Archive for the ‘The Voice of Young Conservatives Blog’ Category

Government debt currently stands at a staggering $15 trillion. Even more troubling, over the next 10 years the CBO projects that Washington will rack up another $13 trillion.

Set against that backdrop, finding $1.2 trillion in spending cuts over the next decade shouldn’t have been difficult. Nevertheless, the so-called Deficit Supercommittee has failed to do just that. In a joint-statement by co-chairs Rep. Hensarling (R-TX) and Sen. Murray (D-WA), they came to the conclusion that a deal would not be done before tonight’s deadline.

“We have come to the conclusion today that it will not be possible to make any bipartisan agreement available to the public before the committee’s deadline,” the statement reads.

“Despite our inability to bridge the committee’s significant differences, we end this process united in our belief that the nation’s fiscal crisis must be addressed and that we cannot leave it for the next generation to solve.”

The “significant differences” the statement diplomatically alludes to is whether higher taxes should be used to make up for Washington’s spending addiction.

A good case could be made that tax hikes shouldn’t be included in any deficit reduction plan. After all, the CBO projects that even if the Bush-tax cuts are extended, government revenues will rise above their historical averages over the next few years. Moreover, a quick glance at the White House’s “Historical Tables” shows pretty plainly the role that spending has played in creating our unsustainable debt. Consider this: in 2001, just a short decade ago, total federal government spending was $1.8 trillion; today, that figure has more than doubled to $3.8 trillion. By contrast, our population has only grown by less than 9 percent.

Nevertheless, in the spirit of compromise and reaching a deal, Republican members of the Deficit Supercommittee indicated their willingness to give a little on Democrats tax demands. Sen. Toomey (R-PA) offered a plan that would have raised tax revenue by about $300 billion over the next decade by limiting tax breaks in return for lower rates. And that’s on top of other revenue sources like $40 billion from changing the formula for adjusting tax brackets for inflation and $200 billion spectrum sales and user fees.

In essence, it was a 2-for-1. New revenues would have flowed into Washington’s coffers for deficit reduction and the long-overdue process of reforming our broken tax code would be accomplished.

But Democrats were having none of it. The lowest they were willing to go on new revenues was $1.3 trillion, which would have ranked as the second largest tax hike in American history. Notably, this is a much more hardline stance than they took during the heated debt-limit negotiations in which a tentative agreement was reached to cut $3.2 trillion in return for $800 billion in new revenues, a 4-to-1 ratio of cuts to taxes. In contrast, a 3-to-1 ratio would have allowed the Deficit Supercommittee to succeed in its mission.

Even worse, Democrats actually wanted to use the Deficit Supercommittee to increase the deficit. Their proposal included a budget gimmick that used “savings” from ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to pay for new spending on infrastructure!

Only a true spending addict would use a committee whose sole purpose was to reduce the deficit to spend more and increase the deficit.

But while the Super Committee turned out to be less than, well, super, that doesn’t mean Washington can simply sit by while we continue down the road to bankruptcy. Spending can still be cut. Government can still be made smaller. Waste and duplication can still be rooted out. If Democrats aren’t even to do those commonsense things, then Americans should find representatives who will in 2012.

“I literally picked up the phone and called Jon Corzine and said, Jon, what do you think we should do. The reason we called Jon is that we knew that he knew about the economy, about world markets, how we had to respond, unlike almost anyone we knew. It was because he had been in the pit – because he had been in the furnace. And we trusted his judgment,” – Vice President Joe Biden speaking in 2009.

Now, Jon Corzine finds himself disgraced. After losing to Republican Chris Christie in the New Jersey governors race, Corzine took over MF Global – one of the world’s preeminent derivatives brokers. MF Global is now kaput, losing two-thirds of its market value under Corzine’s leadership. The firm ultimately filed for bankruptcy and is currently under a federal investigation into more than $600 million of missing customer money.

If this is where the Obama team was getting their economic advice, it is little wonder they find themselves in trouble.

Corzine was destroyed by betting his clients money on European bonds, which if you’ve been following world news, you’ll understand is a risky, some would say asinine strategy. Greece has been on the verge of collapse for years now and it has threatened to drag the entire eurozone down with it. Italy, Spain, Portugal, and even France, have seen their bond rates soar, threatening to make their debt service unsustainable.

