Archive for May, 2011

When the government hit its debt limit earlier this month, the Treasury Department warned of the desperate need for a vote to increase the debt ceiling by mid-August. Leaders on both sides have speculated that without the vote, the U.S. would likely default on its debts, triggering a massive financial crisis and causing widespread panic among global markets.

Today, the House is expected to reject the administration’s request to lift the $14.3 trillion national debt ceiling. The voting will take place well after Wall Street closes for the day, according to Fox News, and will begin no earlier than 4:45 pm ET. This late afternoon/early evening voting is a precautionary measure to avoid impacting the market as the House did in September 2008 when it failed to approve the TARP/bailout bill and more than $1.2 trillion in market capitalization washed away.

The GOP House majority has brought up a “clean” bill, under which there would be an increase to the limits on government borrowing, without also making large cuts to federal spending. According to CNN, “The bill would ensure Washington’s ability to keep paying its bills through the end of 2012.” This “free-of-spending-cuts” proposal seems to be exactly what many Democrats have called for, so why would the Republicans provide them with the opportunity to vote on it? The reality is far more strategic than it appears! According to USA Today:

“No Republicans are expected to vote for the “clean” debt limit increase and Democrats, with 192 members, don’t have enough votes to pass the measure by Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich. In addition, the GOP leadership has structured the vote so that it would require a two-thirds majority to pass.”

The vote is intended to expose fault lines within the Democratic caucus, and Republicans are depending on a large number of Democrats to vote with them tonight. Despite the fact that House Democratic leaders have long advocated for the conditions presented in the “clean” debt limit increase, their support of the proposal is expected to fall short in tonight’s vote. According to CNN:

“The vote was scheduled by GOP leaders to show that any attempt to divorce an increase in the debt ceiling from deficit-reduction efforts — a move initially favored by the Obama White House — is a political non-starter.”

GOP leaders believe the failure of the debt limit vote to pass will send a clear message to the White House about the unity of the Republican caucus– and just in time for their meeting with President Obama! Tomorrow, Obama plans to speak with Republican House members about the administration’s ongoing budget negotiations, which include the debt-ceiling. Perhaps the GOP will successfully demonstrate their unity and determination in dealing with budget crises and impress even Obama himself? If only!

By: Blair Newman

So I saw Hangover II over the weekend. As with so many summer movies, I go with lowered expectations and yet still leave feeling less than satisfied.

I get it. The summer is not Oscar season. Nobody is gaining or losing tons of weight for a role. There are no plots examining gender identity, drug abuse, or growing up in a broken home. The closest thing you get to a period piece is Pirates of the Caribbean and the only wars you are likely to see will involve robots or aliens. It’s pure dumbed-down entertainment, and I know that going in, but I still can’t help feeling let down.

It was much the same emotion as when I saw the recently released economic numbers. I knew they were not going to be good, but dang, did they have to be this bad?

According to the Commerce Department, gross domestic product (GDP) grew at an annual rate of 1.8 percent in the first quarter. Not only is that well below the 3.1 percent pace from the last three months of 2010, that’s considerably less than the 2.2 percent growth that many experts expected.

Now I learn that even that measly figure, the movie equivalent of say, Transformers 3: Dark Side of the Moon (don’t even try and argue with me that this will be good), is actually more like Freddie Got Fingered (possibly the worst movie evah). Business Insider explains the reason for the hearty downgrade:

The way the government calculates real GDP is to start with nominal GDP–the actual change in the output of the economy as measured by adding up all the actual sales prices (“nominal”)–and then “deflating” this number by subtracting an estimated inflation rate. Thus, the government backs into the real GDP growth number, starting with nominal prices and then adjusting for inflation.

Well, the “GDP deflater” the government is using right now–the estimated rate of inflation–is only 1.9%. As anyone who has been to a supermarket of gas station recently can attest, this assumption is preposterously low.

The government’s actual estimate of quarter one inflation was 5.7 percent, not 1.9 percent. According to Business Insider’s calculations, using this inflation number you see that first quarter GDP “growth” was actually -1.82 percent.

