Candidate Obama’s Class Warfare
[HumanEvents.com]
Forget trying to govern. President Obama has gone all in on class warfare.
Don’t expect any of his stimulus or deficit-cutting ideas to pass Congress. They’re not designed to pass in a House controlled by Republicans. They’re designed to pit middle-class and poor voters against job creators and the Tea Party’s low-tax philosophy.
The President’s legislative plan to stimulate the economy is a miniature version of his failed stimulus plan. Congress won’t pass another expensive bailout of the states and giveaway to Big Labor wholly funded with higher taxes.
Obama’s submission to the Super Committee contains $3 trillion in gimmicks and tax increases over the next 10 years, which will purportedly slice $3 trillion off the national debt. He claims a “cut” of more than $1 trillion in connection to the planned wind-down of the conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq. Obama raises $1.5 trillion with most of that new revenue on the backs of individuals making more than $200,000 and families making in excess of $250,000.
What Obama will do on his summer “vacation” — write a jobs plan
HotAir.com
The Washington Post reports that Barack Obama will go back to the drawing board during his vacation* this month and draw up a plan to stimulate job creation. At least that’s what Obama has promised, along with a deficit reduction plan that he has promised since April:
President Obama has decided to press Congress for a new round of stimulus spending and tax cuts as he seeks to address the great domestic policy quandary of his tenure: how to spur job growth in an age of austerity.
Obama will lay out a series of ideas in a major address right after Labor Day, when he and a largely antagonistic Congress will return from vacation, the White House said Wednesday.
The president is thinking about proposing tax cuts for companies that hire workers, new spending for roads and construction, and other measures that would target the long-term unemployed, according to administration officials and other people familiar with the matter. Some ideas, such as providing mortgage relief for struggling homeowners, could come through executive action.
Obama also plans to announce a major push for new deficit reduction, urging the special congressional committee formed in the debt-ceiling deal this month to identify even more savings than the $1.5 trillion it has been tasked with finding.
In other words, we’re going to get more of the same policies we got in Porkulus in 2009. Obama will offer short-term gimmicks to get short-term boosts in spending, go back to the “shovel-ready” projects that even Obama finally admitted were a mirage, and offer more public safety-net spending while calling it a “stimulus.” The fact that we’re headed into another recession clearly showed these Keynesian gimmicks as failures seems to have escaped Obama’s attention.
Investors Business Daily’s John Merline gives a better diagnosis of the real problem holding back investment and growth:
If the federal government’s regulatory operation were a business, it would be one of the 50 biggest in the country in terms of revenues, and the third largest in terms of employees, with more people working for it than McDonald’s, Ford, Disney and Boeing combined.
Under President Obama, while the economy is struggling to grow and create jobs, the federal regulatory business is booming.
Regulatory agencies have seen their combined budgets grow a healthy 16% since 2008, topping $54 billion, according to the annual “Regulator’s Budget,” compiled by George Washington University and Washington University in St. Louis.
That’s at a time when the overall economy grew a paltry 5%.
Meanwhile, employment at these agencies has climbed 13% since Obama took office to more than 281,000, while private-sector jobs shrank by 5.6%.
John also gives us the Chart of the Day, showing the growth in regulatory agencies over the last 18 months:
Sell Bonds, Buy Stocks: An Investment Strategy Built on Pro-growth Tax Cuts
BigGovernment.com
Posted Dec 12th 2010 at 2:41 pm
by Larry Kudlow
For once, top Obama economic advisor Larry Summers got it right. Warning opponents of the big tax-cut deal, Summers told reporters, “Failure to pass this bill in the next couple weeks would materially increase the risk that the economy would stall out and we would have a double-dip recession.”
Too bad Mr. Summers didn’t advise the president to cut taxes across-the-board two years ago, rather than push for the misbegotten $800 billion government-spending package. That policy dismally failed to ignite a real economic recovery or to lower the unemployment rate.
