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“The Federal Reserve continues to focus on the rate of change in inflation,” said Peter Bookvar, equity strategist at Miller Tabak. “Sure, it’s moving at a slower pace, but the absolute cost of living is now back at a record high in a country that has seven million less jobs.”
This week three conservative books broke into the New York Times' bestseller list: Mike Huckabee's "A simple government: Twelve Things We Really Need From Government," Dick Morris' "Revolt!: How to Defeat Obama and His Socialist Programs" and Frank Luntz's "Win: The Key Principles to Take Your Business from Ordinary to Extraordinary."
But one of those authors, Morris, is taking issue with how the New York Times credited his sales. Instead of listing these books with other non-fiction books -- a list they surely would have made -- the Times categorized them has "How-to" books.
"On Sunday -- for the first time since the New York Times Bestsellers List first appeared in 1942 -- best selling political books will not appear in the Hardcover Non-Fiction List. Instead, those books will be relegated to the A'dvice, How-To and Miscellaneous List,' along with 'The 4 Hour Body' and 'Weight Watchers New Cookbook,'" Morris wrote on his blog (poor punctuation improved by yours truly). "... Apparently, too many Fox News Contributors are crowding up the hardcover best seller list, so they’ve been thrown downstairs."
It is time for Congress to rein in spending and fix our nation’s budget crisis. The excesses from the recession drove spending up to $3.5 trillion last year—borrowing 40 cents out of every dollar spent. The public debt is closing in on 70 percent of the economy and within the decade will exceed the tipping point of 90 percent, resulting in significant harm to economic growth and prosperity.This short-term problem will be followed by a tidal wave of entitlement-driven spending as baby boomers flood into Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Left unchecked, these programs will drive debt to nearly 200 percent of the economy. Unless Congress changes course on spending, every income tax rate will have to more than double, according to the Congressional Budget Office.[1] Every American, especially younger generations, would have a permanently lower standard of living.
The nation is drowning in a sea of red ink, and the voters have rightly said, “Enough.” We must tame federal spending and protect our children and grandchildren from crushing debt or taxes. The policies set forth below will achieve a stronger America, one where our families and businesses are much better off.
Establish Spending Targets
Set firm budget targets to light the path for returning to fiscal sanity by lowering spending and controlling the debt.
- Specific cuts to discretionary spending, at least $170 billion in the next year.
- Cut total spending to no more than 20 percent of the economy, moving quickly towards a balanced budget within a relevant budget window—without raising taxes.
Fix the Budget Process
The budget process allows entitlements—Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, the biggest parts of the budget—to grow with no limits or long-term constraints. Other parts of the budget are likewise unconstrained, so Congress should:
- Place firm caps on total spending, with strong Gramm-Rudman-type enforcement mechanisms to lock in cuts.[2]
- Increase transparency. Give the public the true picture of the nation’s finances by disclosing the unfunded obligations of Medicare and Social Security front and center in the annual congressional budget resolution. Require a clear roll-call vote to increase these obligations.
- Score major policy proposals over both short-term and long-term time horizons.
- Take entitlement programs off budgetary autopilot with a true, long-term budget. This could be done through specific caps within each program.
Provide for a Strong Defense
Fully fund defense needs so our troops can defend America and our interests abroad. Priority should be given to modernizing and developing next-generation equipment necessary to protect the nation and our interests from rapidly changing threats. Savings from military reforms, such as performance-based logistics, should be reinvested in the defense budget to help pay for these much needed improvements.
Specifically, the base Department of Defense budget should include $560 billion in funding for 2012 and an average of $720 billion over the next five years (to be adjusted for inflation). Funding for ongoing contingency operations should be in addition to this amount.
Implement Broad Spending Reforms, Including Entitlements
Beyond discretionary cuts, major programmatic changes are needed to bring federal spending under control.
Transformational changes are needed for the major entitlement programs Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
- Increase the retirement age for Social Security and Medicare and the index for longevity.
- Move entitlement programs toward a real insurance model—aimed at increasing financial security rather than simply providing a stream of benefits. Each program should have firm spending controls and a limited budget.
- Gradually transform the Social Security benefit into a flat benefit that protects against poverty and is indexed to wages. Include an auto-enrollment savings system and voluntary personal accounts, which would be funded with eventual savings from reforms. Existing benefits should be indexed to the Chained Consumer Price Index.
- Move Medicare to a premium support system with a fixed contribution and long-term budget controls, giving patients maximum freedom to make health care choices without subjecting doctors and patients to artificial price controls. Greater cost sharing should be added to the traditional fee-for-service Medicare program.
- Move Medicaid’s healthy families into private health insurance. Then, convert the remaining program for the elderly and disabled into a capped allotment with greater flexibility to states to manage the program.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act, or Obamacare, touted as a deficit reduction bill, is in reality a budget buster. It created new entitlements and will drive general health care costs up, not down.
