Archive for February, 2011

Democrats are reviving an age-old Washington strategy: the old “despite the fact that we have no intention of cutting the budget, we really need to blame Republicans for the resulting government shutdown, so maybe if we blame them enough before hand, the public will forget what’s really going on” trick. Strong move.

There is no doubt they’ve mastered the tactic. Why it’s working is another question entirely. It’s enough to make you wonder if Justin Bieber’s PR team taken over the Democrat Party. There’s simply no other explanation for why such an overtly craptastic strategy is resonating with the media.

After all, it’s such a clear ploy to avoid making the difficult choices necessary to get the budget under control. Democrats are literally the only one’s talking about it. In just the past week House Speaker John Boehner has said, “There’s not one Republican talking about government shutdown. Our goal is to cut spending because it will lead to a better environment for job creation in America.”

Senate Minority Leader said pretty much the same thing, “As Republicans focus on constructive ways for the two parties to work together on cutting spending and debt, Senator Schumer (D-NY) seems strangely preoocupied with the notion of a government shutdown . . . Most Americans and even many in his own party have come to realize that the gravity of our current fiscal problems calls for constructive dialogue.”

Nevertheless, you’ve got columnists like Frank Rich stuck in the liberal echo chamber, either unable or unwilling of realizing that Republicans are the one’s working to get the problem resolved. In yesterday’s column Rich writes, “Still heady with hubris from the midterms – and having persuaded themselves that Gingrich’s 1995 history can’t possibly repeat itself – radical Republicans are convinced that deficit-addled voters are on their side no matter what.”

Look at Boehner’s quote, now back to Rich’s, now back at Boehner, now back to Rich, sadly Rich isn’t Boehner, but if he stopped pandering to the liberal New York Times readership and actually listened to what conservatives were saying he could be as respected as Boehner. Look down. Back up. Where are you? You’re reading a column talking about a man, liberal men should sound like.

(If you don’t get that reference: A: You don’t watch enough TV, and B: Please, for your own sake, watch the best commercial of the year HERE)

The fact is, liberal pundits like Rich, and Democratic Congressmen like Schumer are clearly trying to muddle the facts. It’s a blatant ploy. It’s about as subtle as the Lady Gaga entrance to the _________ awards. Really, any of them would work fine in that sentence.

There are four steps to passing a Continuing Resolution and ensuring that the government doesn’t shut down. Step 1: the House passes a CR, Step 2: the Senate passes a CR, Step 3: it is sent to a conference committee to resolve the differences, Step 4: the President signs it. Really, it’s a whole hell of a lot more complicated than that, but c’mon, cut me some slack, reading a column about the entire legislative process would be about as entertaining as the Real Housewives of Boise.

The House, led by Republicans, have put forward their proposal. They offered $61 billion in budget cuts over the course of the year, and in order to get the process moving were willing to agree to a short term CR with $4 billion in cuts. Neither of those comes close to solving our $1.65 trillion deficit problem this year.

Nevertheless, Senate Democrats threw up their hands and called the measure “extreme” and “reckless.” What cuts did they propose you may be asking. Well, none. All in all, they’re pretty content with where we’re at.

So if you’re keeping score at home, Republican House passes a continuing resolution, Senate Democrats refuse to bargain. Remind me again who we’re blaming for the government shutdown?

The ball is in the Democrats’ court. House Republicans have been working feverishly to come up with some iteration of cuts that Democrats won’t brand as extreme, Democrats appear appear content to sit back and run through Roget’s for new synonyms for “extreme.” One can almost hear the discussion going on in Harry Reid’s office last week:

“Reid: What adjective should we go for next? Aide 1: How about “drastic”? Reid: No, overplayed. Aide 2: How about “imprudent”? Reid: Who am I, Webster? I don’t even know what that means. Aide 3: Oooh! Ooh! I got one. ‘Excessive.’ Reid: Good work. Print up a press release, try to use the phrase “excessive cuts” at least 18 times. And throw in a ‘draconian’ if ya can. Makes us sound smarter.”