But it’s never too late to promote good policy. And echoing Summers, in recent months any number of demand- and supply-side economists warned of a double-dip (or nearly so) unless the Bush 2003 tax cuts were extended. The economy would be demoralized from a rollback of incentives to work, invest, and take risks. Plus, roughly $600 billion of cash (including the alternative minimum tax) would be drained from the private sector.
Whether Obama is really changing his stripes and abandoning class-warfare, big-government spending remains to be seen. But at least he is out there defending the huge tax-cut package, which is pro-growth, along with a South Korean free-trade deal, which also is pro-growth. Certainly it’s a turn for the better for the White House.
In the wake of the tax-cut announcement, a number of Wall Street forecasters are upping their growth estimates for 2011 and beyond. The consensus seems to have lifted real GDP by nearly a full percentage point. And if the economy can grow by 3.5 to 4 percent, the likelihood of a sizable decline in unemployment literally grows stronger.
Video: Anthony Weiner Gets Snotty with Megyn Kelly over TAX CUTS
HotAir.com
posted at 5:42 pm on December 8, 2010 by Allahpundit
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Via Greg Hengler. Weiner being abrasive is pretty much the opposite of breaking news, but I am a bit surprised at how subdued MK’s reaction is. One of the reasons Fox viewers love her is her willingness to throw down with the likes of KP; in this case, he’s all but telling her to pipe down and let the grown-up talk and yet she hardly bats an eye. The Megyn Kelly of old would have called him a pencil-neck geek and then cut his mic. Dude, I think she’s going soft.
As for Weiner’s angst over the deal, The One has three problems right now: His base hates the terms of the compromise on the merits, they hate the fact that he didn’t fightfightfight for a better bargain, and of course they hate the fact that they’ll be irrelevant in the House in a few more weeks. Time for the progressive caucus to make a last stand? Maybe!
Reid, Senate Democrats Threaten to Block Obama Deal on Tax Cuts
Newsmax.com
“I’m not here to play games with the American people or the health of the economy,” Obama said of his day-old deal, which is designed to avert a scheduled Jan. 1 expiration of tax cuts at all income levels.
In a remarkable political role reversal, Republicans lined up to support the package, while lawmakers of the president’s party said they were prepared to oppose it. Liberal Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., pledged to “do everything I can to defeat this,” including a filibuster to prevent a final vote.
The deal includes an extension of expiring Bush-era tax cuts for all income levels — not just for lower and middle-income taxpayers, as Democrats wanted. It also contains a renewal of jobless benefits due to expire in a few weeks, and a one-year cut in Social Security taxes paid by workers.
Lawmakers Build Case for Tax Cuts as Jobless Rate Rises
FoxNews.com
Published December 03, 2010
House Minority Leader John Boehner speaks at a news conference on Capitol Hill Dec. 2. (AP Photo)
The latest labor report showing unemployment rose to 9.8 percent in November swiftly became a political football Friday as lawmakers seized on the dismal data to make the case for everything from tax cuts to jobless benefits.
The worse-than-expected report, reflecting the highest rate since April, comes in the middle of a tense debate on Capitol Hill over what to do about a host of expiring tax provisions. The lame-duck Congress is running out of time to act, but the new numbers only emboldened lawmakers — as they claim to be reaching for middle ground — to stand by their economic prescriptions.
Republicans said the uptick shows the need to immediately extend all the Bush tax cuts before their Dec. 31 expiration. Democrats argued the weak employment picture underscores the need to extend the cuts for the middle class and to extend the long-term unemployment benefits which started to expire earlier this week.
“The best way to inject demand into our economy right now is to put money in the pockets of those that need it most and will spend it fastest – America’s middle class,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a written statement, urging Republicans to reinstate the aid and “stop holding middle-class tax cuts hostage.”
But Republicans, who assailed Democrats for pushing a middle-class tax cuts-only bill Thursday in the House, said the report shows it’s time to get serious and spare everyone from a tax hike.
White House Concedes on Upper Income Tax Cuts
FoxNews.com
Published November 11, 2010
Reuters – Oct. 30: Obama Senior Advisor David Axelrod departs the White House to spend the weekend campaigning for Democratic candidates.
