The Voice of Young Conservatives Blog

For the past several years vampires have dominated the entertainment landscape. From the sparkly romantics of the Twilight series to the kinky, southern aristocrats of True Blood, vampires have become ubiquitous.

Dracula’s place atop the horror throne could be at risk to the mindless, flesh-hungry, mobs of zombies that have shambled their way into pop culture. The Walking Dead, anyone?

But lurking in our nation’s capitol is another, and much more real, version of these classic horror movie villains. It’s not exactly a stretch of the imagination to see that Washington has become a ravenous blood sucker, leeching money out of taxpayers’ wallets.

Now President Obama’s sharpening his fangs, pushing for more stimulus spending and higher taxes as part of his so-called “jobs package.” Realizing that taxpayers are already being bled dry, a bipartisan majority of the Senate voted down President Obama’s plan. As Democrat Joe Manchin (D-VA) said, “Let there be no mistake, if this bill does not change, if it is not improved, if it is not more focused on job creation and more fiscally responsible, I will strongly oppose [it].”

Sadly, Democratic leadership didn’t understand that this should have been a stake through the heart of the plan. Instead, President Obama announced his intention to pass the new stimulus bill in pieces, as if a terrible bill would suddenly become more attractive if broken down into bite-size chunks.

The first bite was a $35 billion bill aimed at shoring up the Democrats’ political base, providing stimulus dollars to states to hire teachers and police officers. In describing why they went this route, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said, “It’s very clear that private sector jobs have been doing just fine, it’s the public sector jobs where we’ve lost huge numbers, and that’s what this legislation is about.”

Of course none of this was true. In fact, the private sector has lost 6.3 million jobs since 2007, while the government payrolls have fallen by 392,000. That’s a large reasons why only 4.7 percent of government workers are unemployed – the lowest of any industry according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Apparently facts are to Democrats, as garlic is to vampires.

Given the horrible economics underlying the mini-stimulus, it was unsurprising that a bipartisan group of Senators voted to stop the bill in its tracks.

“I don’t think you increase taxes for new spending,” said Sen. Nelson in explaining why he voted against the ill-conceived bill. Senator Pryor added, “I’m not sure federal taxpayers should be paying for teachers and first responders. That’s traditionally a state and local matter.”

What was surprising, was that Democratic leadership then introduced yet another stimulus bill. This one, a $45 million stimulus plan aimed at infrastructure.

As it turns out, these mini-stimulus bills are multiplying, and proving as hard to kill as a horde of zombies. Just when you think they’re dead in the face of overwhelming facts, they rise from the dead for one last scare.

But shouldn’t Obama have learned from the failure of his last stimulus, ya know, the one that was supposed to invest more than $100 billion in infrastructure projects and create 400,000 jobs?  At the time he touted it as the “largest investment increase in our nation’s infrastructure since President Eisenhower created the national highway system.”

Of course, that proved to be just a lot of talk.

“Ten months into President Obama’s first economic stimulus plan, a surge in spending on roads and bridges has had no effect on local unemployment and only barely helped the beleaguered construction industry,” concluded the Associated Press after analyzing the data.

Between these blood sucking bureaucrats and zombie-like stimulus plans, young adults have been terrorized long enough.

President Obama has a habit of taking lavish vacations on the taxpayers dime. Last August, Michelle took a much-maligned trip to Spain, where taxpayers picked up the tab for the security, support staffers, and airfare. The Obama’s then spent Christmas enjoying the pristine turquoise waters of Kailua Bay in Hawaii, where the air-travel alone cost about $1.3 trillion. And this summer they relaxed in Martha’s Vineyard while the United States loomed perilously close to default.

No one begrudges the President a vacation, but the utter lavishness of his choices made for a poor contrast against the backdrop of joblessness and poverty that so many Americans are suffering through.

But with vacation season over, the President has found other uses for taxpayers’ hard earned cash. Over the past week, Obama has been traveling through North Carolina and Virginia, two crucial swing states, aboard one of his brand new $1.1 million buses.