The Obama Administration made a completely different, but no less risky, bet. They used taxpayer money to gamble on green energy technologies.

The question has become whether or not Obama Administration’s decisions were made based on sound economics or pure politics. Sadly, it appears to be the latter.

In testimony before Congress yesterday, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said, “My decision to guarantee a loan to Solyndra was based on the analysis of professional – experience professionals and on the strength of the information they had available to them at the time.”

That’s the correct answer, but is it accurate?

A 2009 email correspondence from the Energy Department and Obama officials would suggest it is not. “The issue of working capital remains unresolved. The issue is cash balances, not costs. Solyndra seemed to agree that the model runs out of cash September 2011, even in the best case without any stress,” said one email, which prophetically nailed the date of Solyndra’s bankruptcy.

Moreover, Solyndra’s troubles weren’t exactly an industry secret. A November 2010 article from Renewable World revealed fundamental flaws in the solar manufacturer’s balance sheet and business model. They wrote,

“In the last year, there have been numerous stories about CIGS thin-film manufacturer Solyndra’s troubles – a pulled IPA, a restructuring of the executive team, and, most troubling, the high cost of module production. (In an S-1 filing a year ago, the company said its average sales price was over $3.20 a watt, about 65% more than leading crystalline-silicon PV manufacturers. Its cost of manufacturing was over $6 a watt.”

In other words, Solyndra was 65% more expensive than their competitors and lost $2.80 on each watt of electricity they produced. To be fair, Solyndra said they hoped to be able to lower costs to $3.50 a watt by the end of 2011, but even under this “best-case” scenario they would have been losing money hand over fist.

In fact, if Secretary Chu’s testimony is to be believed the only thing he did know is that the taxpayers are unlikely to be paid back. When asked how much money the government will be able to cover, Secretary Chu responded “not very much.”

It’s hard to believe that President Obama’s hand-picked chief of the Energy Department didn’t know the risk behind his green energy bets. Then again, it becomes a whole lot easier to believe when you remember that one of their main economic advisors, Jon Corzine, brought a respected company to its knees based on bad bets on European bonds.

This is an Administration who just doesn’t know their economics. It’s time to replace them with people who do.

Today the House of Representatives will vote on a Balanced Budget Amendment (BBA) to the Constitution. It’s not mere hyperbole to say that this is perhaps the most important vote for the future of our generation.

Passage of the Amendment would put an end to Washington’s newfound addiction to deficit spending, an addiction which threatens the fiscal health of the United States. But today’s bad habits will have enormous impacts on young adults who will feel the sting of higher taxes or the pain of reduced government services. Washington has given young adults little reason not to fear this ominous future. In 2011 our budget is more than twice as large as it was in 2001 and our $1.6 trillion deficits is the size of the entire budget of 1982.

Unfortunately, many Democrats, who seem perfectly happy to fritter away the wealth of future generations, are dead set on defeating the bill.

Sadly, the partisan divide that now exists over a Balanced Budget Amendment didn’t always exist. In 1995 a BBA which closely mimics the one that will receive a vote today, passed through the House of Representatives by a vote of 300 to 132 before falling one vote short in the Senate. Included in those numbers were 72 House and 14 Senate Democrats.

“The issue of a balanced budget is not a conservative one or a liberal one, and it is not an easy one,” said Rep. Steny Hoyer at the time, “but it is an essential one.”

“I am absolutely convinced that the long term consequences of refusing to come to grips with the necessity to balance our budget will be catastrophic . . . [T]hose who will pay the highest price for our fiscal irresponsibility, should we fail, will be those least able to protect themselves, and the children of today and the generations of tomorrow,” Hoyer concluded.

At the time Hoyer said that the national debt stood at $5 trillion, a level that would be a dream scenario in today’s Washington. Nevertheless, he understood that unless steps were taken, young adults would pay the price.

Rep. Hoyer is now the Minority Whip in the House, making him responsible for keeping his party in line with Democratic leadership (read: Nancy Pelosi). With a BBA once again coming to the floor, Hoyer has completely flip-flopped.

“What I said in 1995 I absolutely agree with today,” Hoyer recently told reporters. “Unfortunately, I did not contemplate the irresponsibility that I have seen fiscally over the last nine year, or eight years, of the Bush Administration . . .”

