News

Obama’s defense cuts undermine our national security

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From Investors Business Daily.

Excerpt:

The administration announces a leaner version of our military involving the cutting of tens of thousands of ground troops as a leading defense contractor closes a major plant due to budget cuts.

In an unusual appearance at the Pentagon on Thursday, President Obama laid out his plans for a “leaner” military based on the need “to renew our economic strength here at home, which is the foundation of our strength in the world.”

In other words, failed domestic policies require us to cut our military in a dangerous world.

[…]Yet as Russia rearms, Iran pursues its nukes and China pushes toward a global reach, it is hard to argue that less is more.

[…]Defense cuts are already having a domestic effect. Boeing Co. announced Wednesday it will close its defense plant in Wichita, Kan., by the end of 2013, moving future aircraft maintenance, modification and support to other facilities.

The closure, prompted by defense cuts, will cost 2,160 workers their jobs.

[…]A 14-page analysis by the Republican majority staff of the House Armed Services Committee says the cumulative cuts will result in the Army and Marines losing 200,000 troops.

The Navy will shrink to 238 vessels from today’s 300 and would lose two carrier battle groups needed to project American power and influence. Strategic bombers will fall from 153 to 101. Air Force fighters would drop by more than half, from 3,602 aircraft to 1,512 planes.

As a chart produced by the committee shows, the cumulative cuts are real cuts, both in spending levels and in military capability. The Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, said in written statements released during his recent confirmation hearings, “National security didn’t cause the debt crisis, nor will it solve it.”

We would note that defense is a constitutional imperative — not an optional budget item — and that the question should be what do we need to defend ourselves and our interests, not simply what we can afford as the result of failed administration policies.

If you are expecting the President to keep the country safe and to protect our interests abroad, then you don’t elect a Democrat. Democrats can’t do national security or foreign policy, because they think that a weaker America is better than a stronger America. And, when elected, Democrats weaken America.

News

Mitt Romney raised taxes by $740 million while he was governor of Massachusetts

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Deroy Murdock explains in this Scripps Howard News Service article.

Excerpt:

Hot on the heels of his eight-vote Iowa-caucus landslide, Willard Mitt Romney is crisscrossing New Hampshire before Tuesday’s key primary. Romney is masquerading as a limited-government, free-market executive from next-door Massachusetts. From the Golden Gate to the Granite State, voters should greet Romney’s impersonation with a quarry full of skepticism.

In fact, Romney increased taxes by $309 million, mainly on corporations. These tax hikes, described by Romney apologists as “loophole closures,” totaled $128 million in 2003, $95.5 in 2004, and $85 million in 2005. That final year, Romney proposed $170 million in higher business taxes, the Boston Globe reports. However, the Bay State’s liberal, Democratic legislature balked and only approved an $85 million increase.

“Tax rates on many corporations almost doubled because of legislation supported by Romney,” Boston Science Corporation chairman Peter Nicholas explained in the January 6, 2008 Boston Herald. Also, Romney raised the tax on subchapter S corporations owned by business trusts from 5.3 percent to 9.9 percent — an 85 percent hike.

“Romney went further than any other governor in trying to wring money out of corporations,” the Council on State Taxation’s Joseph Crosby complained.

Romney also created or increased fees by $432 million. He was not dragooned into this by greedy Democratic lawmakers; Romney himself proposed these items. In 2003 alone, Romney concocted or boosted 88 fees. Romney charged more for marriage licenses (from $6 to $12), gun registrations (from $25 to $75), a used-car sales tax ($10 million), gasoline deliveries ($60 million), real-estate transfers ($175 million), and more. Particularly obnoxious was Romney’s $10 fee per Certificate of Blindness. Romney also billed blind people $15 each for discount-travel ID cards.

While Romney can take credit for a $275 million capital-gains tax rebate, property-tax relief for seniors, and a two-day, tax-free shopping holiday, he also must take responsibility for signing $740.5 million in higher taxes, plus that $85 million in business taxes that he requested and legislators rejected.

“Romney did not even fight higher death-tax rates,” notes former California State Assembly Minority Whip Steve Baldwin, a Romney critic. “When the (Massachusetts) legislature considered this issue, Romney’s official position was ‘no position.’ This echoed Barack Obama’s ‘present’ votes in the Illinois State Senate.”