CBS News reports:

“If Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, Herman Cain or any of the other presidential challengers were to embark on a three-day bus trip like the one now underway by President Obama, it would cost their campaigns tens of thousands of dollars. Perhaps more.

. . . But not the Obama campaign. The White House declared that Mr. Obama’s three-day trip through North Carolina and Virginia are “official events” and not campaign appearances, even though the two states are known to be political objecives of his reelection bid.”

That means taxpayers are on the hook for the flights, including the use of Air Force One, the two buses for him and his staff, setting up the speech sites, lodging and meals, as well as a host of other things.

So what has the President been doing on this taxpayer funded “official trip”?

In a dose of irony that seems lost on the President, he’s been stumping for his plan that calls for more public sector stimulus and higher taxes. Even though his plan was soundly defeated by a bipartisan majority, the President just can’t seem to let go.

“My plan says we’re going to put teachers back in the classrooms, construction workers back to rebuilding America, rebuilding our schools,” said the President. Who then shifted into hyper-partisan attack mode. “And then you’ve got the [Republican] plan,” Obama said, “Which is, let’s have dirtier air, dirtier water, less people with health insurance. Alright, so, so far, at least, I feel better about my plan.”

It’s makes you wonder if the President has already forgotten last June when he said, “If you’re looking for just a bunch of partisan rhetoric, I’m probably not your guy.”

Of course he hasn’t forgotten, it’s just that he never meant it in the first place. President Obama is the consummate messaging guru – he’s a weathervane that shifts with the political winds. And with the presidential campaign gearing up, Obama is in full partisan demagoguery mode.

So now, as if using our tax dollars for a campaign to raise taxes wasn’t enough, conservatives have to shell out money to listen to their President say how stupid they are.

No really.

From The Hill:

“President Obama mocked the intelligence of Republicans on Monday while making the first stop of his three-day bus tour, implying GOP lawmakers didn’t pass his $447 billion jobs bill because they weren’t smart enough to understand it.

“Maybe they just couldn’t understand the whole thing at once,” Obama said during an address in Asheville, NC, that had all the trappings of a 2012 campaign event.”

I think its time we send President Obama on a vacation, a long vacation, better known as retirement. This time, taxpayers won’t be paying, but we will be voting.

In describing the problems with the federal deficit, Republicans like to use the concept of a family budget. When deficits are sky high, Washington must begin to prioritize its spending, much like a family would have to do if times were tight. Otherwise, creditors would soon start banging down your door and there would be no money left to purchase the absolute necessities for your family.

Being that it is so hard for the average American to truly understand the enormity of trillions of dollars, some have tried to provide some perspective. Take this chart from the Gainesville Tea Party which simply lops off eight zeros from some key economic numbers to help reveal just how unsustainable America’s fiscal decisions have been.

Why S&P downgraded the US:

U.S.  tax revenue:                   $2,170,000,000,000

Federal budget:                      $3,820,000,000,000

New debt:                                 $1,650,000,000,000

National debt:                        $14,271,000,000,000

Recent budget cut:                       $38,500,000,000

Let’s remove 8 zeros and pretend it’s a household budget:

Annual family income:                                 $21,700

Money the family spent                               $38,200

New debt on the credit card:                       $16,500

Outstanding balance on credit card:        $142,710

Budget cuts:                                                         $385

Democrats often use their own metaphor – that of a farm. Here, the recession is the equivalent of a winter, when nothing can be grown. “The very best farmers are not idle during the winter,” writes Mark Thoma in the Fiscal Times. “They use this time to time to repair equipment, expand capacity, and do other things to get ready for the next year’s planting and harvesting.”

Liberal commentators have taken this to mean that we should use our economic winter – with large quantities of labor, equipment, and raw materials idled – to lay the foundation for a successful harvest.

All in all, it’s a great metaphor, but they are using it to draw the wrong conclusions.

