Excerpts from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
By: Reince Priebus
February 14, 2012
“President Obama lands in Milwaukee as he continues traveling the country on his quest for re-election. But before he makes more promises to Wisconsinites on what he would do in a second term, he should answer for the broken promises of his first term. He should explain to the residents of the state whose motto is ‘Forward’ why he has taken our country backward for the past three years.
“The list of broken promises is long – and growing. Most recently, the president failed on his chief responsibility: to uphold the Constitution. He issued a health insurance mandate that required religious organizations, most notably Catholic charities and schools, to violate their religious beliefs…
“The national unemployment rate has been above 8% for a record 36 months…He promised his $825 billion stimulus would keep unemployment below 8%. Instead of creating jobs, it just created debt…
“He has added over $4.5 trillion to the national debt – debt that takes a toll on the economy and threatens our children’s future. This is a sharp contrast with congressional Republicans, who, under the leadership of Wisconsin’s own Rep. Paul Ryan, last year passed a budget and a plan for long-term fiscal solvency…
“Obama said now was the time to end our addiction to foreign oil…Last month, he blocked the Keystone energy pipeline, a project that would have provided affordable, reliable, secure energy to Americans…
“Wisconsinites have a leader like that in Gov. Scott Walker…One year after taking office, he has balanced the budget, reformed government and saved teachers from layoffs…
“The contrast with Obama is stark. America is decidedly worse off – our government is bigger, our debt is larger, our economy is weak and Americans are dispirited. The promise of ‘hope and change’ has been broken.”
Click Here To Read The Full Op-Ed: http://bit.ly/AzuGJH
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ICYMI: Chairman Priebus: “The President Has Broken Many Promises”
ICYMI: Highlights from RNC Conference Call on Obama’s Campaign Trip to Wisconsin
RNC Chairman Reince Priebus:
“We’re here this afternoon to really discuss what amounts to nothing more than yet another taxpayer paid funded campaign stop by the president, this time to our home in Wisconsin, to rehash really more of the same broken promises, more speeches…highlighting yet again a president who is absolutely in love with the sound of his own voice but not in love with following through with his promises.
“Certainly in Wisconsin, we’ve heard all of this before: lofty rhetoric, more proposals that actually never see pen to paper, and worse yet, no results to show for it. But after three years of constant campaigning, I think Wisconsinites are sick and tired of watching and observing a campaign non-stop and a campaign prop or backdrop for this president’s reelection tour. This time, it’s going to be our backyard in Wisconsin. Unfortunately, by nearly every economic measure, whether it’s the manufacturing sector, or mounting deficits, the debt bomb that’s facing this country, Americans are flatly worse off than they were when this president took office.
“We don’t need to look any further than the budget submitted just yesterday by the president, as proof that he’s not serious about governing. He’s not serious about tackling the debt. He’s not serious about tackling the deficit in this country, because as a matter of fact, he’s making everything worse.
“After three consecutive years of deficits, over $1 trillion, the president’s latest budget comes in at 1.3 trillion in year one, despite promising to the American people that he’d cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term. What’d he do? He proposed the biggest structural deficit in year one, than any structural deficit in the history of the world. He’s gambling with our kids’ future. He’s gambling with the very future of what made this country great.
“Fortunately for Wisconsin, our state pushed back on the Obama Administration by electing strong leaders like Scott Walker and Senator Johnson who are willing to make the tough choices to get our economy back on track, but we can’t stop there.
“In November of this year, Wisconsin will see through these three years and these speeches and all of these lofty promises from Obama, and I’m confident that we’re going to do our part and elect a Republican president.
“Thanks to labor unrest that has ripped across China, wage costs have been rising in a nation that is supposedly inexhaustible supply of cheap labor. Master Lock and other companies in the past two years have also complained about shifts in currency exchange rates after Beijing engineered a weakening of the dollar against the Chinese yen. This counting US exports to China and bending to pressure from Washington with Bristol’s at China’s tight control over its exchange rate. I want to draw your attention to an article today in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel about China’s worsening business environment as it relates to Master Lock’s success.
