"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler
Yeah, I know everybody’s riveted by negotiations between Republicans and Democrats over the federal budget, but what is far more urgent — at least to me, personally — is the battle over my own budget, which involves negotiations with Mrs. Other McCain.
If you think this is leading up to me asking you to hit the tip jar — hey, you know me too well. But there’s much more to the story, if you want to read it. Continue reading The REAL Budget Battle (UPDATED) →
Thanks to Moe Lane for pointing this out. In the immediate aftermath of the mid-term GOP tsunami, Democrats were boasting about how many of the Republican freshmen they were targeting for 2012. In the past few months, however, these boasts have been significantly downsized. Jim Geraghty at National Review reprints this e-mail from the National Republican Congressional Committee:
IN NOVEMBER 2010, THE DCCC SAID IT WAS TARGETING 61 DISTRICTS CARRIED BY OBAMA: “The DCCC has identified 61 seats currently held by Republicans in districts that Barack Obama won in 2008. ‘Republicans won a lot of seats they have no business winning,’ said a top Democratic strategist. ‘It’s going to be a full-on recruitment cycle [and] Israel is the perfect person for that.’” (Brian Beutler, “Blue Dogged: Meet Steve Israel, The Incoming Chair Of The DCCC,” Talking Points Memo, 11/23/10)
EARLIER THIS MONTH, THEY SCALED THAT BACK TO 37 SUBURBAN DISTRICTS: “Representative Nancy Pelosi’s selection of Mr. Israel to lead the Congressional campaign had much to do with his district, a swath of Nassau and Suffolk Counties where Democrats hold a modest registration edge but independents decide elections. The path to retaking the House, both say, leads through 37 similar suburban districts, home to nine million independents who voted for President Obama in 2008 but deserted the party in the 2010 elections.” (David M. Halbfinger, “L.I. Congressman Leads Uphill Charge Toward a Democratic House,” New York Times, 03/19/11)
NOW, THE DCCC HAS BEEN FORCED TO FOCUS ON ONLY 14 DISTRICTS: “The Democratic Party is taking aim at 14 freshmen Republicans in the House, of 87 elected, whom it deems the most vulnerable…the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which is focusing on districts where Mr. Obama and Senator John Kerry both won as presidential nominees and where Democrats have a registration advantage.” (Jennifer Steinhauer, “Hardly Settled in House, but Already in Hot Seat,” New York Times, 03/27/11)
ACTUALLY, THEY EVEN GOT THAT NUMBER WRONG. IT’S 13 DISTRICTS WON BY KERRY, NOT 14: “All told, 63 Republicans in the 112th Congress will hold seats that President Obama carried in 2008 and, of that group, 13 will hold seats that Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) also won in the 2004 presidential race.” (Chris Cillizza, “The Obama Republicans,” The Washington Post’s “The Fix” blog, 11/11/10)
Which is not to say that Republicans can shift into neutral and expect to coast to re-election, of course. We’re way too early in the cycle to start trying to predict what the results will be on Nov. 6, 2012. “But it’s pretty remarkable that we’re not hearing much talk about Democrats retaking the House in 2012,” Geraghty says.
And I would add that, if we take this as evidence of demoralization and disarray in Democrat ranks — combining it with Obama’s sagging poll numbers — this provides a strong argument against GOP leaders rolling over easy on the budget showdown.
Republicans should listen to Rick Crawford.
UPDATE: Linked by The Lonely Conservative and welcome, Instapundit readers! Reports that Republican budget negotiators have settled for $33 billion in cuts — after initially promising $100 billion in cuts — are not exactly being applauded by Ace of Spades.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Monday urged Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to ditch members of the Tea Party and cut a deal with Democrats to avert a government shutdown.
Reid insisted it is those GOP internal divisions that are threatening to shut down the government after April 8, in less than two weeks.
“For the sake of our economy, it’s time for mainstream Republicans to stand up to the Tea Party and rejoin Democrats at the table to negotiate a responsible solution that cuts spending while protecting jobs,” he said.
First point: No Republican is “threatening to shut down the government.” The House of Representatives is controlled by Republicans. The Senate is controlled by Harry Reid and it is he who, by rejecting the House budget plan, is trying to force a shutdown, which he clearly hopes to blame on the GOP.
(Question: Are reporters at The Hill professionally obliged to report Reid’s dishonest rhetoric in this credulous manner, as if they were stenographers or publicists at a p.r. firm? The Hill‘s Erik Wasson “reports” three entire paragraphs quoted directly from Reid’s press release and it is not until the eighth paragraph of Wasson’s article that he begins to permit the GOP to respond.)
Second point: Republicans are doing a piss-poor job of explaining the shamelessly deceptive game being played by Reid and the Democrats, who are not being directly called out on their use of the federal budget as a political hostage. Every day, in every statement, in every public appearance, Republicans should point out that the current negotiations are the result of Nancy Pelosi’s failure, when Democrats held an insuperable majority in the House, to pass a budget for Fiscal Year 2011. Had Pelosi and the Democrats done their job last year, we would not be in our current “crisis” mode, and any attempt to scapegoat the GOP for this situation is nothing but a damned lie.