The fact is, our American farm has been so mismanaged over the past several years that there is simply no money available to buy fancy tools. If we stashed a little money in the good times, to enable us to invest in the lean times, perhaps we’d be in a different position. Instead, farmer Obama went into town, but rather than buy a tractor, he spent all the farm’s reserves on lottery tickets with terrible odds of actually paying out.

The result is that we’re broke. But that doesn’t mean the farm is broken. There are still myriad things Washington should be doing to ensure America is prepared to succeed when it comes time to harvest.

“You might as well use the winter of recuperation to take care of the fundamentals,” writes New York Times columnist David Brooks. “Work hard to fix the education system, the tax code, the fiscal mess and the regulatory system. None of these things will produce short-term benefits. But when the recession finally does run its course the economy will be ready to surge. Paradoxically, you have more power to influence these fundamental issues than you do next month’s jobs report.”

None of those reforms cost money, in fact, many of them would reduce our deficit, but they would all put America is a strategically better position to succeed in the global economy. Our tax system is uncompetitive compared to the rest of the world. Our regulatory system is so burdensome that businesses are encouraged to set up shop elsewhere. And our education system, once the envy of the world, has taken steps backward despite enormous increases in our investment.

So no matter what metaphor you choose. Whether it’s family budgets or farm investments, the bottom line remains the same – the federal government must take steps to fix the underlying problems inhibiting private sector growth. Because if you reap what you sow, we’re in for some lean times.

A mysterious virus spread across Washington DC today. An unexplained outbreak that seemed to target our elected officials.

Don’t worry, there’s no need to alert the CDC, it doesn’t appear contagious, or even particularly harmful. But it is good for a laugh, or at least a resigned sigh of “how did we elect these clowns.”

It was just the latest flare-up of foot-in-mouth disease. Typical symptoms include the inability to form coherent thoughts, make cogent arguments, or an increased likelihood to offend everyone around you.

Elizabeth Warren, former adviser to President Obama and current candidate for the U.S. Senate, was the first indication we have have an outbreak on our hands. “I’m going for the hick vote here,” Warren said in a liberal podcast. “I just want you to know. Maybe we could start wearing stickers that say ‘Hicks for Elizabeth’ – could we do that?”

On any other day that would have dominated the headlines. But today – a five-alarm, perfect storm, of publicists’ nightmares – it barely made news. And rightly so compared to the utter nonsense that was coming from the President’s mouth.

“I guarantee it’s going to be a close election because the economy is not where it wants to be and, even though I believe all the choices we’ve made have been the right ones, we’re still going through difficult circumstances,” President Obama said in an interview with ABC today.

You could almost see Jay Carney, the White House’s chief spokesman, having an aneurism. He knew this would require more clean up than a frat house after a kegger and it couldn’t have come at a worse time.

Talk about hubris? The American economy is essentially collapsing (for a second time!) all around him and he wouldn’t change anything?

He wouldn’t make any changes to Obamacare despite the subsequent reports that it is actually causing higher premiums? He wouldn’t leave the CLASS Act, which he just had to admit was financially unsustainable, out of the health care bill? He wouldn’t have saved the $800 billion in taxpayer cash that he dumped into the stimulus? Or even say “my bad” on labeling last summer the “Recovery Summer?”

He wouldn’t make it a point to study Solyndra a little more before signing off on the loan and then making it a point to campaign at their factories? He wouldn’t act quicker to clean up the Gulf oil spill? Or check with Eric Holder to make sure that “Fast and Furious” wasn’t in fact another movie sequel?

I mean, at the very least wouldn’t you think he’d question the wisdom of vacationing in Martha’s Vineyard when the United States was standing at the edge of default and seriously contemplating jumping rather than cut our deficit?

Ok, then. Good luck in November!

But the coup de grâce, which is of course French for “dumbest thing ever uttered,” was Mr. Foot in Mouth himself – Harry Reid.

“It’s very clear that private-sector jobs have been doing just fine,” Reid said on the Senate floor, “it’s the public-sector jobs where we’ve lost huge numbers. . .”