So as John Boehner takes to the airwaves to once again encourage “working together to cut spending and rein in government – not shut it down,” what will Democrats do? Something tells me they’ll keep doing nothing. And then they’ll blame Republicans for it.

“American politics increasingly resembles a kind of total war.”

That is the conclusion of columnist Ronald Brownstein in the National Journal. Brownstein argues that President Obama is facing a two-front war, with the GOP House majority on the one side, and Republican governors on the other. Brownstein writes,

Whatever the governors’ motivations (one man’s posturing, after all, is another man’s principle), their unreserved enlistment into Washington’s wars marks a milestone. It creates a second line of defense for conservatives to contest Obama even after he wins battles in Congress. It tears another hole in the fraying conviction that state capitals are less partisan than Washington. And it creates a precedent that is likely to encourage more guerrilla warfare between Democratic governors and a future Republican president.

American politics increasingly resembles a kind of total war in which each party mobilizes every conceivable asset at its disposal against the other. Most governors were once conscientious objectors in that struggle. No more.

Except Brownstein forgot two fronts in this supposed (read: made-up) war against Obama. First, conservative Democrats in the Congress. You’ve heard enough about the Blue Dogs over the past election cycle, so I won’t dig into them here. Suffice it to say they were, and are, a driving force for fiscal restraint in a Democratic House caucus that seems bent on spending mounds of taxpayer cash. Simply put, our healthcare system would look radically different if it weren’t for their concerns with the public option. Cracks are also beginning to emerge in the Senate. Take Senator Claire McCaskill, a Missouri Democrat, who said “My Party, honestly, is in denial about how severe the problem is. They think they can just nibble around the edges.” She, along with Republican Senator Jeff Sessions, offered a plan could slash as much as $4.5 trillion from the budget over the next 10 years. If you’re keeping score at home, that is more cuts than even the most ambitious Republican plans in the House! And it was proposed by a Democrat!

The fourth “front” Obama has to “fight” is Democrat governors. New York governor Andrew Cuomo used his State of the State address to argue “we need to hold the line on taxes, we need a spending cap, and we need to close the $10 billion gap without any borrowing.” Cuomo is not alone in sounding like a fiscal conservative. In California, new Gov. Jerry Brown used his inaugural address to say that “When dealing with a budget gap in the tens of millions, I must point out that it is far more than waste and inefficiency that we have to take out,” going on to list things like healthcare, income assistance and tax incentives that would need to be cut.

So there you have it. Obama is fighting a four front war, which is a more confusing way of saying, he’s surrounded.

Brownstein attempted to make the point that politics is becoming more polarized along partisan lines than ever. Implying that somehow the system has broken down.

This overlooks a second, and in my mind more plausible thesis – that it has nothing to do with politics, and everything to do with our financial struggles. Our debt and deficits care little for the little “R” or “D” beside your name. It doesn’t care what caused it, it cares that it gets paid back.

The ranks, or flanks, of conservatives aren’t growing because we sat down at a big table and laid out a total war strategy. It’s because party-blind finances are driving a unified movement. Everyone is realizing, almost simultaneously, that our state and federal finances are so deeply out of whack that we’ve got to make some drastic changes.

Obamacare (liberal’s favorite example of the “total war” conspiracy theory) has become the rallying point for this diverse set of actors. But take a deeper look and it’s easy to understand why. Obamacare not only busts the federal budget, which accounts for Congressional disapproval, it also busts state budgets, by expanding Medicaid and implementing vast bureaucratic burdens onto state governments.

The war is not between Republicans and Obama. The war is between everyone and unsustainable spending. And until we stop demagoguing the issue into one of politics, it’s a war we’ll never be able to win.

It’s one of the oldest rhetorical tricks in the book. You take a seemingly mundane argument and you push it to its logical extreme in order, supposedly, to show the cracks that always existed in the foundation but that people were somehow overlooking.