With regrets to the 1995 version of Rep. Hoyer, it seems the issue of balanced budgets is a conservative issue. If his recent comments are any indications, liberals have abandoned the idea to instead coalesce around the strategy of blaming Bush (and completely ignoring three years of historic deficits under Obama).

Democrats’ decision to completely abandon the support for a BBA couldn’t come at a worse time. In 1997, the year of the last BBA vote, the national debt was $5.36 trillion. Today it is $14.4 trillion and climbing. Back then our annual deficit was $21.8 billion. Today, that’s less than the average weekly deficit being run under the Obama Administration.

Our growing debt, the fiscal collapse of Europe, our sustained economic malaise – none of it has been enough to derail Washington’s thirst for more spending. Indeed, despite the so-called new era of fiscal responsibility, the federal government is still spending money faster than they did last year!

The inability to rein in deficits is likely driving the overwhelming popularity of a BBA. A recent CNN poll finds that 74 percent of Americans, including 63 percent of Democrats and 65 percent of independents, support passage of a Balanced Budget Amendment. It’s a law that not only brings together parties, but also generations. Indeed, a whopping 73 percent of 18-29 year olds favor a constitutional balanced budget requirement.

Today’s vote could literally change our generation’s future from one filled with debt to one defined by opportunity. Call your lawmakers and let them know you support a BBA by following THIS LINK.

The Keystone XL pipeline put the Obama Administration in a real political bind. On the one hand, lefty environmentalists hated it because it’s an oil pipeline and not solar panels or windmills. On the other hand, lefty labor-types love it because it promised to bring thousands of jobs to a region starved for them.

What’s a president to do! Two of your most important voting demographics pitted against each other on one issue. Disaster!

The internal struggle over the Keystone pipeline turned Obama into a Keystone Kop – a stumbling, bumbling mess of a President who can’t get out of his own way. Rather than make any decisions, Obama did what he always does when facing a difficult choice – he punted.

As a result, the Keystone project, which was first proposed in 2008, has been tangled in government red tape for the last three years, has been delayed until after the election…pending (yet another) environmental regulatory review.

Everyone agrees with the need for safety. After all, our generation would like to inherit a good economy, a balanced budget, and a clean environment. But the Keystone XL project has already jumped through more hoops than a circus tiger and passed with flying colors.

For instance, the State Department’s Supplemental Draft Environmental Impact Statement (the second round of reviews) found that, “from a global perspective, the project is not likely to result in incremental greenhouse gas emissions.” They also found the “proposed project would have a degree of safety over any other typically constructed domestic oil pipeline system.”

Given the glowing reviews, the Keystone finally looked like it was a go, bringing with it more than 13,000 immediate high-wage construction jobs as well as a projected 340,000 additional jobs in related manufacturing and service industries. This seems to be exactly the kind of infrastructure project that Obama said he wanted when he passed the $787 billion stimulus. The only difference is that the Keystone isn’t funded by taxpayers – it’s being paid for completely through private investment!

Or should I say, would have been paid for.

Obama’s decision to engage in another environmental review and allow another public comment period could lead TransCanada, the pipeline’s owner, to look for other alternatives. BusinessWeek reports,

“The U.S. State Department’s decision to delay its review of TransCanada Corp.’s $7 billion Keystone XL pipeline until after next year’s presidential election may doom the project and accelerate Canada’s efforts to ship crude to Asia, Canadian Minister Jim Flaherty said.

“The decision to delay it that long is actually quite a crucial decision. I’m not sure this project would survive that kind of delay,” Flaherty said yesterday in an interview at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Honolulu. “It may mean that we may have to move quickly to ensure that we can export our oil to Asia through British Columbia.””

So not only have we lost thousands of jobs and billions in GDP, but we’ve now potentially damaged the relationship for one of our most secure oil importers. Regardless of Obama’s green dreams, reality (for now) still runs on oil. Unfortunately, most oil producing nations aren’t exactly our friends and aren’t what you’d call stable.

Doesn’t it make more sense, especially in terms of energy security, to import from Canada, than say, Libya? Apparently not to the Obama Administration, who may have foreclosed that option, forcing Canada to look at China as a backup purchaser. And is the environment really better off by shipping oil the 6,000 miles across the Pacific on gas-guzzling tankers to be refined in less regulated tankers?

No. But this wasn’t about creating good policy, it was about avoiding bad politics. And while Obama’s poorly disguised political punt may have avoided the wrath of green-energy fanatics, it should leave the nation’s unemployed wondering why they can’t catch a break.