Take a moment to pick your jaw off the floor. No really, I’ll wait. . .

Back? Good. The fact is that the private sector is far from fine. Since the recession began in 2007, the private sector has lost 6.3 million jobs. By contrast, government pay rolls have fallen by 392,000. Moreover, only 4.7 percent of government employees are unemployed – by far the lowest of any industry or class according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and about half the national unemployment rate. But even those numbers are misleadingly low because the number of involuntary part-time workers (they’d like to work full-time) is now at 9.3 million and 6.2 million workers have been out of work for 26 weeks are quickly becoming unemployable.

Unfortunately, there is no known cure for foot-in-mouth disease. But that doesn’t mean there is nothing we can do to eradicate it from Washington. Namely, we have to elect some people who know what the heck they’re talking about.

For more on Sen. Reid’s utterly ignorant statement, check this out:

In Washington it is possible to increase spending while also cutting spending. If that sentence doesn’t make one lick of sense to you, congratulations, you’re normal.

It’s Washington that houses the weird ones. But it’s true, due to budgetary rules that make about as much sense as quantum physics, spending increases can simultaneously be labeled spending cuts.

Take for instance today’s new that federal spending is up 5 percent this year. How could this possibly be, you may be saying. Didn’t the House cut $38 billion from the Fiscal Year 2011 budget? Didn’t we pass a debt limit deal that cut spending?

Indeed we did.

But as John Merline reports for Investor’s Business Daily,

“Data released by the Treasury Department on Friday show that, so far, there haven’t been any spending cuts at all.

In fact, in the first nine months of the year, federal spending was $120 billion higher than in the same period in 2010, the data show. That’s an increase of almost 5%. And deficits during this time were $23.5 billion higher.”

So what could explain this phenomena? It’s something called “baseline budgeting” – an arcane tool used by the Congressional Budget Office that sets any policy change against current projections. For instance, if the Ministry of Red Tape and Bureaucracy was projected to spend $10 million, $15 million, and then $20 million over the next three years for a total of $45 million, but a law was passed that reduced its spending authority to $10, $12, and then $15 million respectively, that would actually be scored as an $8 billion cut.

In that scenario spending still increased every single year, but politicians were still able to take credit for “reigning in spending!” It’s a crazy mixed up way of doing things that enables Washington to hide behind a veil of fiscal responsibility even as taxpayer dollars are flying out the doors quicker than ever.

Of course, the reality that government spending has grown over the past year hasn’t stopped Democrats from crowing about the horrors of Republicans’ attempt at austerity.

Each and every step of the way, Republicans have tried to wring the federal budget of the gross waste and mismanagement of taxpayer dollars, only to run into Democrats and the liberal media who have carelessly speculated about the effect any “cuts” will have.

New York Times columnist and de-facto economist of the Democratic Party, Paul Krugman, argued that “the turn toward austerity is a major factor in our growth slowdown.”

He’s not alone.

White House economist Austan Goolsbee has blamed reductions in government spending for slowing economic growth. Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) labeled GOP attempts to cut spending “reckless” and “irresponsible.” Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD) called the budget cuts a “meat-axe approach.” And in potentially our favorite quote of the year, Rep. Norm Dicks (R-WA) one-uped Hoyer by saying, “This is a meat-axe approach on top of a meat-axe approach. It’s a double meat-axe approach.”

Except it was all bluster.

As the Wall Street Journal put it succinctly: “Government austerity is a myth.”

As the new CBO information shows, Washington continues to burn through taxpayer money faster than a poker player on tilt. But the government’s biggest spending year ever still wasn’t enough to buy our way out of the recession. Despite outlays rising 4.2 percent compared to 2010, job creation remained stagnant and the unemployment rate actually rose over the past year.

So the next time you hear a Democrat crowing about the harmful effects budget cuts are having on the economy, kindly ask them “What cuts?” And if you ever hear a liberal wailing about the need for more stimulus, ask them why historic spending didn’t work last year.

