a little bit short, because he was saying ‘spend, spend, spend’ instead of ‘cut, cut, cut.’”  We already have a name for your plan to continue throwing money at the same problems – Cash for Clunkers.

Another thing I know? Unemployment is an astonishing 9.4%.

We don’t need to hear about what you think. WE KNOW. Do you think the unemployed are going to be able to invest in this “roaring stock market” as you called it last night?  You also mentioned corporate taxes on small businesses saying they are, “Hit with one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world. It makes no sense, and it has to change”

What an epiphany. Republicans have been encouraging you to reform the corporate tax code since Day 1 of your presidency. I wonder what would happen if you actually cut these taxes? Jobs? Reinvestments by these businesses back into the economy? Money in the pockets of those with new jobs who can start buying houses and cars again? What an innovator. I guess it finally got through to you what the Republicans have been saying all along.

So Sir, Now you know……

Stop with the talking, stop with the promises, and let’s start DOING something.

by Jordan Hicks

“We can no longer afford to leave the hard choices for the next budget, the next administration, or the next generation.” That is what President Obama said when he unveiled his budget two years ago. Sadly, we’ve been pushing off those hard choices ever since. Yesterday’s State of the Union address was no different. It was Obama’s chance to finally address the unsustainable path we currently find ourselves on. Instead, we got a lecture in American exceptionalism.

It’s not that it was a bad speech. He, better than anyone, knows how to make Americans feel better about the present and downright optimistic about the future. But America didn’t need a doting father who is proud of what we have accomplished and sure we’ll make something out of ourselves. What we needed was a wake-up call.

As the Washington Post editorialized today,  “President Obama entered office promising to be a different kind of politician – one who would speak honestly with the American people about the hard choices they face and who would help make those hard calls.” In that sense, yesterday’s State of the Union can be labeled nothing more than a disappointment.

Instead we’re left with lots of mention of the “investments” our government must make to ensure that our economy continues to grow. What he really means is that he plans on continuing his failed attempt to spend our way into prosperity. But we can’t afford it.

In fact, we can afford nothing less than immediate action to begin addressing our deficit. As Rep. Paul Ryan said in the Republican Response,

“A few years ago, reducing spending was important. Today, it’s imperative.

. . . We face a crushing burden of debt. The debt will soon eclipse our entire economy, and grow to catastrophic levels in the years ahead.

On this current path, when my three children – who are now 6, 7, and 8 years old – are raising their own children, the federal government will double in size, and so will the taxes they pay.

No Economy can sustain such high levels of debt and taxation.”

This is the reality we face and it is the reality President Obama went to great lengths to avoid. Instead, he chose to pay lip service to our debt, promising a five year domestic spending freeze, that would do little but “freeze” our unsustainable deficits in place. He briefly mentioned Medicare and Medicaid, even going so far as to call them the “single biggest contributors to our long-term deficits.” But he provided no solutions, no leadership, other than to plug Obamacare and say he’s “willing to look at other ideas.” He also wants to “find” solutions to Social Security, then categorically rules out everything but tax increases to close the program’s financial gap.

In a Washington where “search” means nothing but “stall,” we are quickly running out of time. We must begin to make the hard choices necessary to confront our deficits before it is too late. This was President Obama’s chance to take the lead and truly pivot to fiscal reform. Instead, Obama has chosen to go the same route he did with the bipartisan fiscal commission. Endorse the search for solutions and then refuse to endorse them if they prove to politically difficult.

Fortunately, Republicans are attempting to fill the leadership vacuum in dealing with America’s fiscal peril. Just last week the Republican Study Committee did what President Obama has consistently refused to – private detailed cuts to our federal budget. Their plan, entitled the Spending Reduction Act, is a package containing $2.5 trillion in spending cuts over the next decade. The bulk of the savings come by returning discretionary spending to 2006 levels and implementing a hard freeze through 2021.

President Obama alluded to the RSC’s plan last night saying, “I recognize that some in this chamber have already proposed deeper cuts, and I’m willing to eliminate whatever we can honestly do without.”

If you’re willing Mr. President, we’re ready. It is time you live up to your promises to be a different kind of politician. It’s time to stop putting off the hard choices for the next administration or the next generation. Last night we didn’t need a pep-talk, we needed leadership. If you’re not willing to provide it, Republicans will be.

by Brandon Greife, Political Director