Wednesday Chronicle: The Debt 'Deal' Cuts Leave Much to Be Desired

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Subscribe to The Patriot Post — It's Right and It's FREE: click here. Chronicle · August 3, 2011 The Foundation "No pecuniary consideration is more urgent, than the regular redemption and discharge of the public debt." --George Washington Editorial Exegesis "After months of talk about the nation's runaway debt, lawmakers managed to agree on a plan that, at most, will cut spending by a mere 5%. Is it any wonder federal spending is out of control? ... According to IBD's analysis of available budget numbers, the deal's $2.4 trillion in 10-year cuts amounts to a mere 5% trim off total projected federal spending during that time. It's like a 400-pound man boasting that he plans to drop 20 pounds over a decade, while his doctors warn about the risks of losing weight so fast. Even calling these 'cuts' is a bit of a stretch, since spending will continue to increase, just at a slightly slower pace. ... By 2021, federal spending would still equal 22% of the nation's economy, above the post-World War II average of 20%. Not really a cut, is it? Plus, in the short term, these 'deep,' 'sharp,' 'slashing' cuts would still leave the federal government spending roughly 4% more in 2012 than it did in 2010, and 20% more than it did in 2008. Shorn of all the hyperbole, what this agreement really demonstrates is why it's so hard to get federal spending under control. Both sides routinely use budget gimmicks to exaggerate spending cuts, while armies of special interests swarm Washington to make sure their pet programs don't get touched. All the while, spending marches upward. And reporters too dumb, lazy or biased to understand how budgets work keep falling for this nonsense." --Investor's Business Daily Essential Liberty "It is true that the Tea Party has 'won' within the context of what constitutes a political win in Washington. But have they accomplished enough to change our future? No, by this deal, they have not. To have a chance at actually changing our future, Washington would have to risk shocking and unpredictable change that might rock, temporarily, the financial prosperity of the nation. The establishment is not ready for that. To wit: Whether to risk radical change now or not is the measure of whether to support the deal. Thus, Washington politicians and politically alert citizens across the country can be broadly divided into those who fear losing the status quo and those who fear losing the future." --columnist Tony Blankley Share your thoughts Upright "Federal outlays now make up a quarter of the total national output. Federal spending is up 46% in the last decade while the economy has grown by just 14% (inflation adjusted dollars). In other words, government is growing over 3.5 times faster than our ability to sustain it. Normally, spending numbers are lost on much of the voting public, but the debt ceiling offers a chance at national reflection over what we have purchased and what we've committed to buy. Instead of framing the debate around government freebies, as in the case of the federal budget, the debt ceiling shows Americans how much it all costs. It is the difference between the euphoria of a credit card-financed shopping spree and the realism [of] the next month's Visa statement." --columnist Joseph Ashby "If the debt-ceiling had not been raised, the government would have been forced to choose between spending initiatives. The debt-ceiling would have provided a hard cap; it would have prevented President Obama from being able to press for new spending initiatives. Now, with the 'Super Congress' ... in charge of cutting the deficit, we can expect a new push for higher taxes, especially since reports are that the constituency of the Super Congress will be 'moderate.' ... If someone sets a hard date, we can fairly guarantee that the doom-saying is nonsensical. Never in history, has a non-mankind-created hard date turned out to be disastrous. No Kal-El prediction of the sun exploding has ever been accurate. ... The only apocalypse that will occur is the one our scaremongering politicians bring down upon us." --columnist Ben Shapiro "The political class predicted 'disaster' if Congress didn't raise its debt limit. I think that was a scam to get more money. See, the poor politicians don't have enough, and they need to borrow more. We taxpayers are cheap. This year we'll give them only $2.2 trillion. They want to spend $3.8 trillion." --columnist John Stossel Insight "No government is respectable which is not just. Without unspotted purity of public faith, without sacred public principle, fidelity, and honor, no machinery of laws, can give dignity to political society." --U.S. senator Daniel Webster (1782-1852) "If you are afraid to speak against tyranny, then you are already a slave." --author John "Birdman" Bryant (1943-2009) The Demo-gogues He should take his own advice: "[This debt-ceiling deal is] an important first step for ensuring that as a nation we live within our means. ... [But the economy] didn't need Washington to come along with a manufactured crisis. It's pretty likely that the uncertainty surrounding the raising of the debt ceiling -- for both businesses and consumers -- has been unsettling, and just one more impediment to the full recovery that we need. And it was something that we could have avoided entirely. Voters may have chosen divided government, but they sure didn't vote for dysfunctional government." --Barack Obama Pity party: "If I were a Republican, I would be dancing in the streets. I don't have any idea what the Republicans wanted that they didn't get." --Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO) Government is great: "[Some] of us ... believe that government has a role for positive achievement in society along with the private sector doing things only government can do. ... I don't like this deal. But I think it would have been worse. ... Tax cuts are fun, but I never saw a tax cut put out a fire. I never saw a tax cut make a bridge. We need to have to make the case for positive government." --Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) Hating the Tea Party: "[A]s result of the Tea Party direction of this Congress these last few months has been very, very disconcerting and very unfair to the American people." --Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) "The Tea Party acted like terrorists in threatening to blow up the economy." --Rep. Mike Doyle (D-PA) "They have acted like terrorists." --Joe Biden, repeating and approving the line Gun grabbers: "The easy availability of high-capacity ammo magazines in the U.S. has once again helped enable a large-scale massacre. ... This is another tragic example of our lack of common-sense gun laws failing us with deadly consequences, allowing a cold-blooded killer to easily acquire the tools of mass murder