America must get serious about our yawning budget gap. We can no longer afford a government that can equate budget cuts with spending increases. The time for phony math and budgetary tricks is over. But nothing can change unless voters focus on putting fiscal conservatives in control of Washington.

And vote out guys who only want to cut thiiiiis much…

In his time as President, Barack Obama has tried on a number of different costumes.

First, he was the “hope and change” guy. The young, well spoken, vision of a new generation of politician who was tired of politics as usual and was going to bring a fresh new approach to Washington.

Then he discovered that changing the political culture is kinda hard. So that version of Obama lasted about as long as the Charlie’s Angels reboot, which lasted all of oh, four episodes.

Next, he was the big, bold reformer. The guy who didn’t care about the politics, he had a vision and he was going to see it through. Except his vision was mainly Obamacare, which it turned out not very many people liked. Deep down you could tell he figured that if he could just get it passed, people would come around, and finally, he would have a legacy-maker.

Two years later and majorities of Americans still think Obamacare makes about as much sense as Hollywood signing off on The Smurfs remake. Didn’t those guys learn from Alvin and the Chipmunks and Garfield? But seriously, it’s hard to call the bill any kind of a success. Premiums are going up faster than if the bill hadn’t been passed, key parts are being ditched, and states are suing rather than implementing. Once again, Obama was left scrambling for a new face.

He settled on “the above-it-all President.” While the two parties argued over their different visions for job creation and deficit reduction, the President remained noncommittal, some would say aloof. Every once in a while he’d step off his throne, show up at some random factory and make some grand, if ridiculously generic, comment about the need for job creation, then promptly slink back into the Oval Office and wonder why he didn’t just become a lawyer.

It was like Bill Clinton’s Triangulation Strategy v.2.0, except ya know crappier. He may as well of had Solyndra design it.

Once again, Obama was left searching for a costume to put on. It appears he’s settled on “bad-ass Obama.” A take no prisoners, make no compromises, and let the chips fall where they may kinda President that is aimed at making his liberal base swoon once again.

A recent USA Today Headline summed up this new Obama best: “Obama Won’t Negotiate With Republicans on Jobs.”

Hmm. This seems about as well thought out as 16-year-old Courtney Stodden’s decision to marry washed-up, 51-year-old actor Doug Hutchison, in the hopes of getting a reality show. That is to say…terribly, terribly thought out.

It’s an odd time for the President to take such a stand, especially given that the Senate voted down his jobs plan last week by a bipartisan majority. Just as Obama is sharpening his partisan sword, Republicans are willing to lay down their weapons in favor of working together.

While Republicans have consistently stated they won’t abide any frivolous spending or ill-conceived tax hikes, they have expressed their willingness to find common ground. “What we’re here to do is try to transcend differences, not let them get in the way in the areas we can make progress on,” said Majority Leader Eric Cantor in September.

In that vein, Republicans presented President Obama with a memo outlining specific areas where common ground can be found. Indeed there are many, including extending 100 percent expensing of depreciation, reducing regulatory burdens on small business formation, unemployment insurance extension, and payroll tax relief, just to name a few.

With the economy continuing to struggle and unemployment showing no signs of budging, Obama’s hardline stance will only make things worse. This isn’t the time for political games and focusing on your election hopes, it’s about getting people back to work. Given that reality, I’d say there’s a better chance that Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore stay married than there is that Obama will maintain this new personality.

It may be Halloween, but for Obama it’s time to take off all the costumes once and for all, and just work to get America back on track. But after nearly three years of flux, does Obama even know who he is, or what he stands for anymore? At this point, it’s an open question.

Not even a month after we chronicled the “recipe for disaster” that is the CLASS Act – the Obama Administration has pulled the plug.

From the get-go it was clear that the “Community Living Assistance Services and Supports” program, better known as CLASS, was a budgetary and bureaucratic mess.

It was built on the unsustainable idea that millions of healthy Americans would sign up for an insurance program they didn’t need in order to subsidize the few who did. It was written in such a way that a so-called “insurance death spiral” was inevitable – unhealthy people would disproportionately sign up, the costs needed to cover the insurance would soar, which would further discourage healthier people from buying in.

