Federal debt and deficit
January 17, 2013 — John Hinderaker
Can’t the government, at the end of the day, just print money, with the unfortunate downside being inflation? It turns out that it isn’t actually that simple, because the framers of our financial system were pretty farsighted. And that, in turn, sheds light on why the debt ceiling is non-trivial. The Grumpy Economist, John Cochrane of the University of Chicago and the Hoover Institution, explains: First, just to be clear,
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January 17, 2013 — John Hinderaker
I share Scott’s deep outrage at Barack Obama’s exploitation of children to advance his cynical political agenda. Obama’s misuse of children is doubly contemptible, since his administration has done more than any in our history to sell the younger generation’s future down the river–a river of debt. Michael Ramirez manages to find a glimmer of humor in Obama’s hypocrisy:
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January 17, 2013 — Scott Johnson
In exploiting kids as props to promote his schemes of the moment, President Obama stoops to conquer. He’s done it before and he’ll do it again. It worked — rhetorically, at least — for Bill Clinton. As I recall, just about every damn exertion of federal control or expansion of the welfare state was for the children. Obama is picking up where Clinton left off and “improving” on him. The
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January 16, 2013 — John Hinderaker
I am generally of the view that a president has the right to staff his administration with like-minded people of his choice. He won the election, and is entitled, I think, to wide latitude in choosing the cabinet officers and others who he thinks can best advance his agenda. (Judges are different. They serve a co-equal branch of government, not the president’s administration, and they will be around long after
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January 15, 2013 — John Hinderaker
Our children are slated to drown under a tsunami of debt. Do they have any hope? Maybe, as the Republicans on the Senate Budget Committee explain: Currently, almost 95 percent of spending on means-tested poverty assistance falls into four categories: cash assistance, health assistance, housing assistance, and social and family services. Welfare spending has increased on a year-over-year basis regardless of whether the economy has improved or unemployment has declined,
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January 15, 2013 — John Hinderaker
Much of the debt limit discussion is dishonest, like this statement from the Obama White House: There are only two options to deal with the debt limit: Congress can pay its bills or it can fail to act and put the nation into default. This is wrong: under the 14th Amendment, the US cannot default on its bond obligations, and there is no need to do so. Federal revenues are
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January 14, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
I was pleased to read in Politico that, according to high level House sources, at least 90 percent of Republican House members are prepared to allow the sequestration cuts to take effect. President Obama would like to compromise by substituting revenue increases for some spending cuts. But if Politico is right, this is a non-starter in the House. By contrast, according to Politico, only a bit more than half of
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January 14, 2013 — John Hinderaker
I had never been interested in guns until a little over a year ago, when I fired a handgun for the first time. To make a long story short, it turned into a hobby–the first I have ever had, as my wife points out. So when, by sheer coincidence, gun issues suddenly emerged in the same moment when I happened to know something about guns, the result was inevitable: I
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January 14, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
At his press conference today, President Obama reiterated that he will not engage in negotiations over raising the debt ceiling. He called on Republicans to raise the debt ceiling without conditions. Once the ceiling is raised, we can talk about reducing the debt, including through additional tax increases on upper income Americans in the form of changing the law on deductions, Obama said. Obama introduced his discussion of the debt
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January 12, 2013 — John Hinderaker
Yesterday four Democratic senators–Harry Reid, Dick Durbin, Patty Murray and Chuck Schumer–wrote a letter to President Obama urging him to take all “lawful steps” to increase the debt limit, with or without the Republicans. Byron York points out that all four of these Democrats voted against increasing the debt limit in 2006. At that time, the Democrats pretended to be outraged by the deficits of the Bush administration, which were
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January 11, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
In a piece called “Austerity and National Character,” Anne Applebaum compares the pursuit of austerity in Latvia and Greece. In Latvia, she reports, the Latvian government responded to the crash of 2008 by slashing public spending, firing a third of its civil service, and reducing the salaries of those who remained. GDP fell by 24 percent in two years, but is now growing at more than 5 percent. Meanwhile, the
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January 9, 2013 — John Hinderaker
News reports indicate that President Obama will appoint White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew to replace Tim Geithner as Secretary of the Treasury. The Associated Press applauds Obama’s choice, telling us that Lew is a “pragmatic liberal” who “is well-liked in Washington by both Democrats and Republicans.” What the AP doesn’t tell us is that Lew has made signal contributions to the culture of lies, dishonesty and lack of
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January 8, 2013 — John Hinderaker
The United States is over $16 trillion in debt. The point is rapidly approaching where our young people cannot look forward to a prosperous future, and in November voters chose to make matters worse rather than better. Michael Ramirez depicts the avalanche that is about to descend on our heads:
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January 8, 2013 — John Hinderaker
The current federal debt ceiling will be reached next month, and Democrats have been furiously posturing to limit the gains that Republicans can make in exchange for the House’s agreement to raise it. President Obama insists that he will not negotiate over the debt ceiling–not ever, not for anything–and Republicans should agree to raise it without getting anything in return. (This is much the same as his position on taxes.)
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January 7, 2013 — John Hinderaker
If you doubt whether the Left has gone around the bend, all you have to do is read Paul Krugman. Today, on the New York Times web site, Krugman argued that President Obama should circumvent the debt ceiling by having the Treasury Department mint a trillion-dollar coin, which would then be handed over to the Federal Reserve, thereby freeing up a trillion dollars in additional borrowing. Apparently this was a
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January 3, 2013 — John Hinderaker
The genius of Michael Ramirez is brought to bear on our current fiscal situation–not for the first time, needless to say. The thing about Ramirez is that he is not only an excellent analyst of the political scene, he is a great artist. Who else could draw such a beautiful cartoon with such a pungent point, drawn from popular culture? There is a lot of talk about messaging on the
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January 2, 2013 — John Hinderaker
Some ad man deserves an award for coming up with the phrase “fiscal cliff” to denominate a combination of spending cuts and tax increases that had the potential to make a start, at least, toward addressing the nation’s debt crisis–$16.4 trillion and growing. Whew! The “fiscal cliff” was averted, and Wall Street celebrated. But the real cliff just got that much closer. That’s my pedestrian way of explaining what the
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