Negative! This is a recovery for goodness sakes! We’re supposed to be seeing economic growth numbers north of 5 percent, certainly nothing less than that, and in the name of all things holy, not negative. That just seems downright impossible. It’s like bringing Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and Harrison Ford back to make Indiana Jones 4 and finding a way to screw it up. Oh wait, that’s not impossible, it already happened.

For comparison’s sake let’s take a look at another director, Ronald Reagan, aka the Scorcese of economic recoveries. After the end of the 1981-82 recession economic growth shot to as high as 9.3 percent, spent the next few quarters hovering around 8 percent, and then settled back into a normal rhythm of around 4 percent annual growth. By contrast Obama – aka the Michael Bay of presidents (loud, flashy, often pretty, but always terrible) – has eked out one quarter of 5 percent growth, and then averaged around 2.5 percent growth.

Different results are matched by contrasting strategies. Reagan pushed spending restraint, Obama massively increaesed spending; Reagan deregulated entire industries, Obama has overseen massive regulatory expansions; and Reagan focused on free markets, while Obama continues to sit on three pending free trade agreements.

Fortunately, the House Republicans just released a jobs plan, including great ideas like lowering the corporate tax rate and reducing government regulations. But it will take the White House and the Senate Democrats to really achieve the policies we need for lasting growth.

Otherwise our economy will be stuck in a disappointing hangover, one that might even overshadow my disappointment in the Hangover.

The Iceman Cometh, the inspiration for our title, is a decidedly depressing play. It’s set it an old Greenwich Village saloon populated by lowlifes of every sort. The group of men who serve as the focus of the plot spend their lives attempting to drown their sorrows in the company of a good stiff drink. Their only hope in the world is the anticipation of a visit by a traveling salesman, Theodore Hickman, who often turns up at the saloon after a sales trip and becomes the life of a party.

But when Hickey finally arrives it becomes clear he’s a changed man. He has become a convert, finding salvation in places decidedly north of the bottom of a bottle of whiskey.

President Obama is our Hickey. We, the struggling masses, looked on with doe-eyed anticipation that he would lead our nation out of its doldrums and back toward prosperity. Displaying our naïveté, we expected him to accomplish it through sheer force of will and charisma.

What we received was decidedly not what was advertised. We hoped that Obama would bring change to the way Washington worked. That it would be smaller, more efficient, and spend less of our money. Instead, government continues to grow larger, and the only change that appears imminent is higher taxes.

The taxman cometh. And he cometh with a vengeance.

As economic writer and policy analyst Stephen Moore wrote in this week’s Wall Street Journal,

If the Democrats’ millionaire surtax were to happen—and were added to other tax increases already enacted last year and other leading tax hike ideas on the table this year—this could leave the U.S. with a combined federal and state top tax rate on earnings of 62%. That’s more than double the highest federal marginal rate of 28% when President Reagan left office in 1989. Welcome back to the 1970s.

How does he arrive at that astounding figure?

Well first you take today’s top income tax rate of 35 percent, then you:

• Remove the Bush-era tax policies which lowered the rates for almost all tax brackets
• Reinstate the “personal exemption phase-out” which prevents certain people from taking itemized deductions
• Add Medicare payroll taxes which contain no wage cap
• Factor in the new 0.9 percent surtax on anyone with any family earning more $250,000 contained in Obamacare
• Add in the President’s proposal to eliminate the income ceiling in the Social Security tax
• Insert a new 3 percent millionaire surtax that has been proposed by Democrats

Put it all together and you have a tax rate north of 60 percent, and that doesn’t even include the White House’s plan to dramatically raise taxes on investment income.

This enormous tax burden poses a real threat to economic growth. People respond to incentives. The higher the marginal tax rate (the tax on the last dollar of income earned) the lower the incentive to increase productivity, raise investment, or engage in entrepreneurial activity.