“I think this brings us to an important question: is Master Lock doing well because of Obama’s policies, or is it in spite of his policies? I think most Wisconsinites will tell you that it’s the latter.”
U.S. Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI):
“With President Obama going to Milwaukee and visiting Master Lock, it does remind me of the rooster taking credit for the sunrise. As a manufacturer and job creator who has actually made decisions to hire and expand a business, it’s no mystery to me what a slow to our economic recovery and it really is the policies of this administration and I would first start off by saying, it starts with this administration’s basic hostility toward business and the free market system. Business owners certainly and I recognize this and the business owners I talk to feel that hostility and it scares them. It’s one of the things that creates the high levels of uncertainty and certainly a lack of confidence that business owners, job creators feel and certainly the consumers feel.
“The consumers are spending and business owners have a basic fear of investing, expanding business and certainly they have the fear about bringing new people on because they are not seeing a demand. They know that they are the ones being targeted being by President Obama’s assault on success and his strategy, his very overt strategy of class division, class warfare. They also feel the brunt of the growing cost of complying with government regulations certainly from President Obama’s agencies that are just in hyper-drive. They feel what President Obama’s Small Business Administration reported in a study, that it cost 1.75 trillion dollars in 2008 to comply with the federal regulations and since then 11,000 new rules and regulations have been issued…
“President Obama just released his fourth budget and it is another depressing example of this president showing absolutely no leadership on what Admiral Mullins said was the greatest threat to America our debt investment. He did make that promise about cutting the deficit in half by the end of his first term.
“The first deficit that he experienced was 1.4 trillion dollars. This year, his budget comes out and the deficit for 2012 will be 1.3 trillion dollars, not exactly being cut in half. This budget, even though everyone acknowledges from the head of CBO to Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke…everybody recognizes that the long term debt and deficit issues are really being driven by Social Security and Medicare and the fact that these things are not sustainable.
“This president and his fourth budget doesn’t lift a finger. He puts forward no proposal whatsoever to save those programs…even though his interim OMB director in front of the budget committee today stating the president is pushing Congress for pro growth tax reform. Why doesn’t he propose it? Why doesn’t he come forward? Why doesn’t he work with us in good faith to actually enact and pass pro growth tax reform? Instead, he is doing his class warfare and saying let’s tax the rich which again business owners know that they are the ones being targeted. That’s what we are up against…totally against pro growth policies, and that’s what is causing great harm to our economy.”
Click Here To Listen To The Full Audio: http://www.gop.com/audio/2.14.2012_Wisconsin.mp3
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ICYMI:Highlights from Conference Call with Mario Diaz Balart (FL-21) on Obama’s 2013 Budget
Representative Mario Diaz-Balart (FL-21):
“As we all know, yesterday the president unveiled his 2013 budget proposal…There are some things that frankly amaze me. The president breaks his promise of cutting the deficit in half by the end of his first term, doesn’t even attempt to do so. It shatters his obligations to confront the nation’s spending driven debt crisis that is really pretty much upon us already. He doesn’t address the upcoming bankruptcy of critical programs. These are programs that are threatened for bankruptcy, whether it’s Social Security or Medicare, threatening the health and retirement security of our current and future seniors and again he doesn’t even deal with that reality…he assumes that they are perfect and there is nothing that has to be reformed.
“This budget that is full of the same old tired gimmicks. It frankly spends way too much, it’s $47 trillion of government spending over the next decade. It proposes a net increase over current spending projections which again is astonishing to me…clearly it taxes way too much, it’s $1.9 trillion in new additional taxes, and it raises the taxes not to lower the debt, which is again our looming crisis, but to fuel more government spending, which is again pretty astonishing to me. It clearly continues to borrow too much, this is the 4th straight year of trillion dollar plus deficits, and again there is no plan in his proposal to reduce the debt, the gross debt at the end of fiscal year 2022 is $26 trillion, it’s actually $25.9 trillion, an incredible increase in the debt…
“It’s really sad. It seems like that this president has gone from when he was a candidate of ‘hope and change’ to the president of divide and deceive. It’s really unfortunate.