It’s one of liberals’ favorite tricks. Conservatives will say, “I think we need to reform Medicaid.” Liberals then throw a temper tantrum and say, “While you’re at it, why don’t you just get rid of the whole program, let all the poor people who can’t afford healthcare just suffer in the streets.” What can you do to defend that?!? Conservatives must automatically go into defense mode to try and argue that wasn’t what they were proposing at all. And here’s the first rule of politics – never, ever, be on defense. There’s a better chance of Charlie Sheen being back on an episode of Two and a Half Men then there is a winning the argument if you’re only playing defense.

That tactic has been taken to the extreme by prominent liberal blogger Mathew Yglesias. In a new post he writes,

“If you’re trying to look at America from a balance-sheet perspective the problem is very clear. It’s not “entitlements” and it’s not “Social Security” and it’s not “Medicare” and it’s not “health care costs” it’s the existence of old people. Old people, generally speaking, don’t produce anything of economic value. They sit around, retired, consuming goods and services and produce nothing but the occasional turn at babysitting. The optimal economic growth policy isn’t to slash Social Security or Medicare benefits, it’s to euthanize 70 year-olds and harvest their organs for auction. With that in place, you could cut taxes and massively ramp-up investments in physical infrastructure, early childhood education, and be on easy street.”

Yes, he actually wrote that. And even though he was about as sincere as a Lindsay Lohan apology, it’s still a terrible argument.

The craziness was in response to a growing theme among conservatives – that America should be run like a business. More specifically, Yglesias’ rant was leveled against a post by Silicon Valley investor Sarah Lacy, in which she writes

“How can we be so apathetic when we see true abysmal fiscal neglect, especially when it’s that of a pseudo-company (the United States government) in which we all essentially own shares? . . . If politicians reported to voters the way management reports to shareholders, no one would finish out their terms.”

In true liberal fashion, Yglesias takes a reasonable argument, albeit one he doesn’t like, and pulls a Joan Rivers. That is, he stretches, pulls, slices and dices it beyond all recognition. You’ll notice that nowhere does she mention euthanasia; in fact, all she says is that Medicare and Medicaid are “the biggest culprit for why our financial system is so untenable.” It was still enough to get Yglesias worked up enough to go into a Mel Gibson-esque hysteria.

Lost in that hysteria is any semblance of reason. He overlooks the fact that if the American government made decisions like a prudent company, we, as citizens, would be obligated to act as prudent workers.

What does that mean? It means that we need to plan for our retirement. We need to save and invest in such a way that Social Security and Medicare are allowed to act as they were intended – as social safety nets – and not catch-all government programs. Unlike the assumptions made in Yglesias’ straw man argument, it’s not the “existence of old people,” that is the problem, it’s the fact that our system has not required them, over the course of their lives to contribute in money as much as they will receive in benefits.

America’s government, just like any company, has no duty to completely care for each of workers through their retirement. What it does have the obligation to do is to provide reasonable means by which its workers can comfortably retire on their own.

That isn’t killing people, as Yglesias suggests, it’s giving them the freedom to live.

President Franklin Roosevelt’s concerns about public sector unions are once again proving true. Roosevelt argued that, “The process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service” because a “strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to obstruct the operations of government until their demands are satisfied. Such action looking toward the paralysis of government by those who have sworn to support it is unthinkable and intolerable.”

Such fears proved well founded in Wisconsin schools and the government had to be shut down in protest of the union bill. Democrats in the Senate boycotted the planned vote, fleeing the state to go to Illinois. Oddly enough, Senate Democrat Julie Lassa said “we believe we’re standing up for democracy.” They weren’t alone. Wisconsin’s teachers also decided to flee, in this case their classrooms, in order to go to Madison to protest the vote. CNN reported that the Madison Metropolitan School District was forced to cancel classes for three straight days because of anticipated teacher absences.

Now, Roosevelt’s fears are spreading to other states. Politico reported this afternoon:

Democrats in Indiana’s legislature are said to be fleeing the state Tuesday to block a vote on an anti-union bill, repeating the move used by Wisconsin Democrats to avoid voting on legislation there.

Members of the Indiana House are headed to Illinois or Kentucky to avoid having to vote on a “right-to-work” law, which would allow non-union members to work in unionized companies, the Indianapolis Star reported.