This has been proven in study after study. Economist Robert Barro found that the world’s twenty fastest growing economies either all had low marginal rates or cut their rates in half prior to 2002. After surveying many studies Karabegovic found that, “The evidence from economic research indicates that . . . high and increasing marginal taxes have serious negative consequences on economic growth, labor supply and capital formation.” Nobel Laureate Robert Lucas found that high marginal tax rates on capital dramatically reduce economic growth by reducing the stock of capital. There’s plenty more, but I think you get the point.

The Taxman Cometh, not to bring us good news or kick off the economic boom needed to get this country back on track, but to tell us the sobering fact that he intends to raise taxes. Like the characters in the famous play, the Taxman’s arrival is enough to drive me to the drink.

If you’ve read this blog long enough (or at all) you’ve likely come away with the feeling that the government isn’t really good at doing much of anything. Well, after some deep searching we’ve finally come across something that the government is good at; no, spectacular at! It’s a field in which they are innovative enough to put Steve Jobs to shame, successful enough to make Mark Zuckerberg blush, and wily enough to make Warren Buffet fall down in praise.

What field is this you may ask? Why, finding incredibly dumb ways to spend our money of course!

Fortunately, if the government has proven itself to be the Moriarty of waste then Senator Tom Coburn has revealed himself to be Sherlock Holmes. He’s issued report after report detailing the ridiculous ways Washington has distributed our tax dollars. He’s found everything from $1 million to build a guardrail around a lake that doesn’t even exist, to $144,000 to see how monkeys react to cocaine, to $18 million for a sports complex for the town of Lakewood Village (pop. 3,050).

And now the spending sleuth is back with another damning report. Entitled “Under the Microscope,” Sen. Coburn takes a deeper look into the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Now, let’s begin by saying that the NSF has a very important mission. With $6.87 billion in funding, the NSF represents approximately 20 percent of all federally funded research conduced in U.S. colleges and universities. It’s in large part responsible for the creation of the internet for goodness sakes!

There is also a growing fear that America is falling behind the rest of the world in math and science. That can have dramatic economic impacts as new technologies, innovations, research, and the products that those processes lead to, begin to shift overseas.

That said, our government has become conditioned to the idea that more money is always the best solution to any problem. Unfortunately, history rarely bears that out, especially in the field of education where billions more is spent but academic achievement remains stagnant. So when the President proposes to increase the NSF’s budget by 18 percent, it’s healthy to wonder…is that money being spent wisely and effectively? And as Sen. Coburn’s report shows, it’s hard to believe the answer is “yes.”

According to Sen. Coburn,

“The good news for taxpayers is there is no question NSF has contributed significantly to scientific discovery.

The bad news is a significant percentage of your money is going to what most Americans will consider fraud, waste, and abuse, and there are many areas where NSF could contribute far more with better management and smarter targeting of resources.”

Among the $3 billions in waste that Coburn finds (note: that’s almost half of their budget):

• Mismanagement of Funds: The agency currently has $1.7 billion in undisbursed grant money, calling into question the $1 billion in additional funds under the President’s budget
• Lack of Accountability: The Office of Inspector General has found that the NSF’s grant management activities have been poor, including monitoring awardees’ financial accountability, performance, and results.
• Duplication: The government has 17 different science programs, each with different reporting structures and metrics. As just an example of the problems this creates, one University of Florida researcher was found to have received funding from three federal agencies for the same exact proposal
• Questionable Projects:  Among them – A $79,998 grant to discover that “the best [sports] players will tend to choose winning [college] programs.” Brilliant! A $3 million study to determine whether sick shrimp could run on a treadmill as long as healthy shrimp. Genius! And a $315,000 grant to figure out whether playing Farmville helps develop relationships. Eureka!

America must improve its educational foundation in math and science. But after reading this report it’s clear that spending our money more wisely is the answer, not simply spending more money.

“We can’t play under two sets of rules . . . I don’t think this is healthy. But it is the system we have. And you can’t expect one side to operate under one set of rules and the other side to operate under another.” – David Axelrod, Senior Communications Adviser to the President

Axelrod was talking about the emergence of Democratic organizations designed to pump millions in anonymous contributions to candidates in the upcoming elections. If Republicans were going to do it and get away with it, then screw the moral high-ground, Democrats were going to do it to.