On a cool January morning a man named James Marshall was taking a walk along the banks of the American River in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. As he looked down he noticed something sparkling in the water, bent down, and scooped up some tiny, yellowish nuggets. Gold.

The rest is history. Word eventually leaked out and the then-sleepy town of San Francisco was inundated with hundreds of thousands of people hoping to strike it rich. Many of them did. In the beginning, the valuable mineral was so prevalent that you could just pick gold nuggets up off the ground.

The California Gold Rush has long been over, but the green-energy gold rush is just beginning. Like gold, taxpayer-funded subsidies are there for the taking. Although Solyndra is the most well-known, the $535 million federal loan guarantee was one of 18 such projects that generated $9.5 billion in clean energy investment, with an addition $9.3 billion in the works.

Washington’s decision to spend such vast sums of cash has drawn struggling green-energy companies like a moth to a flame. Free cash has a tendency to do that.

NRG, a cleverly-named power company, has been one of the main beneficiaries of the Obama Administration’s green energy pipedream. The company, along with its partners, have received $5.2 billion in federal loan guarantees as well of hundreds of millions in other government subsidies for other solar-energy projects.

The New York Times reported that NRG’s chief executive, David W. Crane, told Wall Street Analysts that “the government’s largess was a once-in-a-generation opportunity, and ‘we intend to do as much of this business as we can get our hands on.’”

“I have never seen anything that I have had to do in my 20 years in the power industry that involved less risk than these projects,” the New York Times story quoted him as saying. “It is just filling the desert with panels.”

Not only is the federal government paying them to lay the solar panels, but it is mandating that consumers buy the energy. “These projects, in almost all cases, benefit from legislation that has been passed in about 30 states that pushes local utility companies to buy a significant share of their power from renewable sources, like wind and power,” explains the New York Times.

One green energy CEO joked that “it is like building a hotel, where you know in advance you are going to have 100 percent room occupancy for 25 years.

As if providing them with start-up money wasn’t enough, governments are now in the business of guaranteeing success by mandating a market. I guess that’s one way to ensure that you don’t have to deal with a Solyndra-style debacle anymore.

Like the 49ers before them, it was like picking gold nuggets up off the ground. It is as close to free money as you’ll find. Except it’s not free.

The money, being tossed around like it belongs in a Monopoly game, comes out of every taxpayers’ pocket. Not only is our money being spent on questionable green energy investments but it is completely distorting the energy marketplace, driving out competition and driving up costs.

But there are other, more hidden, costs as well. First, by guaranteeing success, the government is destroying the profit motive that keeps businesses searching for the next technology, the next innovation. Second, by giving green-energy, which is currently vastly more inefficient than traditional energy sources, a tremendous leg-up in the marketplace, it diverts investment from more lucrative societal endeavors. Finally, it snuffs out the potential for a completely new and potentially better technology to emerge. Why gamble on something different if the government is handing you a sure winner?

The green-energy rush is in many ways similar to the gold-rush that fundamentally transformed the west and made a lot of people rich. But there’s a key difference. Namely, the green-energy gold is mined from our pockets, not God’s green earth.

President Obama just doesn’t understand business. Or if he does, he has a funny way of showing it.

The main problem from my perspective is that the President has failed to realize how truly global the economy has become. America once soared above the competition when businesses were deciding where to locate. We had the rule of law, a world-class education system, comprehensive financial networks, and most of all, lots of disposable income.

Those once huge advantages are slowly fading, outweighed by high taxes, burdensome regulations, and expensive labor. But the President isn’t ready to recognize those faults. Instead, he’s chalking it up to laziness.

While speaking at an economic summit in Honolulu yesterday, President Obama said the U.S. had been lazy in bringing businesses to our shores.

“But we’ve been a little bit lazy, I think, over the last couple of decades,” the President said. “We’ve kind of taken for granted – well, people will want to come here and we aren’t out there hungry, selling America and trying to attract new business in America.”

What the President is missing is that we’ve been far worse than lazy, we’ve been actively giving businesses reasons to set up shop elsewhere.

One of the primary troubles has been this Administration’s demonization of profits. Time and time again President Obama has picked an industry – whether it be health care companies, the oil industry, or financial firms – and attacked the fact that they would dare turn a profit in a recession.