“Last year the House passed our budget, it was called the ‘path to prosperity.’ We’re in the process of now putting together a budget for this year. It was approved, it was passed. It does deal with bringing us to balance. It does deal with the impending debt crisis. It does deal with the health and retirement security of our seniors and unfortunately, as everyone knows, the Senate has yet even to pass a budget in over 1,000 days and the Majority Leader has now stated that it looks like they’re not going to pass a budget this year again…The president does have a proposal which falls flat in so many ways.”
Comentarios en Español
“…Sin duda yo creo que el tema más importante que no es solo para los hispanos pero para todos las personas en los Estados Unidos pero particularmente para los hispanos es el desempleo, la falta de crecimiento económico… Si es importante para el resto de la población, yo diría que es hasta más importante para los hispanos porque los hispanos están sufriendo de un nivel de desempleo más elevado que el resto de la población, entonces por ejemplo esta actitud de tratar de dividir el país entre los más afluentes y menos afluentes y entonces decir que vamos a aumentarle los impuestos a los que tienen más desafortunadamente tiene el efecto de hacerle daño a la creación de empleos.
“Aproximadamente, a la mitad de esos a los que el Presidente quiere aumentarle los impuestos son pequeños negocios, pequeñas empresas, y son los que crean…los empleos para los hispanos en los Estados Unidos. Y entonces esta propuesta del Presidente sería desastrosa para la creación de empleos, y cuando hablamos de la creación de empleos entre los que mas están sufriendo son los hispanos.
“Así que para mí, el tema más importante, lo más urgente ahora es el desempleo particularmente en las comunidades hispanas y el Presidente de los Estados Unidos parece que no entiende como se crean los empleos, no entiende cómo funciona la economía por que sigue en esta guerra no declarada o semi-declarada al sector privado, a los que crean los empleos y particularmente a las pequeñas y medianas empresas. El sigue con esa actitud que yo creo que ha sido una actitud desastrosa…”
Click Here To Listen To The Full Audio: http://www.gop.com/audio/2.14.2012_budget.mp3
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ICYMI: Obama’s Budget Games
Excerpts from The Washington Post
Columnist Dana Milbank
By: Dana Milbank
February 13, 2012
“Gene Sperling’s sports metaphors collided so often during the White House budget rollout that it’s a wonder the man didn’t pull a hamstring.
“The head of President Obama’s National Economic Council suited up for a Monday afternoon news conference with a full lineup of athletic cliches. ‘We believe manufacturing punches above its weight economically,’ he said, and the administration’s trade policy ‘will level the playing field against countries around the world.’
“Sperling…said his basketball-loving boss’s policies are ‘as complementary as good hitting, good pitching and good fielding is for a baseball team — or, to seasonally adjust, good shooting, good rebounding and good playmaking.’
“By the end of the session with reporters, Sperling was just running up the score. ‘So I think this president has very much stepped up to the plate,’ he concluded.
“All the sports talk amounted to a head fake, or perhaps a quarterback sneak, because the real game the White House was playing was dodgeball: evading anything resembling a serious budget proposal.
“The White House’s budget for fiscal 2013 begins with a broken promise, adds some phony policy assumptions, throws in a few rosy forecasts and omits all kinds of painful decisions. Even then, the proposal would add $1 trillion more to the national debt than Obama contemplated a few months ago — and it is a non-starter on Capitol Hill, where even Senate Democrats have no plans to take it up. It is, in other words, exactly what it was supposed to be: a campaign document.