And that pretty much sums up how I’m feeling about the Medicare debate right about now. Republicans have tried to have an adult conversation on how to reform our broken entitlement system. We’ve tried to speak honestly and responsibly about the need to get government spending under control.

Where has it gotten us? Nowhere.  For God’s sake just this past week Democrats released an ad portraying Paul Ryan as literally throwing an elderly woman out of her wheelchair and off a cliff. How can you expect to have a genuine debate when that is what you’re up against?

So screw it. I’m pulling a Tony Montana from Scarface. “You wanna play rough? Okay. I play rough. Say hello to my little friend!”

Maintaining the status quo wouldn’t just push grandma over a cliff, it would pile the entire family, children and all, into the car and jam on the gas. We’re going out Thelma and Louise style.

But don’t take my word for it. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, former Medicare Trustee, Thomas Saving, and president of the National Center for Policy Analysis, John Goodman, explain just how Obamacare will kill Medicare.

“Almost no one familiar with the numbers thinks that the planned brute-force cuts in Medicare spending are politically feasible . . .

But suppose the law is implemented just as written. In that case, according to Medicare Trustees, Medicare’s long-term unfunded liability fell by $53 trillion on the day Obamacare was signed.

But at what cost to the elderly? . . . In terms of sheer dollars involved, the law’s reduction in future Medicare payments is the equivalent of raising the eligibitliy age for Medicare to age 68 for today’s 65 year-olds, to age 71 for 55-year-olds and to age 73 for 45-year olds. But rather than keep the system as is and raise the age of eligibility, the reform law instead tries to achieve equivalent savings by paying less to the providers of care.”

It’s such an important piece that I urge you to read it in it’s entirety (HERE), but hopefully that snippet gave you a since of the sheer idiocy that Democrats are attempting to pass off as saving Medicare.

All Obamacare did was wave a magic wand and essentially mandate that costs be lower. That’s not reform, that’s madness. For Democrats to achieve any of the savings that they propose, doctors and hospitals would see enormous cuts in the amount of money they receive for accepting Medicare patients. At best, elderly patients would receive reduced quality of care or fewer treatment options; at worst, doctors will refuse to accept Medicare patients at all.

This is the reality that Republicans have been fighting tooth and nail to try and avoid. We’ve offered a plan that would fundamentally stabilize Medicare’s finances, using market forces and the freedom of choice to keep health care costs in check. Is it a perfect proposal? No. Is it the only proposal out there? Yes, because Democrats are more happy to demagogue any proposed solution rather than present their own. Is it akin to pushing grandma off a cliff? Hell no.

But maintaining the status quo is. The precious present, which Democrats seem to be fighting to hard to keep will inevitably push America into default. It would make the recent recession look like childs play. Trillions of dollars in wealth would likely be lost, our debt interest payments would skyrocket by untold billions, and millions of people would be unemployed. You wanna talk about scary. Beat that.

When Bill Clinton talks, Democrats tend to listen. And for good reason. Despite his personal foibles, Clinton still ranks as the most popular political figure in the country. Despite his liberal views on many issues, he’s come to enjoy a deep respect across the ideological spectrum, a sage voice of reason in a sea of crazies.

Thus, Clinton’s words carry a certain currency that has only appreciated in the inflationary political dialogue of our times. That’s what makes his stern words to his fellow Democrats on the issue of Medicare so deeply important.

At a fiscal summit put together by the Peter G. Peterson foundation Clinton said, “I think the Democrats are going to have to be willing to give up, maybe, some short-term political gain by whipping up fears on some of these things – if it’s reasonable Social Security proposal, a reasonable Medicare proposal. We’ve got to deal with these things. You cannot have health care devour the economy.”

It was a stunning statement that sliced to the very heart of the political problem we face. Washington has spent so long buying votes by adding benefits to Medicare, Social Security, and the like, that they’ve become as popular as they are bloated. As Republicans have bet their fortunes on reform, Democrats have made a Faustian bargain. They’ve chosen to defend the status quo, not because they believe it to be a sustainable fiscal course, but because they know it is an easier sell to the voters.