Well intentioned? Yes. Well structured? No.

So it comes as little surprise that Obama was forced to abandon the program, despite being one of the signature pieces of his healthcare reform law. The news was delivered by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius who earlier this year vowed to make the program financially viable.

“Despite our best analytical efforts, I do not see a viable path forward for CLASS implementation at this time,” she was forced to admit in a letter to Congress.

Senator John Thune (R-SD) and others cheered the announcement. “This is a victory for the American taxpayer and future generations,” he said. “The administration is finally admitting [the long-term care plan] is unsustainable and cannot be implemented.”

But what Obama has not yet admitted is that this is too little to late.

When Obamacare was still being debated, we did our best to highlight the unrealistic assumptions, the budgetary gimmicks, and the downright dirty tricks the Administration used to make it more palatable to Americans.  One of the worst offenders was the CLASS program.

The issues with the CLASS program are not new. As far back as May 2009, the chief actuary at the Center of Medicare and Medicaid services, attempted to warn the president that this program was not sustainable. Obama didn’t care. Instead of pulling it out of the law, Obama ignored the facts and seized on CLASS as a marketing tool.

Using some fiscal slight of hand, that many of us would call lies, the drafters of Obamacare wrote in a five-year vesting period during which premiums flow into the program, but no benefits would be paid out.

So in the 10-year budget window that the CBO uses to score legislation, they were forced to count 10 years of revenue and only 5 years of cost! Of course the program looked like a goldmine using that ridiculous framework!

Of course in Democrats’ fantasyland they ignored the fact that this money would eventually be needed to pay for benefits – not reduce the deficit. But such double counting, which would be called “accounting fraud” in the private sector, was part-and-parcel of the Obamacare package. Indeed, the gimmick was responsible for “reducing the deficit” by $72 billion, roughly half of the deficit reduction that Obama claimed would result from passage of Obamacare.

Now that CLASS helped push his health care reform bill over the finish line, Obama is more than willing to ditch it. And although we applaud them for pulling the plug before it caused too much budgetary havoc – the true damage has already been done…Obamacare passed.

There are bad ideas, and there are really bad ideas. Merle Edington’s decision to build an exact one-fifth scale replica of the Great Pyramids, the Great Wall of China, and for good measure, a copy of a Mayan temple, outside of Bedford, Indiana (where?!?) qualifies as the latter.

It’s tough to see how anyone could listen to the concept while keeping a straight face. After all, it isn’t as if Bedford is a sprawling metropolis. It is a small, sleepy town of just 13,000 citizens that isn’t even connected to an interstate. The closest town you could call it near to is Bloomington, and that’s 30 miles away. Suffice it to say, this is not the ideal location for a tourist park. Orlando, Florida this aint.

But while any sensible person would have tried hard not to laugh the well-meaning Mr. Edington out of the room, the federal government praised the idea and cut him a hefty check to make his vision a reality.

Unsurprisingly, the project was never completed. It’s now just a pile of large, grey rocks, overgrown with weeds, that has become a dumping ground for tires and various other refuse.

It’s a story that is equal parts sad and ridiculous. But mainly it serves as a testament to the utter inability of Washington bureaucrats to pick worthwhile investments. The Economic Development Administration, the agency behind the “Bedford pyramid” is one of the shining examples of government’s investing hubris.

The program was initially created as part of President Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” with the goal of providing grants to economically distressed areas of the country. But as we know all too well now, once the door to taxpayer dollars is left ajar, politicians will kick it wide open. So it went with the EDA. Seeing the chance for “free money” legislators finagled the definition of “distressed” so that more than 80 percent of the United States was ultimately eligible to receive grants.

What began as a targeted stimulus program became just another government slush fund.