“The opposition picked up Sperling’s metaphor and ran with it. ‘He has punted again,’ said Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), the House Budget Committee chairman…
“As a budget writer, Obama whiffed. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, although offering a few kind words for the president’s proposal, said the plan ‘would barely stabilize the debt — and at too high a level.’
“The budget calls for hundreds of billions of dollars in new spending. It shows deficits exceeding $600 billion in every year but one over the next decade, while the debt grows to $18.7 trillion.
“As such, the rollout couldn’t have been more purely political if it had included a balloon drop…”
Click Here To Read The Full Article: http://wapo.st/ykqyk6
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ICYMI: Editorial: “Obama’s Budget Plan Leaves Debt Bomb Ticking”
Excerpts from USA Today
February 14, 2012
“The best test of a budget proposal these days is whether it reins in the national debt, which is projected to equal a troubling 74% of gross domestic product this year. The last time the publicly held debt was that high as a percentage of the economy was in 1950, when the nation was still paying off the stupendous amount of money it had to borrow to fight and win World War II.
“The election-year budget President Obama sent to Congress…fails that test…Obama’s budget has a lot of deficit reduction…But the plan would still add $6.7 trillion in deficits over the next decade, with the debt-to-GDP ratio creeping up to about 77% through 2022…long-term figures buried deep inside the budget show the debt would shoot up again after 2022 and just keep going, driven by an aging population and the escalating cost of Social Security and health care…
“Credible proposals from Obama’s own deficit-reduction commission and by the Bipartisan Policy Center in 2010 both aimed at reducing the debt to 60% of GDP and keeping it headed down. Obama’s plan does not even begin to do that. Nor…does it fulfill his 2009 promise to halve the deficit by the end of his first term.
“The reason the president’s budget doesn’t fix the longer-term problem is that for all its spending cuts and revenue increases, it relies on gimmicks and avoids some problems instead of tackling them.
“The administration continues to pretend that Social Security needs no fixes because it doesn’t add to the budget deficit…The administration’s own numbers…show that the program is in the red and will drain the Treasury of half a trillion dollars from 2011 to 2017…
“This is the president’s fourth year in office. If he had been aggressive about long-term debt in years one through three…the nation might not be where it is today…”
Click Here To Read The Full Editorial: http://usat.ly/AjF2M9
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RNC Releases Valentine’s Day Cards
WASHINGTON – The Republican National Committee (RNC) launched their annual Valentine’s Day cards on www.GOPValentine.com featuring President Obama and his liberal friends.
“This Valentine’s Day, love is definitely in the air at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. President Obama is in love with making speeches, spending money we don’t have and campaigning non-stop to save his own job instead of creating jobs for the American people,” said RNC Chairman Reince Priebus.
“In the spirit of the season, we hope Obama and his liberal buddies will find Cupid’s arrow and show some love for creating jobs with the Keystone pipeline, getting our spending under control and avoiding tax increases in this tough economy.
“But, after three years of record unemployment and out of control spending, the American people have a chance this November for a clean break from Barack Obama’s failed policies.”
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Dismantling Obamacare
Download Podcast | iTunes | Podcast Feed
On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Pejman Yousefzadeh and Kevin Holtsberry are joined by Sally Pipes to discuss her book The Pipes Plan: The Top Ten Ways to Dismantle Obamacare, some of the criticisms of Obamacare, and alternative solutions for fixing healthcare.
We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.
Related Links:
Buy The Pipes Plan: The Top Ten Ways to Dismantle Obamacare on Amazon
PRI’s Amicus Brief at SCOTUS concerning Obamacare
Sally Pipes at Pacific Research Institute
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Morning Briefing for February 15, 2012
RedState Morning Briefing
February 15, 2012
Go to www.RedStateMB.com to get
the Morning Briefing every morning at no charge.
1. The Competitive Disadvantage of Principle
2. The Demise of the Tea Party is Greatly Exaggerated
3. The Highway Bill and ANWR: It’s a Trap!
4. Beware Greeks Demanding Benefits
5. CPAC: Not Quite Like the Media Matters Communications Room. But Still, Grow Up.
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1. The Competitive Disadvantage of Principle
If you have not read it, this is a fascinating article in the New York Times. The crux of the article is the title — even critics of the safety net increasingly depend on it.