- Repeal Obamacare and take steps to defund and block implementation of this law until Congress completes its repeal.
Welfare spending is approaching $1 trillion annually, and the 70-plus welfare programs have encouraged a pattern of cyclical dependence among tens of millions of Americans.
- Establish fiscal constraints for all federal welfare spending: After unemployment returns to normal levels, roll back funding for all programs to pre-recession levels. Then cap this spending at the rate of inflation.
The reach of the federal government is too vast. Asset sales can bring relief to the overstretched budget and bring economic benefits to society by putting resources in the hands of the more productive private sector.
- Implement a plan to sell, over time, federal assets, such as land, mineral rights, and unused federal office buildings.
Keep Taxes Low
Tax hikes are the wrong answer to the budget crisis. To keep our economy strong and growing, taxes must be kept low and competitive with other nations, and policies that distort markets should be reformed.
- Make the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts permanent, including eliminating the death tax and permanently fixing the Alternative Minimum Tax.
- Reform corporate taxes and significantly reduce the rate.
- Reform the health insurance tax exclusion by turning it into a tax credit to assist with the purchase of health insurance.
Alison Acosta Fraser is Director of the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation.
Despite the assertive statements of celebrity atheists, national book tours denouncing God and the perennial docket of court cases challenging the presence of religion in the public square, most Americans believe in God and many regularly practice their faith. Heritage research on the newly launched FamilyFacts.org shows that 75 percent of American adults believe in God and another 11 percent in some higher power.
Many Americans take their faith a step further—almost 40 percent of all adults act on that belief by attending religious institutions at least once a week, and over half of adults surveyed say they pray at least daily. These religious beliefs and practices can have a profoundly positive impact on civil society and defend against much of the social breakdown threatening communities.
For instance, regular religious observance has been associated with helping to sustain intact families, raise healthy adolescents, and even maintain good health. Families who frequent religious institutions tend to have higher marital satisfaction and fidelity, fewer incidents of domestic violence, and greater conflict resolution. The religious practice of parents also seems to have a significant impact on how adolescents will view marriage, pre-marital sex, and cohabitation. Likewise, adolescents whose families regularly attend church services are less likely to be sexually active or experience teen pregnancy.
The protests have been on behalf of well-paid people with excellent jobs — better jobs than the average Wisconsinite's. And the protesters got massive extra doses of freedom to express themselves in the state capitol for over a month, without any threats of violence or even arrest for the crimes they committed in full view of the police. I mean, I know they have their complaints, but they are not even the bottom sector of the Wisconsin economy. If there were to be a class struggle here, they would be taken aback to find themselves in the role they actually have in this economy: the oppressors!
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"You cannot help the poor
by destroying the rich.
You cannot strengthen the weak
by weakening the strong.
You cannot bring about prosperity
by discouraging thrift.
You cannot lift the wage earner up
by pulling the wage payer down.
You cannot further the brotherhood of man
by inciting class hatred.
You cannot build character and courage
by taking away people's initiative and independence.
You cannot help people permanently
by doing for them,
what they could and
should do for themselves."
But the steps the United States has taken may well have bolstered Gadhafi's determination to crush the rebellion against his regime.
On the one hand we supported the United Nations resolution giving the International Criminal Court jurisdiction to prosecute Gadhafi and his minions. That means we have blocked off any escape route to a safe retirement.
On the other hand we have interpreted the Security Council resolution ordering an arms embargo as applying to the Libyan rebels as well as the Gadhafi regime.
Or at least that's the interpretation of State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley. An anonymous White House source said maybe the resolution doesn't apply to the rebels.
The White House has said the United States will send aid to the rebels and that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will meet with their transitional council next week.
Aid, not arms; a meeting, but (unlike France and Portugal) no official recognition. The president seems to be voting "present" once again.
It is understandable perhaps that he has not c
A beleaguered President Obama has told aides it would be so much easier to be the president of China, The New York Times reports.
There are two ways to read the remark, which is attributed to anonymous aides. One is that Obama resents the burden of global leadership that comes with the American presidency. The other is that he longs for an authoritarian system, where he need tolerate no dissent.
Under either or both interpretations, his confession carries a dose of self-pity that means Obama has hit a wall.
He is in over his head, and he knows it.
Even before the horror in Japan, the president faced a litany of nightmares. From Libya to Iran to Afghanistan to gas prices, unemployment and rising debt, Obama is surrounded by serious trouble.
His responses range from halfhearted to wrongheaded. Nothing is working. Unhappy voters already repudiated his first two years and might fire him when they get the chance. It is a moment that brings home the truth of the sign on Harry Truman's desk: "The buck stops here."