“There will be a time for them to make profits,” Obama said of banks, “and there will be a time for them to get bonuses . . . now’s not that time, and that’s a message I intend to send directly to them.”

Sadly, they heard it. But the ominous comment was also heard by every potential businessman and entrepreneur, including those thinking of creating a U.S. based business. And they were likely left to wonder whether the United States is the right place for them. If they become successful, would they too face the populist wrath of a politically-minded President? Would they end up paying higher taxes while other, more politically-friendly firms like green energy, received taxpayer-funded subsidies?

All the while, the President ignores that the magic of the free market’s wealth creating power is based on the self-interested individual’s overwhelming desire to earn profits and shun losses. Greed is certainly not good, but in this instance it has the power to do good. It is the driving force behind innovation, new products, competition – the very factors that create jobs, increase our standard of living, and create new products that leave us wondering how we ever lived without it.

You see, America hasn’t gotten lazy in its sales pitch, it’s just that Washington has gotten lazy in its economics.

It’s that sluggishness that has led our effective corporate tax rate to be the second highest in the world. That refused to adopt a “worldwide” system of taxation, instead sticking with a “territorial” approach that double-taxes our companies on foreign earnings. That continues to use 1950s-era rules on securities which inhibits the use of the internet in funding start-ups and entrepreneurs. That adds regulatory burden on top of regulatory burden so that businesses’ are handcuffed with red-tape.

And when you factor in all of that, there’s not much of a sales pitch left. After all, no matter how good the salesman (and sadly, Obama isn’t much of one), it’s tough to sell a faulty product.

So Mr. President, let’s put aside the sales pitch for a while and devote that energy towards creating a healthier business climate. Accomplish that and America will once again sell itself.

As part of the agreement to raise the debt ceiling a so-called Deficit Supercommittee was created to put together a plan to cut the deficit over the next ten years.

It reminded me of my childhood, waking up on Saturday mornings to watch the SuperFriends – a team of well-known superheroes including Batman, Superman, Aquaman, and Wonder Woman, devoted to fighting crime.

I can still remember the theme song: “Banded together to protect the universe from the forces of evil…The Superfriends. Dedicated to truth, justice and peace for all mankind; the world’s greatest Superfriends.”

Sadly the Supercommittee has no super powers. No incredible intelligence capable of figuring a way out of this mess, no x-ray vision capable of slicing off any unnecessary spending, and no superhuman strength capable of pounding the government down to size.

Instead, we’ve got a smaller collection of what we always had – a group of Republicans focused on cutting spending and a group of Democrats intent on spending more. One would have hoped that in the context of a deficit committee, focused on reducing the deficit, that Democrats would have set aside their penchant for spending.

Alas, that would have made too much sense. Earlier this week The Hill reported:

“Democrats on the supercommitee have proposed that the savings from the end of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan be used to pay for a new stimulus package, according to a summary of the $2.3 trillion plan obtained by The Hill.

The latest offer from Democrats on the deficit panel, made Monday night to their Republican counterparts, would use some of the war savings to help pay for spending on infrastructure.”

This is one of Democrats favorite budget gimmicks.

The way the budgeting process works, a lawmaker can claim a “cut” if he reduces spending below an arbitrary baseline.  I say arbitrary, because the CBO’s “current law baseline” makes certain assumptions regardless of how unrealistic they are. For instance, it assumes that the present spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will continue at the present level for the entire 10-year budget window.

Of course that is ridiculous given that President Obama announced last month that all U.S. troops would be out of Iraq by the end of 2011 and was proceeding with a drawdown plan to be out of Afghanistan by 2014. But that isn’t stopping Democrats from claiming that “ending the wars” will save around $1 trillion over the next decade.

BuBut why stop there? “Come to think of it, didn’t the Second World War end in 1945? Could we have the CBO score the estimated two-thirds of a century of “budget savings” we’ve enjoyed since ending that war?” Mark Steyn cynically asks in a recent editorial.

What we’re left with is Democrats willing to set aside reality in the name of claiming “imaginary savings” to fund very real, new spending.  In other words, a Supercommittee, whose task was to cut the deficit, is now seeking ways to increase it.

With our national debt continuing to grow and the risk of default becoming all the more real, it’s time we stop with the political games and get to the business of finding cuts. It shouldn’t be hard. There is no shortage of wasteful spending and no dearth of ideas on positive reforms to entitlement programs that could easily achieve the $1.2 trillion goal.