When the House was called into session Tuesday morning, just two of its 40 Democratic members were on hand. In all, 58 legislators were present in the chamber, nine fewer than the 67 needed for a quorum.

That is worth repeating: Democrats in Indiana are fleeing the state because they don’t want to allow a vote on becoming a “right to work” state. This would allow members of unionized workplaces the freedom to not join a union. Currently, Indiana is a “union shop” state, forcing employers to fire employees who have not joined the union or paid union dues.

Yet, somehow, someway, liberals are twisting this into a fight over power. Idiots like Paul Krugman have written that, “What Mr. Walker and his backers are trying to do is to make Wisconsin – and eventually, America – less of a functioning democracy and more of a third-world-style oligarchy.” How you can equate a law allowing workers the choice to join, or not join, a union with an oligarchy is beyond me.

Nevertheless, such brash statements and heated debate is exactly what Roosevelt feared. With Democrats leaving the state, and quite literally going into hiding rather than participating in the vote, they have paralyzed government. Such an action by “those who have sworn to support it” is “unthinkable and intolerable. Unless apparently, you’re a union member…or someone trying to get their vote.

by Brandon Greife, Political Director

Harvard economics professor Edward Glaeser has an interesting diagnosis of the problems that plague Detroit,

Detroit’s problems were compounded because the city in distress invested in structures, rather than people. Federal support has been almost entirely focused on physical capital, like housing and transportation infrastructure.

In 1948, the Federal government started doling out cash for urban renewal, and by the 1950s it was spending seriously on transportation. In the 1980s, with federal aid, the city built its People Mover, which now glides quietly over essentially empty streets.

Detroit’s never needed more housing or transportation. Declining cities are practically defined by having too much infrastructure relative to people. A monorail has little value when buses can already move quickly on uncongested roads.

Washington Post blogger Ezra Klein cites Glaeser’s thesis to ask the question whether the auto industry crippled Detroit. This, of course, would run counter to the traditional conservative attack, made all the more important given current events, that unions are what killed the Motor City.

I’m not going to go that direction, instead I’d like to focus on what this means for Obama’s plans. President Obama has been an advocate of massive spending to upgrade, and in some cases, overhaul our infrastructure system.

He said the stimulus “contains the largest investment increase in our nation’s infrastructure since President Eisenhower created the national highways system half a century ago. We’ll invest more than $100 billion . . .”

Apparently that wasn’t enough. President Obama was back in 2010 announcing a “a new plan for upgrading America’s roads, rails and runways for the long-term.  Over the next six years, we will rebuild 150,000 miles of our roads — enough to circle the world six times.  We will lay and maintain 4,000 miles of our railways — enough to stretch from coast to coast.  And we will restore 150 miles of runways and advance a next generation air-traffic control system that reduces delays for the American people.”

Finally, Obama tried to make the sale in the greatest of all venues, the 2011 State of the Union. He argued that “over the last two years, we’ve begun rebuilding for the 21^st century . . . And tonight, I’m proposing that we redouble those efforts.” His state goal was to give 80 percent of Americans access to high-speed rail and high speed wireless coverage to 98 percent of Americans.

The question is, are following down the same road that led Detroit to ruin? Namely, are we investing in structures, rather than people? Sure, Obama can talk all he wants about urban renewal and his wonderful goals of our transportation system, but in the end will we have too much infrastructure relative to people?

Liberals will argue that our infrastructure system is “crumbling.” That we are falling behind the rest of the world who is building high speed trains and internet grids. That to stay competitive in the world we must have a competitive infrastructure system. All well and good, but I don’t want to be left with the same problem as Detroit – a billion dollar People Mover with no people to move.

The federal focus on physical capital and not human capital is distressing. Glaeser writes that, “like Silicon Valley in the 1960s, Detroit had an abundance of entrepreneurs fighting to find the new, new thing. Ford, Durant, David Dunbar Buick, the Dodge Brothers, the Fisher Brothers, Henry Leland – it seems as if Detroit once had an automotive genius on every street corner.”