This, Clinton says, is a strategy Democrats must leave behind if America is to truly step back from the debt abyss.

His advice is even more important given Republican’s loss in the New York special election. Democrat Kathy Hochul, an early longshot in a solidly conservative district, came from behind to win. Although there were many reasons for the upset, most notably a fake Tea Party candidate, Democrats have seized on the results as a referendum on Paul Ryan’s Medicare reform plan.

At the fiscal summit, ABC News John Karl overheard a candid conversation in which Ryan expressed his fear to President Clinton that the election results would cause the debate to “sink into a paralysis.” “You know the math,” and then almost despondently concluded, “we knew we were putting ourselves out there.”

Ryan can foresee the tough times ahead. His plan was already on the receiving end of a blunt attack campaign and the election results would only strengthen the opposition’s resolve. His bold and brave plan to save Medicare from going bust threatened to wilt under the weathering heat of Democrats’ hot air.

Hopefully Ryan was heartened by Clinton’s speech. Clinton told the crowd, that “You shouldn’t draw the conclusion that the New York race means that nobody can do anything to slow the rate of Medicare costs. . . [B]ut I’m afraid that the Democrats will draw the conclusion that . . . we shouldn’t do anything and I completely disagree with that.”

Sadly, Clinton’s sage words have already been proven true. The morning following the election results, Guy Cecil, the executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee issued a statement arguing that “Democrats will be able to play offense in Senate races across the country by remaining focused on the Republican effort to end Medicare.”

Senate Majority Leader stepped up the rhetoric even further, using his time on the floor to say, “The Republican plan to kill Medicare is a plan to make the rich richer and the sick sicker.”

Apparently Bill Clinton’s voice of reason no longer holds sway among Democrats. They’re become too enamored with the trappings of power to consider ceding a political advantage, even for the good of the nation. Democrats may have tuned him out, but here’s hoping Americans are still listening, because his words simply can’t be repeated enough “We’ve got to deal with these things.”

Americans are a forgetful and forgiving people.

It’s pretty much built in our DNA. Not too long ago Michael Vick was slaughtering dogs, now people root for him like he’s an underdog. Kobe Bryant was once accused of sexually assaulting a hotel employee, now he’s one of the most popular sports stars on the planet. Mike Tyson wasn’t just accused, but was convicted of rape, then upon release, bit off part of another boxer’s ear, and yet fans will still anxiously await his cameo in this summer’s The Hangover 2.

To say we have short memories is an understatement. We have tweet-length memories. After 140 characters, I’ve probably forgotten about it.

But even with our perpetual willingness to forgive and forget, the Democrats latest attempt to pull the wool over our eyes has us saying “really?”

Take Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Just last month, Reid was pushing for a clean vote to raise the debt ceiling, saying “We don’t have to attach anything. It’s a debate.” In fact, Reid said that he hoped any debt reduction proposals would move as “a separate piece of legislation” because such measures have “nothing to do with attaching it to the debt ceiling.”

Republicans realized how irresponsible this was. Americans overwhelmingly want any increase in the debt ceiling to be tied to spending reductions and procedural reforms. So they called Harry Reid’s bluff.

This week, Senate Republicans announced that they force a clean debt limit vote, free of any spending reductions, programmatic cuts, or reforms. If Democrats wanted to show the people that they were content to spend like usual, then so be it, this would be their chance.

Realizing that many Democrats actually care enough about the deficit (or at least the politics behind it) to not vote for a clean bill, Harry Reid was forced to do a bit of backtracking. Despite his earlier call for a clean vote he now called such a vote “irresponsible” and said it would send “a terrible message to the international community.”

C’mon you didn’t expect us to forget that, did ya Harry?!?

