Ted Cruz and the Oxymorons of Washington

Oxymoron: A figure of speech in which apparently contradictory terms appear in conjunction

One sometimes thinks the word started with our government: Government Intelligence… Government Efficiency... Government Accountability… In reality, it’s been around since the Greeks first coined the phrase, no doubt adding oxy to a word they probably used to describe their politicians too: Moron.

The Greeks may have invented the word, but the US government has perfected its common use. We have a welfare system whose ostensible goal is to get people back on their feet during hard times yet the numbers of people on the program never seems to go down. We have an education system that spends an ever increasing amount of money to somehow do an increasingly bad job of “educating” our students. Barack Obama has penned an agreement with Iran to keep them from getting nuclear weapons that actually rewards them for bad behavior AND makes it more likely they will get nuclear weapons!

As bad as those things are, and there are countless other examples, this very day we are witnessing possibly the single best example of government incompetence possible. So far this fiscal year the IRS has taken in more money than ever before, $2.6 trillion! Yet somehow they still managed to run a deficit of almost half a trillion dollars. And just two nights ago the utterly worthless GOP introduced a bill that enables even more incompetence in the form of a giant two year spending bill that would also raise the debt limit.  Somehow, Americans watch the middle class struggle while programs for the poor proliferate and the connected rich see their incomes skyrocket as Washington and its regulatory machine smothers more and more of the free market.

This is Washington unhinged. This is how liberalism works… including when enabled by the GOP. The government takes more and more of the citizens’ money, which leaves the citizens with less income with which to live their lives, nevermind have money left over to start businesses as they pursue the promise of prosperity. Seeing the resultant slowing economic growth, the government decides to come to the rescue by creating more regulations and more giveaways to make up for the “failures” of the free markets. It’s a viscous cycle… More government equals less freedom and less prosperity.

And today we have on full display the GOP’s disdain for freedom and prosperity. They seek crony capitalism for the specific purpose of ensuring their continued participation in the Washington cocoon – a comforting place where 7 out of the 10 richest counties in the country are located – out of a total of 3,143 counties! That Washington cocoon provides them with parties to attend, a staff to do their bidding, jobs for friends and family, introductions to the “right” people and of course a golden parachute upon leaving after having done enough favors for big business.

Unfortunately, this is likely a fait accompli as the anointed one, Paul Ryan, the soon to be head squish has jumped onboard. The result of this betrayal of the American people makes it only that much more important that voters look to someone like Ted Cruz to be the next president. We are at a point where the government continues to take more and more of our money, yet continues to demand to borrow even more, and this is while the GOP has both the House and the Senate. Ted Cruz has both the intellect and the intent to thwart the liberal enablers in the GOP. No one else in this race has shown the willingness to fight the GOP establishment the way Cruz has. Today’s treachery puts the nation on notice. If you want a change from the failure of liberal policies and crony capitalism, put someone in the White House who does more than talk a conservative game. Put someone in there who has shown a willingness to fight the leviathan of government and it’s GOP enablers. Someone who's not an oxymoron... That man is Ted Cruz.

$2 trillion in cuts? Washington's fantasy math vs. Tea Party "Hobbits"

The past week has been a nothing if not confusing… From the President talking about his plan which mysteriously no one ever saw to John Boehner fighting off an attack from Tea Party “Hobbits” because they said his plan was almost interchangeable with Harry Reid’s. As of Sunday night the Boehner, Reid, Obama triad had cobbled together something that “cuts” federal spending by $2.4 trillion while raising the debt ceiling by about the same. Finally! Some clarity that makes this mess easy to understand for we simpletons…

Not so fast… Just a quick question… if federal spending is going to be cut by $2.4 trillion, why do we need a debt limit increase? In 2012 the federal government is expected to take in $2.2 trillion in taxes yet spend $3.7 trillion, $1.5 trillion more. Well, if you take $2.4 trillion in spending cuts out of a $3.7 trillion budget, you should have expenditures of only $1.3 trillion. That must mean that taxpayers should be getting $900 billion of the $2.2 trillion they will be paying in taxes back. Stupendous! Imagine, when people work together there is no limit to what they can accomplish.

Don’t spend that refund check just quite yet… Unfortunately, real numbers and accounting clarity are not Washington’s strong suit. The $2.4 trillion in savings doesn’t come from next year at all. It comes out of the projected INCREASE in federal spending over the next ten years. So, not only is this magical $2.4 trillion cut not come out of actual spending, it isn’t even cutting all of the expected deficits over the next decade.

Let’s see if I can explain this. The Congressional Budget Office has what they call the Baseline. That Baseline is basically what would happen over the next decade given current projections of spending and tax revenues. According to its January 2011 estimate, the CBO predicts that Uncle Sam will run a total deficit over the next decade of $7 trillion, or an average of $700 billion a year. Wow, $700 billion in deficits a year for a decade! Tax revenues must be expected to fall off of a cliff… Actually, no. They are expected to more than double to about $5 trillion in 2021 from $2.2 trillion this year. Unfortunately however, by 2021 the federal expenditures are expected to grow to $5.7 trillion from today’s $3.7 trillion.

According to Washington math, if the federal government decided to simply stop growing today, and spend only $3.7 trillion a year (which is what they will spend in 2011) for the next decade, that would be a $9 trillion spending cut. ($37 trillion in outlays vs. the CBO’s current $46 trillion projections.) Only in Washington can you spend the exact amount of money yet pat yourself on the back for cutting spending. And there is a bonus. If they were actually to do that, the federal books would go from a $7 trillion deficit to a $2 trillion surplus.