The trouble is that we are now operating in a global economy. Ezra Klein makes the point that. “If you build a train in Detroit, you can be pretty sure it’ll stay in Detroit. You can’t say the same for its residents.” The same can be said for America. We can build a state of the art infrastructure and be pretty sure it’ll stay in America. You can’t say the same for our companies or workers.

The fact is, money talks. If you want to make sure our companies stay here, sure, things like infrastructure will help, but ultimately they’re looking at the total compensation package, the largest portion of which is labor costs and tax burdens. We’ll almost always lose when it comes to labor costs. That is where our advantages in higher education system, infrastructure, and innovation come in to play to offset the additional cost of workers. But there is no reason we shouldn’t have globally competitive tax burden. Sadly, that is not the case. Today, the combined U.S. corporate tax rate is 39.3% – meaning we have the highest corporate income tax rate in the developed world.

So sure, let’s invest in our people, but let’s also leave some money in their pockets to invest for themselves. If not, we may find ourselves a lot like Detroit – easy to get around, if for no other reason than we’re devoid of people.

by Brandon Greife, Political Director

Interesting question from Becky Quick, a CNN Money contributor:

Which item do you think has the most federal taxes and fees attached to it: (1) a can of Budweiser, (2) a carton of Marlboro Reds, (3) a Smith & Wesson Centennial revolver, or (4) a roundtrip airline ticket from Chicago to St. Louis?

If you guessed the beer, cigarettes, or gun, you’d be wrong. Federal taxes and fees tally up to about 5% for the beer, 18.2% for the cigarettes, and 10% for the revolver. But buying an airline ticket pushes the boundaries of government taxation, initiating a slew of taxes and fees most of us never knew existed — a passenger ticket tax, a flight segment tax, a frequent-flier tax, a cargo waybill tax, a commercial jet fuel tax, and a 9/11 fee, just to name a few. I recently found a reasonably priced fare of just $151 for that roundtrip ticket to St. Louis. But tack on the fees and taxes and the total price came to $185.80, a markup of more than 20%.

Ms. Quick may even be underestimating the number of taxes and fees the government places on airlines. The International Air Transport Association lists the current taxies levied on airlines:

Airport and Airway Trust Fund (FAA)

• Passenger Ticket Tax – 7.5%
• Slight Segment Tax – $3.70
• Frequent Flyer Tax – 7.5%
• International Departure Tax – $16.30
• International Arrival Tax – $16.30
• Cargo Waybill Tax – 6.25%
• Commercial Jet Fuel Tax – 4.3 cents
• Noncommercial Jet Fuel Tax – 21.8 cents
• Noncommercial AvGas Tax – 19.3 cents

Environmental Protection Agency

• LUST Fuel Tax – .1 cents

Local Airport Projects

• Passenger Facility Charge – up to $4.50

Department of Homeland Security

• September 11^th Fee – $2.50
• Aviation Security Infrastructure Fee – Varies
• APHIS Passenger Fee – $5.00
• APHIS Aircraft Fee – $70.75
• Customs User Fee – $5.50
• Immigration User Fee – $7.00

A majority of these taxes and fees were designed to go to one of two purposes: the maintenance and construction of our airways infrastructure or the creation and implementation of our post-9/11 air safety system. Sounds great in theory, but the results are more questionable.

Take, for instance, the Airport and Airways Trust Fund. The fund was created to fill in the funding gaps for infrastructure projects that were lagging behind the enormous boom in civilian flying. Over time, the fund has begun to diverge from its original purpose at extreme costs to travelers. A report for the Government Accounting Office finds that FAA Trust Fund expenditures have risen from under $10 billion in 2000 to $15.5 billion in 2010.

To pay for the steep cost increases, the government has taken to raising taxes and fees, putting a squeeze on many airlines and passengers. Kenneth Button, a professor of transportation policy at George Mason University, has a theory as to why. Button told the New York Times that “airlines are vulnerable conduits for these types of taxes because air travel was once considered a luxury, creating the perception that passengers have deep pockets. And putting the fees on airline tickets, he said, makes them easier to collect.”