Study after study, some by the agency itself, have revealed the utter waste of the EDA. As Senator Jim DeMint recently wrote in an op-ed on the issue:

“The agency claimed a project in 1986 created nearly 6,000 new jobs, but later the government admitted the actual number was less than 100. Multiple studies by the Government Accountability Office have found that EDA programs “did not have a significant effect,” achieved “inconclusive” results, and “may even detract” from a more flexible and educated work force.

More recently, the inspector general overseeing the EDA audited 10 projects totaling $45 million between 2004 and 2008. It found that $13 million, or 29% of that money, had been wasted due to “various violations of EDA grant requirements such as financial accounting irregularities, conflicts of interest, and improper procurement procedures.” Four of the 10 projects were never even completed.”

Despite the program’s documented problems, Democrats actually proposed to increase it’s annual budget by $200 million! It was such a ridiculous notion that even President Obama questioned whether there was a better way to balance the “need for smart investment” with the “need to control spending and reduce the deficit.”

Indeed there is Mr. President. That is why Republicans have taken the lead on getting rid of this boondoggle once and for all. Representative Mike Pompeo (R-KS) recently introduced the “EDA Elimination Act” in an attempt to save taxpayers from wasting even one more dollar on things like the government’s bright idea to build a scale model of the pyramids in Nowheresville, IN.

Let’s leave the pyramids in the past. If we’re going to build something, how about building a foundation for a prosperous future – and that begins with reducing our deficit.

“A terrible ugliness is born.”

So wrote liberal economist Paul Krugman after Ireland announced new austerity measures to reduce its growing debt. Two years ago Ireland’s budget deficit hit 32 percent of the country’s gross domestic product. They were also perilously close to default and knew that drastic measures needed to be taken to send a credible signal to the bond market that they were prepared to get their affairs in order.

“When our public finance situation blew wide open, the dominant consideration was ensuring that there was international investor confidence in Ireland so we could continue to borrow,” said Alan Barrett, chief economist at the Economic and Social Research Institute of Ireland.

European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet furthered the sentiment. “I firmly believe that in the current circumstances, confidence-inspiring policies will foster and now hamper economic recovery,” wrote Trichet, “because confidence is the key factor today.”

To foster confidence among citizens and bond investors the Irish government implemented a plan that included, among other things, 10 billion in spending cuts – roughly 6 percent of the nation’s entire GDP. Those cuts came on top of nearly 15 billion euro in budget reductions that Ireland had previously pursued in an attempt to stabilize their deficit after a massive banking debacle.

The cuts were enough to make the heads of liberal economists on this side of the Atlantic explode with anger. “Imposing savage austeriy measures on ordinary citizens” would only make things worse, they wrote. Deeper deficits through government-funded stimulus was the only cure, they said. So it goes with these big-government, little-minded Keynesians.

After passage of the plan the Irish economy dipped and bond yields – one of the best measures of market confidence – rose dramatically.

“Vindication!” yelled the liberals. They now had just the case-study they needed to make the argument for more stimulus. You could almost see economists dusting off their copy of Keynes’ General Theory of Employment that they hadn’t touched since America’s experience with stagflation.

Not so fast! As it turns out, the doom and gloom predictions about the death of the Celtic Tiger were more than a little premature.

As Megan McCardle points out in The Atlantic, Ireland’s bond yields have started falling, meaning that investors are feeling confident in the security of Irish debt. That’s not the end of the good news. The Wall Street Journal reports that,

“Gross domestic product in the three months to June was 1.6 percent higher than in the quarter and 2.3 percent higher than in the same period of 2010.

That was the fastest year-to-year expansion since the last three months of 2007, after which Ireland’s previously fast-growing economy was felled by the financial crisis and the collapse of a debt-fueled proprerty boom.”

Confident investors, economic growth, and a booming export sector? If that’s the outcome Krugman was referring to when he said a “terrible ugliness is born,” you can count me in.

Cutting government spending and reducing deficits is not incompatible with job creation and it is certainly not something we should be afraid of. Sure, it is an absolute prerequisite to ensuring the next generation of Americans is not left with insufferably high taxes, but as Ireland’s experience shows, it can also put us back on the path to prosperity today.