But Harry Reid wasn’t alone in his underestimating the collective memory power of voters. Almost every Senate Democrat has done the same thing. Take a look at some of these statements from Democrats praising President Obama’s budget as a “wise” and “responsible proposal”:

• Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY): “This is a responsible proposal . . . I belive this approach should have bipartisan support.”
• Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE): “The President’s budget is an important step forward”
• Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH): “…a responsible framework that balances economic growth and the need to address the deficit”
• Sen. Bill Nelson: “I personally think that the President’s budget is a step in the right direction”
• Sen. Kent Conrad: “The President’s budget gets it about right in the first year”
• Sen. Max Baucus: “The President’s budget…strengthens our economy”

The love fest could go on forever, but I think you get the point – Democrats were nearly falling over themselves in the rush to gush over the President’s budget.

Yea, well that all went down the drain. Last night the Senate voted on President Obama’s budget proposal. It went down in flames, being rejected by a vote of 0 to 97. Yes, you read that right. The President’s budget received zero votes. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Squadoosh.

On both occasions Democrats are hoping you would forget. Forget, that not even they believe the words that are coming out of their own mouths. It’s a clever tightrope they’re trying to walk – talking a big game on to placate liberal voters, while voting with a dose of moderation to show everyone else their sane. But you can only ride a one-trick pony so far before Americans catch on to the fact that you’ve let politics supplant any sense of principle.

Sure Americans may be forgetful and forgiving. But it appears Democrats have confused that with stupidity.

Congressional Democrats and the online Left have found the One Graph to rule them all

The graph shows that the Bush-era tax cuts and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars account for a hefty chunk of the debt in 2019. Influential liberal blogger Ezra Klein writes, “In other words, cut the financial crisis and the major initiatives from the Bush-era out of the picture, and we’d be in pretty good shape. In fact, we’d be in great shape.”

There are several things wrong with this analysis that I’d like to deal with in turn:

1. The graph hides the truth of what would have happened if the Bush tax cuts had not have been passed,
2. It misleads the reader as to Democrats stance on the Bush-era tax policies
3. It provides a favorable snapshot that fails to tell the underlying story of our problems, and
4. Just stop with the “Bush-era tax cuts” name game

Hiding the Truth

Since World War II tax revenues have averaged around 18 percent of GDP. The CBO predicts that if the Bush tax cuts are not continued, tax revenues will jump to 23 percent of GDP by 2035. In CBO’s words, “the tax system would be quite different from what it is today. Households at all points in the income scale would pay a higher share of their income in taxes than similar households pay today.” In fact, without tax relieft, taxation would have increased by more than 30 percent as a share of the economy!

By contrast, passing and extending the Bush tax cuts put tax revenues much more in line with their historical norm. In fact, the CBO predicts that even with a permanent extension of the Bush-era tax policies, “revenues as a share of GDP after 2020 are roughly 1 percentage point higher under . . . than the average share observed over the past 40 years.

So when the graph hints at the notion that the Bush-era tax policies are a main contributor to our deficit, they are comparing that to a reality in which never-before-seen tax burdens would have been thrust upon Americans.

Democrats Support the Bush Tax Cuts Too

The graph points to the Bush-era tax cuts as the main offender in causing our current fiscal woes. If only we’d have got rid of them last August we’d be on our way towards a balanced budget. That’s pure revisionist history.

Neither party was advocating for getting rid of all of the tax cuts. Sure, Republicans wanted to keep all of them in place, realizing that the more money taxpayers got to keep in their pockets, the better it would be for the economy, but Democrats wanted to keep the vast majority of them in place.

The problem is that when people hear “Bush tax cuts” their mind automatically drifts to the wealthy, when in fact, most of the cuts went to the middle class. According to the Treasury, extending the Bush tax cuts for everyone costs the federal government $3.8 trillion over the next 10 years. Only $680 billion of that is for the wealthy, $3.1 trillion of that is for the middle class.

The graph touts a supposed cure, but it’s important to remember that its one Democrats never pushed for.

Misleading Snapshot

Let’s remember that the graph only looks through 2019. This happens to conveniently be just prior to the explosion in entitlement costs as the Baby Boom quickly falls into retirement. When Ezra Klein says “we’d be in great shape” if we took the Bush-era policies out of the picture, he’s completely off-base. A correct statement would be “our nation’s balance sheet may look a little better for a few years, in large part because everyone is paying enormously higher taxes, but soon Medicare and Medicaid costs will push us towards default.”