Senate Republicans saw an opportunity to cut significant expenditures from the Airport and Airways Trust Fund, hopefully eliminating some of the incentive to raise taxes or, if nothing else, beginning to pay down our deficit. The GOP proposal, put forth by Sen. John McCain would reduced the budget the Essential Air Service program, which subsidizes commercial flights to very small, rural communities.

And we’re talking big subsidies. The AP gave some examples from a report in 2009:

Some of the subsidies, to places like Ely, Nev., Cape Girardeau, Mo., and Havre, Mont., are eye-popping.

Ely, in Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s state, leads the pack with a $4,500 per passenger subsidy, according to new data from the Senate Appropriations Committee. Just 414 people flew out of Ely last year. That’s 0.7 passengers per flight, which means that some planes fly empty of passengers.

For Havre, each of its 359 passengers – 0.6 passengers per flight – received an almost $2,900 subsidy.

Sadly, the bill was defeated in the Senate 61 to 38, largely along partisan lines. Unless something is done soon, FAA’s trust fund will continue to run significant deficit. In other words, look for more airline taxes to be added to the already substantial list in the near future.

by Brandon Greife, Political Director

I’m an unabashed fantasy sports nerd. I study Sabermetrics nearly as much as I study politics. I can tell you if a player’s getting unlucky using BABIP, tell if he’s really worth keeping in free agency using VORP, and how well he performs in LIPS. If that sentence didn’t make one single lick of sentence to you, congratulations, you have more of a life than I do.

Anywho, reveling in my fantasy nerd-dom, I was reading ESPN’s annual “Bad Predictions Review.” The column is essentially a summary list of all the forecasts made by ESPN’s panel of experts that turned out to be totally, and often embarrassingly wrong. For instance, countless scores of sports pundits predicted that San Francisco and Dallas were guaranteed, sure-fire, can’t miss teams to go to the Super Bowl. Oops, they didn’t even make the playoffs.

So here I am, perusing the sports column, chuckling at these writers stupidity (I mean, did you really think T.O. would lead Cincinnati to the Super Bowl!?!?), when I come across an altogether different prediction. It read,

White House Predicts Loaves and Fishes for Everyone in Fiscal Year 2038: In early fall 2010, when incumbents were standing for re-election, the Congressional Budget Office predicted the FY2011 federal deficit would be $1.1 trillion, bad enough. On Jan. 26, 2011, the CBO said the real deficit would be $1.5 trillion — the $400 billion increase alone exceeding the worst U.S. total deficit before 2003. What happened on Jan. 25, 2011? President Barack Obama, addressing Congress, called for fiscal restraint.

In January 2000, the Congressional Budget Office projected a federal surplus of $4.3 trillion for the decade ending in 2010. Actual was a deficit of about $6 trillion. Hey, they were off by only $10 trillion! In 2009, the CBO said Social Security outlays would not exceed revenue until 2017 at the earliest. Instead, this has already happened.

ZING! Ya know you’ve been a little loose with taxpayer’s money when ESPN is calling you out for reckless spending! It was enough to make me stop reading , put down the column and say “whoa.” After all, I can pretty much guarantee that there is going to be no worse prediction than being off by $10 trillion. Alright, alright, so maybe the guy saying he was “100 percent positive” that Favre would never play again, was a little worse. But still, $10 trillion is pretty bad.

Franklin D. Roosevelt was an unabashed friend of unions. One of his signature pieces of legislation was the National Labor Relations Act, which encouraged the creation of labor unions and severely limited employer’s ability to respond to the demands of unionized workers. The bill, along with other favorable legislation, made labor unions a dominant group in the so-called New Deal Coalition that carried Democrats to victory for decades. Roosevelt went so far as to say that, “If I went to work in a factory the first thing I’d do is join a union.”

Sadly, things have changed since Roosevelt’s time. Private sector unions have outlived their usefulness and are doing more to harm then help the middle class. Regardless, it is interesting to note that Roosevelt, the stalwart supporter of private sector union rights, was adamantly opposed to public sector unions.