As Romney drained his constituents’ pockets, the Public Policy Institute of New York’s Cost of Doing Business Index rated Massachusetts in 2006 as America’s fourth costliest state in which to practice free enterprise. The Tax Foundation dropped Massachusetts from America’s 29th most business-friendly state to No. 36. The Tax Foundation also calculated that, under Romney, Massachusetts’ per-capita tax burden increased from 9.3 percent to 9.9 percent. In real dollars, the Romney-era per-capita tax burden grew by $1,175.71.

As if impoverishing his own taxpayers were not bad enough, Romney’s March 5, 2003 signature raised taxes on non-residents retroactive to that January 1. Perpetrating taxation without representation, Romney’s law declared that, “gross income derived from… any trade or business, including any employment,” would be taxable, “regardless of the taxpayer’s residence or domicile in the year it is received.”

Consequently, according to data furnished by the Massachusetts Department of Revenue, between 2002 and 2006, New Hampshire residents who work or do business in the Bay State shipped Massachusetts $95 million above what they paid when Romney arrived. The average tax paid by New Hampshirities to Massachusetts grew by 19.1 percent, from $2,392 in 2002 to $2,850 in 2006.

Romney has a pro-abortion record and pro-gay-marriage record. Not only did he pass Romneycare in Massachusetts, but now we know that he also raised taxes. Why is he running as a Republican? I don’t see anything in his record that would cause me to believe that he is a Republican.

You can see Mitt Romney explaining all of his liberal views in his own words in these videos.

Commentary

George Will: Rick Santorum connects with the working class

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From the liberal Washington Post, a column by moderate conservative George Will.

Excerpt:

On Sept. 26, 1996, the Senate was debating whether to ban partial-birth abortion, the procedure whereby the baby to be killed is almost delivered, feet first, until only a few inches of its skull remain in the birth canal, and then the skull is punctured, emptied and collapsed. Santorum asked two pro-choice senators opposed to the ban, Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) and Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), this: Suppose the baby slips out of the birth canal before it can be killed. Should killing it even then be a permissible choice? Neither senator would say no.

On Oct. 20, 1999, during another such debate, Santorum had a colloquy with pro-choice Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.):

Santorum: “You agree that, once the child is born, separated from the mother, that that child is protected by the Constitution and cannot be killed. Do you agree with that?”

Boxer: “I think that when you bring your baby home . . . .”

Santorum is not, however, a one-dimensional social conservative. He was Senate floor manager of the most important domestic legislation since the 1960s, the 1996 welfare reform. This is intensely pertinent 15 years later, as the welfare state buckles beneath the weight of unsustainable entitlement programs: Welfare reform repealed a lifetime entitlement under Aid to Families with Dependent Children, a provision of the 1935 Social Security Act, and empowered states to experiment with new weaves of the safety net.

White voters without college education — economically anxious and culturally conservative — were called “Reagan Democrats” when they were considered only seasonal Republicans because of Ronald Reagan. Today they are called the Republican base.

Who is more apt to energize them: Santorum, who is from them, or Romney, who is desperately seeking enthusiasm?

Romney recently gave a speech with a theme worthy of a national election, contrasting a “merit-based” or “opportunity” society with Barack Obama’s promotion of an “entitlement society,” which Romney termed “a fundamental corruption of the American spirit”: “Once we thought ‘entitlement’ meant that Americans were entitled to the privilege of trying to succeed. . . . But today the new entitlement battle is over the size of the check you get from Washington. . . . And the only people who truly enjoy any real rewards are those who do the redistributing — the government.”

Romney discerns the philosophic chasm separating those who embrace and those who reject progressivism’s objective, which is to weave a web of dependency, increasingly entangling individuals and industries in government supervision.

Santorum exemplifies a conservative aspiration born about the time he was born in 1958. Frank Meyer, a founding editor of William F. Buckley’s National Review in 1955, postulated the possibility, and necessity, of “fusionism,” a union of social conservatives and those of a more libertarian, free-market bent.

Please make sure you watch Rick Santorum’s speech in Iowa, or read the transcript. The speech was very good, and it’s also very interesting.

In a new national poll from today (Thursday), Santorum now trails Romney nationally 29%-21%.  Gingrich is third with 16%. According to another poll, Santorum is now running third in liberal New Hampshire.

By the way, I am completely fine with a Gingrich/Santorum ticket. But I would prefer a Santorum/Gingrich ticket, if I can get it. Those are the two great conservative communicators in this Republican primary. Both candidates are from the working class, and both are men with bold ideas.