President Obama senior adviser David Axelrod insisted Thursday that comments he made to an online publication conceding to an extension of tax cuts for all income levels are no different from remarks by the president over the weekend.
Axelrod, who confirmed to Fox News comments he made to The Huffington Post, suggested that the administration is ready to accept an across-the-board continuation of current tax rates, marking a turnaround from the White House’s pre-midterm election stance on impending tax increases.
“We have to deal with the world as we find it,” he said. However, Axelrod made clear to Fox News the White House is not conceding a permanent extension for the top 2 percent of earners.
The president’s top adviser also acknowledged that separating different categories of tax cuts now is politically unrealistic and procedurally difficult.
“We don’t want that tax increase to go forward for the middle class … But plainly, what we can’t do is permanently extend these high income taxes,” he told the online publication.
U.S. Deficit Commission Recommends Changes to Social Security
FoxNews.com
Published November 10, 2010
AP – A draft proposal by the deficit commission suggests curbing Social Security benefits and raising the retirement age.
A draft proposal by the deficit commission suggests curbing Social Security benefits and raising the retirement age.
The co-chairmen of the panel appointed by President Obama to cut the U.S. deficit recommend raising the retirement age to 68. It is currently 67 years for retirees to receive full benefits. The panel leaders also propose reducing the annual cost-of-living increases in Social Security.
The increase to age 68 would be implemented by 2050 and then would increase again to 69 by 2075. A “hardship exception” would be provided for certain occupations where older retirement would be unrealistic.
According to a source who spoke to Fox News, the 18-member panel led by former Wyoming Republican Sen. Alan Simpson and former Clinton Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles, also may propose reducing the base rate on corporate taxes, phasing in spending cuts over time, reducing foreign aid by $4.6 billion, freezing federal salaries for three years and banning congressional earmarks. It is unclear how the commissioners would define a congressional earmark.
Greenspan: Stimulus package “worked far less than expected”
HotAir.com
posted at 2:55 pm on September 15, 2010 by Ed Morrissey
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This may depend on how much one expected the Porkulus package to actually work. Many of us scoffed at the Keynesian notion that government spending had a 50% multiplier effect on long-term economic growth, so the stimulus bill demanded and received by Barack Obama actually performed to expectations — an expectation of failure. Alan Greenspan undoubtedly meant that Porkulus “worked far less” than the Obama administration expected in remarks today to the Council of Foreign Relations:
The former head of the Federal Reserve said fiscal stimulus efforts have fallen far short of expectations, and the government now needs to get out of the way and allow businesses and markets to power the recovery.
“We have to find a way to simmer down the extent of activism that is going on” with government stimulus spending “and allow the economy to heal” itself, former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan told a gathering held at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York on Wednesday.
Economic Lessons From the Summer Swoon
BigGovernment.com
Posted Aug 18th 2010 at 8:01 am (Reposted 8/23/2010)
by Larry Kudlow
The economy is suffering from something like a summer swoon. In the words of business columnist Jimmy Pethokoukis, the recovery summer has gone bust. We all know this from the sloppy statistics coming in for jobs, retail sales, and most recently manufacturing. But market-based indicators are telling the same story.
Let’s start with the Treasury bond market. Yields have fallen to 2.6 percent today from 4.1 percent last April. Decomposing this Treasury rally shows that real yields have dropped 79 basis points, which is a signal of lower economic expectations.
Meanwhile, inflation break-even TIPS (Treasury inflation-protected securities) have fallen 64 basis points, showing that price expectations also have dropped. The consumer price index is only rising 1 percent over the past year. And long-term inflation fears have fallen all the way to 1.7 percent. It’s not deflation. It’s disinflation.The corporate-bond market shows a similar decline of economic-growth and profits expectations. Credit-risk spreads are widening. The spread between investment-grade corporate bonds and risk-free Treasuries have widened 62 basis points, while higher-yielding junk-bond spreads have increased 138 basis points.
Now, all these bond-market indicators don’t tell us a whole lot about the future. But they are corroborating the summer slump in the present. Lower inflation is a good thing, but lower growth is not.
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