Daniel DiSalvo, a political science professor at the City College of New York, wrote recently in National Affairs,

“Meticulous attention,” the president insisted in 1937, “should be paid to the special relations and obligations of public servants to the public itself and to the Government. . . .The process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service.” The reason? F.D.R. believed that “[a] strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to obstruct the operations of government until their demands are satisfied. Such action looking toward the paralysis of government by those who have sworn to support it is unthinkable and intolerable.” Roosevelt was hardly alone in holding these views, even among the champions of organized labor. Indeed, the first president of the AFL-CIO, George Meany, believed it was “impossible to bargain collectively with the government.”

Roosevelt’s fears about public sector unions are being played out in Wisconsin. In an effort to protect their unsustainable pension system and bargaining practices, many public sector unions have gone on an unofficial strike. Moreover, they’re enlisting other’s help. ABC News reported that “Wisconsin doctors threw their support behind teachers protesting the Republican governor’s attempt to strip unions of their bargaining powers, saying they would write sick notes for teachers to skip work to demonstrate.” Fox News has reported that union workers “obtained the notes from alleged doctors standing on street corners handing them out to whomever asked.”

Classes are being cancelled, school days are being missed, many government functions are at a standstill because of union protests. To reiterate Roosevelt, “such action looking toward the paralysis of government” is “unthinkable and intolerable.”

Wisconsin unions, and the Obama administration who has taken to supporting them, should heed the AFL-CIO’s (the largest federation of unions in the US) historic advice: “In terms of accepted collective bargaining procedures, government workers have no right beyond the authority to petition Congress – a right available to every citizen.”

Then again, unions have shown through word and deed that they think they are above the average citizen.

by Brandon Greife, Political Director

When Mark Zandi speaks, President Obama usually listens.

On the one hand, he’s the chief economist of Moody’s Analytics, a firm that provides capital markets and risk management professions with the latest research and advice. On the other hand, he’s been one of Democrats’ biggest cheerleaders, aggressively supporting an enormous stimulus and further government spending to get the economy on track. As the Washington Post wrote in 2009,

The 49-year-old economist is a Democratic dream, a former adviser to GOP presidential candidate John McCain who advocates spending over tax cuts as the best way to deliver a quick jolt. The founder of Moody’s Economy.com now asserts that even if it reaches $900 billion, the current package may be too small. His PowerPoint presentations are a staple at congressional hearings. In floor speeches and news conferences, Democratic lawmakers confer on Zandi an authority once bestowed on Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman.

Now, Zandi is once again dominating the news, not for agreeing with Obama, but for taking him to task for his budget-busting budget. In an op-ed for the New York Daily News Zandi writes,

President Obama‘s recently released 10-year budget plan doesn’t engender much confidence that our fiscal problems will be resolved anytime soon. Obama has put forth a budget that isn’t sustainable even on paper.

Zandi was never really known for beating around the bush. So while Obama is out spouting comments like, “[W]hen I was sworn in as President, I pledged to cut the deficit in half by the end of my first term. The budget I’m proposing today meets that pledge,” Zandi is happy to provide a dose of perspective. Zandi writes, “The economy is gaining traction and the deficits will narrow as the stimulus fades and tax revenues rise. Even if this President and Congress didn’t do anything, the deficit would nearly be halved this year and early on in the next President’s term.”

In other words, Obama’s budget actually does nothing to help him accomplish his promise. In reality, an improving economy and the resulting higher tax revenues accomplish that. The question is, with Obama’s favorite go-to talking point rendered moot, what exactly does Obama’s budget accomplish? Not much. Zandi writes,

Even when the economy is in full swing, the deficit will still be unsustainably large. Interest payments on the debt will continue to mount, and unless policymakers make some hard choices on government spending and tax policy, the cost will ultimately swamp us.

The answer? Zandi doesn’t give a perfect prescription, choosing to avoid details, in favor of broad principles. Nevertheless, this one-time Obama ally does give Obama one strong nudge in the right direction, saying that “historical experience” shows that the “economies of countries that tackle their budget problems primarily through spending cuts perform better in the long run.”