Stop with the Language Tricks

As Keith Hennessey has tried his best to hammer home, “At some point a policy flips from extending a tax cut to preventing a tax increase. The top marginal income tax rate has been 35% for almost ten years . . . Most DC Democrats try to have it both ways; they talk about preventing tax increases on the middle class but oppose extending tax cuts for the rich. This rhetorical inconsistency masks a parallel situation in law and policy. Either they’re both extending tax cuts, or they’re both preventing tax increases.”

But why stop with Bush? Liberal icon John Kennedy cut the top tax rates from 91 percent to 70 percent. Why don’t we have a graph looking at how much those increased the deficit? Something tells me it has a lot more to do with demonizing a Republican president than serving as a sensible dividing line.

Solving the Medicare quandary has transfixed Washington for years. Sadly, Democrats have got nothing. No ideas, no plans, no guesses, nada. When asked what their plan was to fix the fiscally broken program, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said, “It is a flag we’ve planted that we will have to protect and defend. We have a plan. It’s called Medicare.”

It’s a very interesting strategy. Democrats plan to fix Medicare, is, well, Medicare. Don’t worry it doesn’t make sense to us either.

Such stunning closed-mindedness is reminiscent of an story from ancient Rome. Master craftsman Filippo Brunelleschi was bidding for a commission to build what would have been the largest domed structure in the world – the Duomo of Florence. At a meeting with the other artisans trying for the job, they became furious with his mysterious design that seemed to rely on nothing for support.

After continual pestering, Brunelleschi finally pulled out an egg and challenged them all to stand the egg on its end. They looked at him as if he was either insane, or a genius who had figured out how to accomplish the impossible. Each of them tried and failed repeatedly to get the egg to stand up. Finally, in exasperation, Brunelleschi grabbed the egg and tapped it firmly on the table, cracking the bottom, and getting it to stand upright. The others protested saying that had they known that’s how he intended to it, they could have easily accomplished the same thing. Brunelleschi retorted that they also would know how to create the enormous dome if they were just allowed to view his plans.

Republicans, are the Brunelleschi of Medicare. Just as Brunelleschi had meticulously figured out a way to support a ceiling with no visible supports, Republicans have figured out how to fix Medicare without raising taxes. They’ve discovered a plan to make it solvent not only for this generation, but for the foreseeable future, without bankrupting the Treasury.

This has only made Democrats more incredulous. Like the competing sculptors from the story, obviously piqued that they lacked the creativity to come up with an answer to the problem, Democrats are pointing fingers and claiming that rules were broken.

“It would end Medicare as we know it,” has become the consistent refrain. Yes, and Brunelleschi had to change the egg “as he knew it” in order to get to stand on its end. There was just no other way to solve the problem.

Medicare is much the same quandary. No matter how much you search for little tweaks that would, as if by magic, right the otherwise sinking ship, Medicare continues to drown in its debts. So what it needs is a firm hand and a brilliant mind. It needs to be broken, if only a little, to get it to stand up straight without rolling over.

That firm hand is Paul Ryan’s reform plan. Ryan would transition Medicare into a premium support system that provided generous payments to seniors, allowing them to purchase health care services on their own. To allay any fears about the size of the payments, seniors would receive just as much as today’s Medicare beneficiaries indexed to inflation.

Although Democrats are vociferously opposing this much-needed change, the term “premium support” was actually coined by two Democratic economists. In fact, a similar proposal was the chief recommendation made by the Commission on Medicare reform, chaired by Democratic Senator John Breaux. The liberal think-tank Brookings Institute has even extolled the numerous benefits of a premium-support system,

Why would premium support produce better care for Medicare beneficiaries at more sustainable rates of growth? First, with competition among the plans on the Exchange and improving information about plan outcomes, seniors can be expected to migrate to lower cost and higher quality plans. Second, capping the subsidy’s growth at a sustainable rate would make the government’s contribution predictable and incent movement to more efficient health care delivery.