Third point: If Boehner lets Reid get away with this kind of stuff — driving a wedge into the GOP House caucus — it is Boehner, and not Reid, who is to blame.
The overwhelming Republican victory in 2010 was a clear mandate for reducing the out-of-control deficit spending that has been a deliberate part of the Obama administration’s misguided Keynesian economic policy. In the current budget negotiations, Reid and the Democrats are trying to “win” retroactively an election campaign they lost.
These are self-evident political facts, which are not complex or “nuanced,” and which any taxpayer can easily understand. If Boehner, Cantor and other GOP leaders are unable to articulate these facts, if they let themselves be bamboozled into arguing policy in the phony terms dictated by Democrats, then they do not deserve to be called “leaders,” and deserve the defeat into which they seem to be stumbling.
UPDATE: More stenography from Erik Wasson of The Hill:
Senate Democrats and the White House on Monday were working to finalize a new counteroffer to the GOP on 2011 spending cuts.
The counteroffer would cut an additional $20 billion from 2011 spending on top of the $10 billion already cut by two short-term continuing resolutions enacted this month, sources close to the talks said.
Today is the first time I’d ever noticed Wasson’s byline (he joined The Hill staff in November) and, as in the previous Harry Reid story, here Wasson offers eight consecutive paragraphs of Democrat talking points before making an “oh-by-the-way” gesture toward letting Republicans reply.
That’s $23,000,000,000 of deficit spending in a single month — the shortest month of the year, as Ace notes, calling it “the prelude to hyperinflation.”
Ace also reminds us that this one-month deficit is $60 billion more than the entire budget deficit for 2007. And a commenter at Protein Wisdom points out that this one-month deficit is nearly equal to the cost of the first eight years of the war in Afghanistan.
But remember: Obama will veto the GOP budget unless it includes funding for Planned Parenthood.
Priorities!
Planned Parenthood wants to teach Girl Scouts to be “Healthy, Happy and Hot,” and the president and Senate Democrats insist that U.S. taxpayers help them do it:
President Barack Obama would veto the House-approved long-term spending bill for the federal government that contains the Pence Amendment, a measure that would de-fund the Planned Parenthood abortion business. . . .
[T]he Washington Times indicates “Obama has issued a veto threat on that bill, saying House Republicans’ cuts are unacceptable.”
“Senate Democrats said the non-spending provisions of the bill — such as restrictions on Planned Parenthood and on Obama administration rules and regulations — will also have to be struck,” the Times continues.
Obama’s adamant insistence on funding Planned Parenthood contradicts his 2008 campaign statements about abortion, Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit observes, calling Obama “the most radical pro-abortion and infanticide president in the last 35 years.” (Hat-tip: That Mr. G Guy.)
This isn’t just about abortion, even though Planned Parenthood is the largest abortion provider in America. Giving taxpayer dollars to Planned Parenthood puts the imprimatur of the U.S. government — an official endorsement — on everything the organization does, including its campaign to impose “comprehensive sexuality education” on children.
Money is fungible. Defenders of federal funding for Planned Parenthood claim that taxpayer dollars aren’t used for abortion, that tax money is only used for (supposedly benign) “family planning” services. But any accountant could see the bottom line, where the stated purpose of taxpayer funding is irrelevant. A dollar is a dollar, it’s all going to the same place, and Planned Parenthood certainly isn’t hurting for cash:
PPFA’s income for fiscal year 2008-2009 was more than $1.1 billion (up six percent from 2007-2008), with nearly one-third coming from taxpayers. This “not-for-profit” entity ends virtually every fiscal year with tens of millions of dollars in “excess revenue over expenses” (known to most people as “profit”). The “excess” for 2008-2009 alone was $64.4 million.
On June 30, 2009, PPFA had net assets valued at $994.7 million, of which $396.3 million was unrestricted (essentially a savings account) and $179.9 million was temporarily restricted. Despite these huge sums, PPFA incessantly claims to need more taxpayer dollars.
Someone in the White House press corps needs to ask questions about President Obama’s priorities: At a time when federal deficits are out of control, why is the president threatening to veto legislation that doesn’t include funding for Planned Parenthood?
UPDATE: Thanks to frequent commenter Adobe Walls for pointing out that Kirsten Powers has seen through Planned Parenthood’s self-serving mythos:
Turns out, a 2009 study by the journal Contraception found, in a 10-year study of women in Spain, that as overall contraceptive use increased from around 49 percent to 80 percent, the elective abortion rate more than doubled. . . .
A January 2011 fact sheet by the pro-abortion rights Guttmacher Institute listed all the reasons that women who have had an abortion give for their unexpected pregnancy, and not one of them is lack of access to contraception. In fact, 54 percent of women who had abortions had used a contraceptive method, if incorrectly, in the month they got pregnant.