The question becomes, now that Zandi has gone from supporter to criticizer, will he still have Obama’s ear or will the President find another go-to economist who supports his every move. Time will tell, but one thing is for sure, Obama is losing intellectual allies fast.

by Brandon Greife, Political Director

This White House just can’t get it right.

Earlier this year President Obama’s team was lambasted for their slow and uncoordinated response to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Now, they are being taken to task for how quickly and forcefully they jumped in to stop Wisconsin’s attempt to solve their budget deficit. It’s a sad indictment of a broken Washington when a President is quicker to try and stop deficit reduction than to stop oil from spilling onto our shores.

Nevertheless, the President has held nothing back, deploying his powerful political operation in an effort to thwart Governor Scott Walker’s proposed legislation, which would reduce the state’s debt burden by lowering union benefits. As we detailed on Friday, under Gov. Walker’s bill Wisconsin public employees would still contribute less of their salary to healthcare and pension benefits than the average government worker, much less private sector employee.

Facts unfortunately matter little to Democrats, who see an opportunity to cement the support of a key contributor of both votes and money in the lead up to the crucial 2012 presidential race. Politico reported that, “Organizing for America, Obama’s 2008 grassroots campaign effort posted a statement on its website late Thursday, announcing it “is mobilizing on the ground in Wisconsin to defend the rights of public employees from an attempt by the governor to take away their right to organize.”

Obama himself didn’t hold back from criticizing the legislation, saying “they’re just making it harder for public employees to collectively bargain generally, seem like more of an assault on unions.”

Nevermind, the fact that public employees in Wisconsin must either join the union or pay dues; somehow that fact always gets left out in the discussion over the “right to organize.” And despite President Obama’s attempt to make this an issue of “us versus them” battle, this is not a fight with unions, it’s a fight to fix the deficit.

To his credit, Gov. Walker has avoided attempts to reduce an honest debate to partisan yelling. He told Fox News that, “I’ve said repeatedly [that] good, decent people work for the government. But they shouldn’t be excluded from what everybody else in society is going through in these tough economic times – we’ve all got to be in it together.”

“I think we’re focused on balancing our budget,” Walker said. “It would be wise for the president and others in Washington to focus on balancing their budget, which they are a long ways from doing.”

Sigh. Our President just released a budget that completely ignores the fact that we have an enormous debt crisis, instead adding $7.6 trillion to our debt over the next 10 years. Now, he directs the resources of the Democratic National Committee and his outsized political clout in an attempt to demonize states that are attempting to deal with their own budget concerns. What’s wrong with this picture?

It’s as if Obama’s ego is getting in the way, saying if I can’t reduce the deficit, than nobody can. Sadly, his thought process is not likely so juvenile. Instead, it’s a political play with very high stakes for the American taxpayer. On the one side you have big-government lackeys who create or foster dependence on government programs. They hope is that once people have had their first taste of government spending they will fight tooth and nail to ensure that it’s not removed. On the other side you have the average taxpayer, the one who works hard, creates his own success and pays his taxes.

Over the past few decades the first group has grown in relation to the second. Government and the amount it spends has continued to skyrocket upwards. Now the bill is coming true and so too is the first real test of “progressive” (read: big-government policies).

Gov. Christie in New Jersey has already fought this battle, winning concessions from teachers unions in order to balance his budget without raising taxes. Gov. Walker is now facing the same struggle. But Democratic power players like President Obama weren’t caught off guard this time. They now understand that their worldview is coming under attack by the forces of budgetary prudence and plain old common sense.

Simple concepts like, we can’t spend more than we take in, and, government workers should be paid in line with the private sector, are finally taking root.

The ideological argument to follow will be heated; so it goes when a party’s foundation is threatened. But it is an argument the Wisconsin’s citizens deserve to have because their future is literally at stake. Their state budget is an unmitigated disaster and the status quo is unacceptable. In order to have the adult conversation necessary, Obama and his team of operatives need to turn their attention to Washington, and get to work solving our nation’s problems.

by Brandon Greife, Political Director