And just to put this in a bit more perspective, freezing at current levels would be enshrining the ludicrously high annual outlays that Barack Obama put in place – up from $3.1 trillion two years ago, which itself is up from $1.8 trillion when George Bush became president. In 2000, the United States had a population of almost 300 million people and a federal budget of $1.8 trillion. By 2011, while the population had grown 3% to 311 million people, the federal budget had grown by over 100% to $3.7 trillion. By 2021 the population is expected to grow by 9% to approximately 340 million people. The federal budget however is projected to grow 65% to $5.7 trillion. So in a period of a mere two decades federal spending will have grown from approximately $6,000 per person in the United States to $16,700 per person.

Let that sink in. By 2021 the federal government will be spending $16,700 for every man, woman and child in the country. They will also be collecting $14,300 for every person in taxes to pay for it and borrowing another $2,000. We’re almost there. How do things feel so far?

That’s exactly what the Tea Party congressmen were fighting against when they were pilloried by the Wall Street Journal, Bill Krystal and John McCain. They don’t want faux cuts that make for nice headlines but do nothing to rein in spending and begin to put the country’s fiscal house in order. They are not even talking about rolling expenditures back to what they were when Barack Obama took office, not to mention the glory days when Bill Clinton left us with a surplus driven by a “Peace Dividend”. No, they are simply talking about freezing spending where it is today and cutting the hundreds of billions of dollars in waste to finance the growth in critical programs.

Washington exists in a universe all by itself and it’s comfortable playing with make believe numbers and budgets. Unfortunately however the people who have to pay the very real bills for such chicanery can’t get by with make believe numbers and promises. The Tea Party nation recognizes that and sent a message to Washington in November to stop the tomfoolery. This budget deal demonstrates clearly that they didn’t get the message. One election however is rarely sufficient to clean out all of the deadwood from a rotting foundation. Keep that in mind the next time you hear some career politician or someone in the media wringing their hands about those Tea Party “Hobbits” who refuse to get on board and do things the way Washington has always done them. Hopefully after the 2012 election Washington will start looking a lot more like Middle-earth.

The Spiteful President Obama

Say what you will about Barack Obama, but the man is quite exceptional. Coming from a broken home, he grew up and graduated from Columbia University and went on to earn a law degree at Harvard. Both schools are amongst the most challenging to get into in the country. Not only that, he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review and taught at the University of Chicago law school.

Looking at his life one has to marvel at the various points where he might have run into trouble that could have derailed his career but didn’t. The most obvious was his extensive experience with illegal drugs. One cannot hold a grudge against the man simply because he was lucky enough to have not gotten caught and thrown in jail. Most of us have made a mistake or two that could have changed the course of our lives had things played themselves out a little differently.

Barack Obama has had something of a charmed life. While a child of a broken home, his formative years were spend in Hawaii where he was raised by his maternal grandparents. Today he’s President of the most powerful country in the world, he has a family who loves him and he has millions of people across the country who adore him.

One has to wonder then why a man with such a charmed life is so spiteful. Typically people are spiteful when they have been grievously injured or harmed. What does Barack Obama have to be spiteful about? Who does he have to get even with? Maybe his father for abandoning his family, but other than that what else does he have to be so angry about?

We first saw this side of President Obama during the first month of his presidency when he told GOP Senator John Kyl of Arizona “I won” during the debate over the makeup of the President’s stimulus plan. The President was simply stating a fact, but the message behind the words was crystal clear, I’m the victor, you’re the losers, now we do things my way. Of course once the GOP won by a landslide in 2010 the President changed his tune, telling the GOP earlier this year that despite their having won, “Getting your way is not how it works.”

A recent and more troubling episode of this petulance was on full display just last week when the President invoked the name of Ronald Reagan during his fight with the GOP over negotiations on raising the debt limit. Frustrated at GOP insistence that equivalent spending cuts offset any debt ceiling increase the following transpired:

Cantor explained, the president became “very agitated” and said he “had sat here long enough,” that “Ronald Reagan wouldn’t sit here like this” and “something’s got to give.” He then told Republicans they either needed to compromise on their insistence on a dollar for dollar ratio of spending cuts to debt increase or agree to a “grand bargain” including massive tax increases. Before walking out of the room, House Majority leader Cantor said, the president told him: “Eric, don’t call my bluff. I’m going to the American people with this.” He then “shoved back” and said “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

The problem is not simply that the President wants to get his own way, most politicians and people want things their own way. The problem is that the President seems largely unable to work with his opponents when the chips are down. It would be one thing if he were indeed Ronald Reagan, who was able to work with opponents like Tip O'Neill to get things done in a atmosphere or respectful opposition. But he’s not.

President Obama does not seem to have that capability, and what’s worse, his petulance seems to make progress even less likely. Waiting until the last moment to become personally involved with the negotiations, the President finds himself annoyed that Eric Cantor and the GOP’s position is exactly what they have been saying it was for months: Spending cuts for any ceiling increase and no new taxes. Rep Cantor even hinted that he was open to a short term solution to provide a segue to a long term deal, but the President was having none of it.

There is an old saying that goes: “Be gracious in defeat and humble in victory.” After the Democrat victory in 2008 Barack Obama did not demonstrate the latter and since the GOP victory in 2010 he has not demonstrated the former. Petulance and spitefulness are unsavory when exhibited by a sovereign ruler, which Barack Obama was pretty close to being during his first two years. Today however President Obama must now share power with his opponents and what were previously just annoying personality traits have become roadblocks to progress.

Now might be a good time for President Obama to go back and look at the video of candidate Obama, particularly when he was talking with Joe the Plumber. The two disagreed with one another but their exchange was cordial and one got the feeling that they could have worked together if they had had to. With the debt limit quickly approaching and the future direction of the country at stake, at least 2008 campaign mode Obama would have put his best foot forward to try and make finding a solution a bit easier. One wonders if President Obama or 2012 campaign mode Obama can learn that lesson.