The Supercommittee doesn’t need to the SuperFriends. They don’t need special powers to secure “truth, peace and justice for all mankind.” They just need some common sense and a willingness to make the politically difficult choices required to get our budget under control. Wouldn’t that be super.

In 2008, presidential adviser and campaign-wunderkind David Plouffe devised the “50 State Strategy.” The goal was to smartly deploy resources to states that had voted for John Kerry in 2004 while focusing the brunt of their grassroots muscle in 18 battleground states – only four of which Kerry won, and all of which the Obama Administration believed they had a chance.

The crown jewels in this plan were North Carolina and Virginia. Winning those, in addition to the Kerry states, and “it’s game, set, match,” said Plouffe. It was bold. Those two states have combined to vote Democratic only once since 1964 – not exactly odds you’d typically want to rest your campaign on.

But they pulled it off. Obama squeaked out a win in North Carolina by a mere 13,000 votes and carried Virginia by a healthier, albeit still small, margin of 232,000 votes.

This year, Obama isn’t so much concerned about having people in 50 states as he is finding some way to cobble together the 270 electoral votes necessary for reelection. This time around Obama can’t coast on a well-tuned stump speech and a few high-minded ideals – he’s got to explain what’s gone wrong over the last four years. Suffice it to say, this is going to be a tough sell.

Take a look at these three charts, data courtesy of the Brookings Institute:

Looking at the data, as of now, every economic indicator puts Obama at or near the bottom of the last five presidents, revealing just how steep of an uphill climb he has to succeed next November.

One of the biggest bellwethers came last week in Virginia. The Obama campaign has held over 1,600 events in the state in just the seven months since he announced his bid for a second term. But if last week’s elections were any indication, Virginians may have wanted to see less of the President.

All told, Virginia Republicans added seven seats to their already sizable majority in the House of Delegates and now holds a two-thirds majority, the largest GOP majority in the state’s history. In addition, Republicans were able to capture the state Senate, despite Democrats having controlled the redistricting process.

But perhaps the biggest momentum builder comes in looking at the success of GOP incumbents. Every single Republican incumbent, 52 in the House, 15 in the Senate, won – and almost all were by double-digit margins. Colloquially, that’s what we call a beat down.

The results will likely have the Obama White House spending some late nights trying to craft a strategy for reelection. That time would be better spent figuring out how to get our economy back on track. May we suggest taking a look at the great work House Republicans are doing?

The Obama campaign promised us the most open and transparent administration in our nation’s history. Indeed, the White House’s website prominently features the “Open Government Initiative” which begins by saying,

“For too long, the American people have experienced a culture of secrecy in Washington, where information is locked up, taxpayer dollars disappear without a trace, and lobbyists wield undue influence. For Americans, business as usual in Washington has reinforced the belief that the government benefits the special interests and the well connected at the expense of the American people.”

Well, events this week show that business as usual is alive in well in Washington under Obama’s watch. And cousin, business is a-boomin’.

Today, Fox News uncovered several emails that show that the White House may have had closer contacts with George Kaiser, a billionaire donor and bundler for the Obama campaign, over the Solyndra loan than they initially let on.

The story first broke in September, when visitor logs were released showing Kaiser had visited the White House more than a dozen times both before and after Solyndra won approval for a $535 million government loan. Soon thereafter, the Obama Administration denied any of the discussions were about Solyndra and instead claimed they were focused on “a lot of charitable efforts.” The White House then doubled down, telling ABC News that Kaiser never broached the subject of a Solyndra loan.

The emails released today disprove that statement. A March email from George Kaiser to Steve Mitchell, who managed a private equity firm deeply invested in Solyndra, said,

“A couple of weeks ago when Ken and I were visiting with a group of Administration folks in DC who are in charge of the Stimulus process (White House, not DOE) and Solyndra came up, every one of them responded simultaneously about their thorough knowledge of the Solyndra story, suggesting it was one of their poster children.”

An email from Ken Levit, Executive Director of the Kaiser Family Foundation, also says “They about had an orgasm in Biden’s office when we mentioned Solyndra.” To which Mitchell responds, “That’s awesome! Get us a DOE loan.”