More contraception = more abortion. Pro-lifers have long sought to call attention to this fact, which seems so counterintuitive to those who’ve bought into the claims of the Contraceptive Culture.
The reason why abortion rates rise as contraceptive use becomes more frequent is a matter of “complex causation,” as social scientists would say. Yet the fact is that every method of contraception has a failure rate. The more often people use contraceptives, the greater the number of failures — i.e., “unwanted pregnancies.” In a society that prescribes abortion as the best response to “unwanted pregnancy,” there will necessarily be an increased number of abortions in tandem with the increase in contraceptive use.
This can be seen simply as a function of the Law of Large Numbers, especially when people are indoctrinated with the idea that sex without the possibility of pregnancy is “normal,” which is what the Contraceptive Culture would have us believe.
For further thoughts on this topic, please see my March 2010 essay, “The Pill at 50: Unhappy Un-Birthday.” And just in case you didn’t click through the earlier link to learn about the sexual agenda Planned Parenthood is imposing on Girl Scouts, let me show you:
Click the images to see the whole 20-page “Healthy, Happy and Hot” pamphlet, which was distributed to Girl Scouts by Planned Parenthood. Because teaching Girl Scouts about “sexual pleasure” is obviously what U.S. taxpayers want, right?
Freshman Republican Rep. Ann Marie Buerkle is the most vicious, reckless, wild-eyed budget-slasher in American history, according to the largest newspaper in her district.
The editors of the Syracuse paper — evidently picking up the “slash-and-burn” theme used by the New York Times — obviously think their readers are idiots who can’t do math. If Obama has proposed a budget with $1.65 trillion in deficits, how big a slice is $61 billion?
Having seen many previous examples of biased reporting in her local paper, The Lonely Conservative addresses herself to their reporter:
Note to Mark Weiner and the Post Standard: We’re broke! What part of that don’t you understand? Are you hoping we turn into Greece so you have a big story to cover? I’m beginning to wonder.
The federal government gave $669.6 million to the public schools in Wisconsin in fiscal 2008, according to the Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). That is more than 20 times as much as the $30 million that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is trying to save in the current fiscal year by asking state employees, including teachers, to pay for a fraction of the cost of their own pension packages and health-insurance premium.
The ramifications of the fight in Wisconsin are beginning to be noticed elsewhere:
The battle in Wisconsin over public employee unions has left President Obama facing a tricky balance between showing solidarity with longtime political supporters and projecting a message in favor of deep spending cuts to reduce the debt.
Senior Senate Democrats slammed Republicans on Sunday for a “reckless” threat to shut down the government as political posturing intensified on both sides over federal spending and the budget deficit.
The GOP hasn’t made any such “threat,” which is a scarecrow being used by Democrats (and their media accomplices) to frighten ignorant old folks into thinking Those Mean-Spirited Republicans™ will take away their Social Security checks. However, Mark Hemingway asks a relevant question at the Weekly Standard:
The obvious point here is that if it’s so “reckless” to shutdown the government, why have Wisconsin legislators, the President and the DNC all supported the government shutdown in Wisconsin?
Exactly: If shutting down government in Wisconsin is good, why is shutting down government in Washington bad?
UPDATE: Jeff Goldstein at Protein Wisdom: “Turns out you don’t have to live in Wisconsin to pay the benefits of Wisconsin teachers.” Now a Memeorandum thread.
UPDATE II: I’m sure you’ll be shocked — shocked — to discover that liberals are engaging in dishonest, irresponsible demagoguery:
Video via Heritage Foundation.
“Contrary to my colleague Doug’s description of the Federal government as existing primarily to redistribute wealth, there is actually very little wealth re-distribution in the United States.”
— Alex Knapp, Outside the Beltway
It is not my habit to defend Doug Mataconis, as he and I very often disagree about politics. But Doug’s post, “The U.S. Government Exists Primarily To Write Checks And Redistribute Wealth,” based on an analysis of Office of Management and Budget data by John Merline, was perfectly reasonable. And so the response by his Outside the Beltway colleague Alex Knapp drew my attention.
Knapp employs a chart based on numbers from the Congressional Budget Office:
What this shows is that the fifth quintile (top 20%) of income-earners pay nearly 70% of federal taxes, while earning about 55% of all pre-tax income. Because they also earn about 51% of after-tax income — a relatively small differential between their pre- and post-tax incomes — Knapp says, “See? No redistribution!”
Knapp’s rather limited “proof,” however, overlooks many possible objections. What is a minor cost to a wealthy person, for example, may be a bonanza for a poor person. Bill Gates’s fortune has been recently estimated at $54 billion. If I could get my hands on just one-tenth of one percent of that sum, I’d be a multimillionaire.
Thus, the 4 percent net loss of income share experienced by the top quintile (as estimated by the CBO) due to federal taxation may seem a minor redistribution to them, or to Knapp, and yet it would be a substantial gift if it were lavished directly on those in the bottom quintile — but it most certainly is not. Continue reading Has Alex Knapp Proven Anything? →