The article profiles a number of people who take advantage of the federal social safety net and are increasingly resentful of it. The solutions on fixing it vary. The angry, for some, may or may not be misplaced. The article reads as a Rorschach test on your ideology — liberals will read it and find the people hypocritical. Conservatives will read it and find it all maddening.
To summarize it, the United States is increasingly taxing the middle class to subsidize the middle class. All the talk about the poor and what the safety net is designed to do for the poor overlooks that the government has taken it upon itself to keep the middle class from falling into the poorer classes of society.
It is a long held principle in this country that the individual is supreme above the collective and the government. Tied to that is the principle espoused by Abraham Lincoln back in Kalamazoo, MI back in 1856, that in this country, unlike so many others, “every man can make himself.” It is less and less true.
More and more, the Middle Class has become dependent on the federal social safety net. It was a slow and creeping dependence the Middle Class did not recognize until it was too late. Now suddenly their principles have come into conflict with their lifestyle.
The Middle Class believes that with hard work it can move up the ranks of society. It is not content to and does not expect to stay in the Middle Class. At the same time, the Middle Class recognizes its current dependency. It also recognizes that if it does break through it will be despised by government. Even more troubling, it does not know how to break through. Due to lobbyists, regulators, and legislators, the process of inventiveness and creativity has been shut down.
Please click here for the rest of the post.
2. The Demise of the Tea Party is Greatly Exaggerated
Certain people keep opining that the Tea Party is all but dead, but those who wish for the demise of the Tea Party are missing the emerging new political infrastructure where Tea Party groups have set aside rallies for political action. Consider Wisconsin to determine where the Tea Party is going in 2012 and beyond.
From New York to California, newspapers are weighing in on the importance of Governor Scott Walker’s recall in Wisconsin. Stephen Moore in the Wall Street Journal described it as “the most important non-presidential election of the decade.” The Orange County Register even penned an editorial about how important it was that the public unions are stopped in Wisconsin.
Please click here for the rest of the post.
3. The Highway Bill and ANWR: It’s a Trap!
Well, it appears that our efforts are paying off. Responding to our charge that the GOP was violating the pledge against bundled megabills, Boehner announced that he will split the proposal into three separate bills; the highway bill (HR 7), pension reform (HR 3813), and expanded oil and gas drilling (HR 3408).
This is great news. But here’s the catch.
Please click here for the rest of the post.
4. Beware Greeks Demanding Benefits
In the most recent round of violent protests that have rocked Greece, a group of aggrieved Communist party members went up onto the Acropolis and hung banners from the massive rock. “Down with Dictatorship” they proclaimed (in English as well as in Greek for the benefit of the western media and/or relevant parties in London and Washington, D.C.).
The message was not particularly subtle: Here, in the birthplace of democracy, Greeks would once again stand up to their oppressors and claim their ancient freedoms. At the very feet of the Parthenon they made their stand, with the ruins of the classical past providing witness.
The juxtaposition between the “birthplace of democracy” and Greece’s current budget woes has been echoed in the media, illustrated with video of Athenians torching Starbucks and Cinnabon. What this analysis fails to recognize is that the contemporary Greeks are rejecting their own heritage as they riot not for freedom, but against it.
Please click here for the rest of the post.
5. CPAC: Not Quite Like the Media Matters Communications Room. But Still, Grow Up.
Stephen Glass was a fabulist. He made up stories and eventually he was caught. I read somewhere he wants to be a lawyer now, but his contrition is in doubt.
One of the things he made up was a story on CPAC. He may have made it up, but I think he got it right nonetheless.