Despite the revelations that they aren’t exactly being truthful about the Solyndra discussions, the Obama Administration continues to refuse to comply with a House subpoena seeking all Solyndra-related correspondence. What on earth could the most open and transparent administration have to hide?

Sadly, that isn’t the end of the President’s secrecy in the face of scandal.

In the wake up the their completely botched “Fast and Furious” program that has provided thousands of weapons to Mexican drug cartels, the Justice Department has decided it is okay to lie to truthseekers.

A newly proposed rule would allow federal agencies to tell anyone requesting documents under the “Freedom of Information Act” that records do not exist – even when they do. The problem, in addition to the fact that it’s a bald-faced lie, is that agencies will be tempted (or even encouraged) to merely deny the existence of any records they don’t want to reveal. Imagine how difficult it will be to uncover the next Solyndra or Fast and Furious.

Has Obama already forgotten the pledge he made to protect the sanctity of FOIA? The one in which he said, “the Government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and failure might be revealed, or because of speculative or abstract fears.” So much for that.

Given the events of the past week I guess we can close the book on President Obama’s promise for openness and transparency. These, like so many of his promises, are proving to be little more than hollow talking points to help him secure the presidency. The question is, does he have the gall to use them again in 2012?

In just under one year from today, Americans will head to the polls for what could be the most important election of our lifetimes.

Oddly enough, that is exactly what people said about the 2008 elections. At that time, the housing market was in a downward spiral and the economy was clearly headed downhill. A little-known Illinois Senator came out of nowhere with a message of hope, promising to get rid of business as usual and fundamentally change a broken Washington.

He won. And it was in large part due to the historic turnout of young adults who saw in Obama something different than the politicians of recent years – a charismatic, well-spoken, young, minority candidate who reflected our own idealism.

As President, Obama was supposed to be just the leader America needed, not only to escape its economic doldrums, but to carry it into a new era of prosperity. It was not to be.

Instead, his $787 billion stimulus bill did nothing to jumpstart the economy, but a lot to unsettle businesses. His reforms of health care and Wall Street did little to solve the underlying problems, but did raise government barriers to private sector success. He promised to bring an end to business as usual in Washington, but instead has made things worse – engaging in scandal after scandal. All the while, the debt has skyrocketed and our problems have grown all the more daunting.

But perhaps the biggest slap in the face to young adults – the group who did the most to see him elected – has been watching the president turn his back on them.

Politico reports:

“The wealth gap between younger and older Americans has widened to its largest ever, exacerbated by the slow economic recovery that has hit young Americans disproportionately hard, a new study shows.

With high youth unemployment and mounting student debt, the typical U.S. household headed by a person 65 years of age or older is 47 times wealthier than that of a household headed by someone under 35, according to a new Pew Research study.”

This is on top of new Labor Department reports that show that the unemployment rate among young adults – 16.7 percent – is more than twice as high as the rate for workers 25 years and older. This marks the 32^nd straight month that the youth unemployment rate has topped 16 percent – the longest stretch ever recorded.

The effect of joblessness is rippling throughout our generation in other, less noticeable ways as well. The Census Bureau reported last month that the number of 25-to-34 year olds living with their parents is up 25.5 percent from 2007. Concordantly, a report from Fannie Mae shows that home ownership rates for the same age group has decreased by 9.6 percentage points. We’re also putting off marriage, delaying starting a family, and suffering from lower levels of self-esteem.

This is not what we voted for. This is not sustainable.

The status quo is so clearly broken. Young adults are growing poorer and older adults are growing richer and yet federal entitlement programs are almost solely geared towards helping older Americans.

The problem is that entitlement benefits have continued to grow. This is due to a wide range of problems from legislators wooing older voters, to increasing life expectancies, to higher income levels. But we’ve now reached a point that not only are younger generations paying for today’s seniors, but future generations, not yet born, are subsidizing today’s seniors.

None of this is to lay blame, point fingers, or even call for dismantling the entitlement system; but it is a call for reform. Our government simply cannot maintain the status quo if it wants to honor the commitments it has made to young workers who are paying into the system. As a generation we are already growing poorer than those before us, would the government now have us pay higher taxes to continue to subsidize a broken entitlement system?

Of course none of this will change unless young adults make their voices heard. President Obama was supposed to be our voice in Washington. He let us down. Fortunately, in a little under one year we’ll have a chance to begin down a new path by electing a leader who truly prioritizes our future.