So while President Obama is out on the campaign trail pitching yet another deficit-financed stimulus package, perhaps the good news out of Ireland will remind him that we don’t need to waste hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars trying to buy our way out of trouble, we need to reduce deficits to encourage skittish investors to buy in to America’s future.

Another month, another disappointing jobs report. On Friday, the Labor Department reported that employers added 103,000 jobs in September while the unemployment stayed at 9.1 percent for the third straight month.

The fact that jobs were created at all is at least somewhat hopeful, but it is still not enough to cover those entering the workforce, much less put a dent in the unemployment rate. In fact, the President now needs more than 270,000 jobs to be created each month to get unemployment down to 8 pecent by Election Day – and that’s still a pretty ugly number.

Moreover, when you peel away the jobs figure, there are some pretty scary trends that could bode ill for the economy. According to the Labor report, the number of part-time workers that want full-time work rose to 9.3 million, up 444,000 from August and the biggest jump in two years. And a study conducted by consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas found that employers have announced 115,730 job cuts – more than double August’s total of 51,114.

Ironically, President Obama has recently criss-crossed the country campaigning for President attempting to blame Republicans for the lousy economy.

“If next week senators have additional ideas that will put people back to work right now . . . we are happy to consider them,” Obama said at a recent event.

Representative Paul Ryan, author of a budget that would balance America’s books, didn’t take Obama’s snub sitting down.

“I suppose that’s good politics, but it’s not factually accurate,” Ryan told NBC’s David Gregory. “We have passed over a dozen pieces of legislation, jobs legislation, that are sitting over in the Senate. We have passed a budget to pay off the debt and get the economy growing. We passed energy reform, we passed regulatory reform, small business tax relief. We’ve passed so many different jobs bills this year that are sitting in the Senate.”

To be fair, the President hasn’t been in town much recently. Speaking at 5,000-a-plate dinners and vacationing in Martha’s Vineyard can leave you a little out of touch as to what’s happening in Congress. So here’s a list of some of the bills that Paul Ryan was referring to – each of which the Republican-led House has passed, each of which the Democrat-held Senate refuse to bring to a vote:

Boosting Domestic Energy Production

• Restarting American Offshore Leasing Now Act,
• North American-Made Energy Security Act,
• Putting the Gulf of Mexico Back to Work Act, and
• Reversing President Obama’s Offshore Moratorium Act

Eliminating Unecessarily Burdensome Regulations

• Consumer Financial Protection Safety and Soundness Improvement Act,
• Resolution of Dissaproval for Net Neutrality,
• Reducing Regulatory Burdens Act of 2011, and
• Protecting Jobs from Government Interference Act

Putting America on a Sustainable Path – Without Higher Taxes

• Path to Prosperity Budget,
• 1099 Taxpayer Protection Act, and
• Energy Tax Prevention Act

Cutting Wasteful Spending

• Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act,
• Emergency Mortgage Relief Program Termination Act,
• HAMP Termination Act,
• Prohibit Funding for National Public Radio,
• Repeal Mandatory Funding Provided to States in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and
• Cut/Cap/Balance Act

That list should not be considered comprehensive. Literally hundreds of more bills that would create jobs and reduce spending languish in Committee, not coming to a vote because of the realization that Senate Democrats won’t give the bills so much as a look

Rather that act on any of these bills President Obama has crafted one of his own – a grab bag of repackaged and reheated stimulus ideas “payed for” with a 5.6 percent tax hike on high-earners and small business owners.

In promoting his bill Obama said, “Any Senator out there who’s thinking about voting against this jobs bill when it comes up for a vote needs to explain why they would oppose something we know would improve our economic situation at such an urgent time.”

We’d ask Obama the same thing. If he’s going to continue ignoring the dozens of jobs bills already passed by the House – bills we know would reduce the deficit, eliminate burdensome regulations, and provide certainty to job creators – he should at least give an explanation to the American people.

Well Mr. President; we’re waiting…