After RedState got started in July of 2004, blogging on the right became all the rage, though it was correlation and not causation. By 2005, CPAC had a Bloggers Row and I went for my first time. The event was held that year at the Reagan Center in Washington, D.C. Most of the attendees stayed across the street at the JW Marriott. It was not an ideal venue, but it was my first time and I did not know better.
Being the good, intrepid blogger, I ran across the street to a CVS to buy a notepad, having left mine in my office back in Macon, GA. There in line were a half dozen young men, each with CPAC credentials around their necks and each buying condoms.
Where is the Race?
The recent polling on the state of the GOP Primary is either bad news or catastrophic news for Mitt Romney. According to PPP, this thing is already almost over for Romney, as PPP shows Santorum up by 15 nationally and 15 in Michigan. The latter is probably equally bad for Romney; if he loses by 15 points in what is essentially a second home state for him, he might not recover.
There are signs, however, that the race is considerably more complicated. Four other polls have been conducted since last Tuesday’s hat trick for Santorum. CNN/Opinion Research shows Santorum up 2, Gallup shows Romney up 2, CBS News/NY Times has Santorum up 3, and Pew has Santorum up 2. In other words, PPP is outside the margin of error for BOTH Santorum’s level of support and Romney’s level of support. Likewise in Michigan, Rasmussen shows Santorum up by 3 – reflecting that PPP is within the margin of error (barely) for Santorum’s support but drastically undersampling Romney’s support.
In a normal set of circumstances this evidence would lead inexorably to the conclusion that PPP had a bad set of polling, and their results should be discarded. However, not so fast. In last week’s contests in Colorado and Minnesota, PPP was the only polling company to sample either state and drastically undersampled Santorum in both. It is at least possible that PPP is on to something here that the rest of the pollsters are missing, and things could be much worse for Romney right now than they would otherwise appear.
Is there another twist left in this race? The nearly interminable series of debates is almost over and there are few obvious opportunities in the next couple weeks for Santorum to self-destruct. The chorus of well-respected Romney supporters may have already burned up their chance to influence the race by engaging in scorched earth against Gingrich and arguing that he represented certain doom for the GOP; it will be hard to make the same pitch twice. Romney may have just two weeks to turn this thing around before the race is cast in stone against him.
The Great New York Redistricting Headache.
So, we’re having ourselves a situation in New York with redistricting. The basics: New York, like many blue states that have been blue states for a while, has seen its population ratio to the rest of the country drop sufficiently that it’s losing two Congressional Districts this cycle. So they’re all trying to figure out how to redraw the map for an optimal destroy-your-enemies approach:
- New York Democrats want to mess over New York Republicans. The New York GOP is defending several federal Congressional seats (six of the seven GOP-held seats are effectively freshmen) and its Senate majority; and New York Democrats are eager to try to winnow those numbers down. If they can figure out how to do it without eliminating a downstate district. Or two, frankly.
- New York Republicans, on the other hand, are digging in their heels until they get at least their state Senate majority preserved (note that there is precious little loyalty, on either side, between the state and national parties).
- And then there’s Governor Andrew Cuomo. He’s a Democrat… which means that he’s usually at war slightly more often with the Republican-controlled Senate than he is with the Democratic-controlled Assembly. He’s also currently stuck with a veto threat that, if not followed, will hurt his chances for later higher office. But if Cuomo does veto whatever devil’s bargain the New York legislature comes up with, then… Bad Things Happen.
And that’s why the courts are now involved. Justice Dora Irizarry (Republican, by the way*) has called for the Second Court of Appeals to create a three-judge panel that will settle this issue. State Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos is noticeably nonchalant about the possible results, which suggests that either: the fix is in and the Democrats are about to get slammed; or that Skelos is going to use the threat that the Democrats are about to get slammed as a tool for getting the state Senate district maps that he wants. All depends on how cynical you’re feeling today, really.
Then again, it’s the New York legislature. Hard to be too cynical about those people.
Moe Lane (crosspost)
*Heck of a thing when Wikipedia spells such things out and St. Johns University won’t.