even from another country. How many more innocent people need to die before we realize that some simple, common-sense gun safety laws in the United States could actually save lives?" --Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY) on the Norway massacre, while her pals call conservatives "terrorists" Dezinformatsia Media vs. Tea Party: "So the question, I think, some people might be asking is, do you think that members of the Tea Party Caucus know how to govern or are they -- do they understand that standing up for a cause is not the same as governing?" --NBC's Ann Curry "They truly did not know what the words 'debt ceiling' meant. Look, let's admit it. It's true of most of the media, most everybody because these things were never covered before. And so they didn't know what it was. Now they were going to have to learn what it was, and they certainly weren't going to take their lesson from Washington about what the debt ceiling is. ... So, there is no educating these Tea Party people. It's just a matter of how do you maneuver around them, and how do you govern." --MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell "We know that the federal government has promised more benefits than it can currently afford. The only way out of this problem involves some combination of tax increases and cuts to Medicare, Social Security and the military. Anyone who won't get specific about which ones they favor is not a fiscal conservative." --New York Times reporter David Leonhardt The BIG Lie: "The reality, of course, is that we already have a centrist president -- actually a moderate conservative president. Once again, health reform -- his only major change to government -- was modeled on Republican plans, indeed plans coming from the Heritage Foundation. And everything else -- including the wrongheaded emphasis on austerity in the face of high unemployment -- is according to the conservative playbook." --New York Times columnist Paul Krugman Newspulper Headlines: Questions Nobody Is Asking: "Is Michelle Obama Trying to Kill Me?" --PajamasMedia.com Now He Wants a Rematch With the Rabbit: "Pres. Carter Sees Guinea Worm Stopped After 23-Yr. Fight" --Atlanta Business Chronicle Not the Sharpest Knife in the Drawer: "Glendale Man Attempts Self-Surgery With Butter Knife" --Associated Press Everything Seemingly Is Spinning Out of Control: "McDonald's to Make Happy Meals More Healthful" --Los Angeles Times Bottom Story of the Day: "Obama Polling Better Than Nixon" --Washington Examiner website (Thanks to The Wall Street Journal's James Taranto) Village Idiots Broken record: "Everything is on the table for that [special congressional] committee, everything, including both entitlement reform and tax reform. Let's be clear: The president thinks, as you know, that the biggest possible overall accomplishment in terms of deficit reduction is a desirable goal, as long as it's balanced. He looks forward to, through the process set up by that committee, to having that debate about what our priorities are. If we need to, as legislated through this deal, find another $1.2 trillion to $1.5 trillion in deficit cuts, how are we going to do that? Are we going to do it by asking sacrifice only of middle-class Americans, or seniors, parents of children who are disabled? Or are we going to ask that others, including oil and gas companies, corporate jet manufacturers, or the wealthiest Americans share in the sacrifice?" --White House Press Secretary Jay Carney Heated rhetoric: "Once having been successful at blindfolding the American public, putting a gun to the president's head, forcing him to sign into law this extraordinary act of ... unpatriotic and irrational frenzy -- I think that now [Republicans are] emboldened, they will now take this as a blueprint and ... a manifesto of sorts to go forward and to disrupt the workings of American government at the behest of a splinter group that is a radical right-wing organization that really needs to be brought to ... account for the devastation that it has wrought on this economy." --Georgetown University professor Michael Eric Dyson on MSNBC "When any faction in America that would put a gun to the head of 310 million people and say 'if you don't do it our way we will blow your dreams away, we will blow a hole in the American economy,' that is un-American and that is not how we do business and we refuse to bow down to those kind of bully tactics. ... The Tea Party is saying if they don't get their way they will refuse to have America pay our bills; if America becomes a dead-beat nation we are finished as a first-rate power. And nobody should threaten that kind of harm to America and get away with it." --former Obama "green czar" Van Jones Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who was actually shot in the head in January, was present for the vote on the debt ceiling. After she was shot, leftists couldn't say enough to blame toxic right-wing rhetoric for the shooting. Yet here they are, using "gun to the head" metaphors. Their hypocrisy knows no bounds. Short Cuts "They used to say that Richard Nixon had a 'secret plan' in the 1968 presidential campaign to end the Vietnam War. President Barack Obama outdid Nixon with a secret plan to control the deficit. He kept telling us of all the virtues of his plan. It was balanced, responsible, courageous and fair. It was just very, very secret." --columnist Rich Lowry "President Obama admitted in a Kansas City radio interview the next election will be a referendum on him and his presidency. The White House quickly clarified his statement. What the president meant to say is that Bush has screwed up left field so badly that nobody can play it." --comedian Argus Hamilton "That thoughtful observer of the passing parade, Nancy Pelosi, weighed in on the 'debt ceiling' negotiations the other day: 'What we're trying to do is save the world from the Republican budget. We're trying to save life on this planet as we know it today.' It's always good to have things explained in terms we simpletons can understand. After a while, all the stuff about debt-to-GDP ratio and CBO alternative baseline scenarios starts to give you a bit of a headache, so we should be grateful to the House Minority Leader for putting it in layman's terms: What's at stake is 'life on this planet as we know it today.' So, if right now you're living anywhere in the general vicinity of this planet, it's good to know Nancy's in there pitching for you." --columnist Mark Steyn "Someone said President Obama was wrong for telling the American people to call their representatives about the debt ceiling. If there's one thing that congressmen hate, it's being told what to do by the people that put them there." --comedian Jay Leno Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis! The Patriot Post Editorial Team (To submit reader comments click here.) 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