With their Medicare plan, Republicans are trying to build something momentous and beautiful. Something that will stand the test of time and be rivaled by other nations. Something like the Duomo! Sadly, the other “architects” have consistently failed to think outside the box. All the while, our Medicare program has begun to crumble to the point where economists have already foretold its inevitable collapse.

They just don’t understand that sometimes you have to break a few eggs…

Aha! I’ve finally figured it out. I knew those dastardly Democrats must have known something that the rest of us didn’t. Why else would they continually refuse to face up to our nation’s fiscal challenges or at the very least offer a budget! It’s because they knew the world was ending.

Surely you’ve heard by now, because the media has become utterly fascinated with a small, but vocal sect of Christians who have read and interpreted passages of the Bible to mean that May 21, 2011 is judgment day. That’s right. Hope you didn’t have plans for Monday, because this weekend is it folks…the end of the world.

But while many simply find the prophecy amusing, amiably shrugging off the multitude of billboards, ads, and news stories that proliferate by the day, it seems that Democrats have really taken the message to heart. Since the world is apparently ending, they’ve decided to let out their inner bon vivant. The deficit be damned they say, let’s spend like it’s 2009, we’ll pay it back when we’re dead.

Of course, I’m only kidding. Although it wouldn’t be the craziest thing to ever happen. OK, actually it would be the craziest thing. I’m pretty sure not even Charlie Sheen could top the end of the world in terms of “crazy,” although I’m not sure I’d dare him to try.

But I am serious about the Democrats hedonistic behavior in the face of what is certain to be some very dark times for the United States, end of the world or not. Sure, it may not be the rapture, but a sovereign debt crisis, is not going to be much fun either.

Yet that is exactly the path we are headed down. No one disputes that our entitlement spending is sustainable. Ever-rising health care costs are pushing Medicaid and Medicare cost growth well beyond the rate of inflation. A broken Social Security formula combined with an aging population has already forced the Social Security program into permanent deficits. And as for everything else in the bloated Washington budget, well, Congress hasn’t exactly been too good at keeping those costs down either.

Despite these quickly rising costs Democrats have failed to even present a budget! In fact, it has been 752 days since the Senate Budget Committee, led by Democrats, have introduced a budget document. 752 days!

What’s more, they’ve recently said that they have no plans to introduce one anytime soon. On Thursday,  Roll Call reported, “Senate Democrats are punting for now on a budget resolution,” citing Budget Chairman Kent Conrad’s statement that “after broad consultation, we have decided to defer a budget mark-up.”

Producing a budget is not only a statutory duty, one in which Democrats have consistently ignored, but it is also an opportunity to present a vision for government. Their opportunity to lay out a plan for what America should look like – how to fix entitlements, the proper size of government, how much to raise taxes, etc.

Long ago, Representative Paul Ryan introduced the Republican budget vision. A bold plan that gradually eliminates our deficit through free market reforms of our government’s biggest and most broken programs. Democrats didn’t waste any time trying to rip the plan to pieces, labeling it as “extreme” and engaging in partisan scare tactics aimed at the elderly and poor.

Of course, it is easy to attack someone else’s plan when you don’t have one of your own. Likewise, its difficult for Republicans to be able to criticize a plan that doesn’t even exist. But early details of the Democrats unreleased budget plan show it is going to be worthy of derision.

The Washington Post reported that the Democrats plan would raise taxes by nearly $2 trillion over the next decade. It also hinted that entitlement reforms were likely to be off the table, meaning that as their costs continue to grow rapidly over the next decade, taxes will likewise continue to grow. With so many taxes it is no wonder Democrats were loathe to introduce the plan. That strategy allows them to ignore tough votes on their own budget, while continuing to lambast Republican’s vision from their untouchable ivory tower.

How long will the Democrats continue to ignore their statutory and societal duty? How long will they prevent America from engaging in a true debate over competing visions for the role of government? How long will they attempt to hide the fact that their plan is simply to raise taxes? Well that depends. I have a feeling that their waiting to see if Saturday really is the end of the world. If so, it may ultimately come as a relief.