The thing I like about this conference is that all of the speakers have participated in lectures and debates. Paul Nelson has debated on intelligent design, JP Moreland has debated on the existence of God, Craig debates regularly on the existence of God, Licona has debated Ehrman and others on the resurrection, and Sean McDowell kicked butt in his debate on morality and atheism. Craig Hazen hasn’t debated to my knowledge, but he does tons of lecturing, and people tend to really like his lectures. I once gave an entire set of lectures to my friends Andrew and Jen and they liked Craig Hazen the best.
So the point is that these guys are all really really good speakers! This conference should be a very lively affair.
Mr. Obama asserted in his January State of the Union Address that by the time he took office, “we had a one-year deficit of over $1 trillion and projected deficits of $8 trillion over the next decade. Most of this was the result of not paying for two wars, two tax cuts, and an expensive prescription drug program.”
In short, it’s all President Bush’s fault. But Mr. Obama’s assertion fails on three grounds.
First, the wars, tax cuts and the prescription drug program were implemented in the early 2000s, yet by 2007 the deficit stood at only $161 billion. How could these stable policies have suddenly caused trillion-dollar deficits beginning in 2009? (Obviously what happened was collapsing revenues from the recession along with stimulus spending.)
Second, the president’s $8 trillion figure minimizes the problem. Recent CBO data indicate a 10-year baseline deficit closer to $13 trillion if Washington maintains today’s tax-and-spend policies—whereby discretionary spending grows with the economy, war spending winds down, ObamaCare is implemented, and Congress extends all the Bush tax cuts, the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) patch, and the Medicare “doc fix” (i.e., no reimbursement cuts).
Under this realistic baseline, the 10-year cost of extending the Bush tax cuts ($3.2 trillion), the Medicare drug entitlement ($1 trillion), and Iraq and Afghanistan spending ($515 billion) add up to $4.7 trillion. That’s approximately one-third of the $13 trillion in baseline deficits—far from the majority the president claims.
Third and most importantly, the White House methodology is arbitrary. With Washington set to tax $33 trillion and spend $46 trillion over the next decade, how does one determine which policies “caused” the $13 trillion deficit? Mr. Obama could have just as easily singled out Social Security ($9.2 trillion over 10 years), antipoverty programs ($7 trillion), other Medicare spending ($5.4 trillion), net interest on the debt ($6.1 trillion), or nondefense discretionary spending ($7.5 trillion).
There’s no legitimate reason to single out the $4.7 trillion in tax cuts, war funding and the Medicare drug entitlement. A better methodology would focus on which programs are expanding and pushing the next decade’s deficit up.
The article notes that the real problem is that Obama is spending money like he has gone mad.
Spending—which has averaged 20.3% of GDP over the past 50 years—won’t remain as stable [as revenue]. Using the budget baseline deficit of $13 trillion for the next decade as described above, CBO figures show spending surging to a peacetime record 26.5% of GDP by 2020 and also rising steeply thereafter.
Putting this together, the budget deficit, historically 2.3% of GDP, is projected to leap to 8.3% of GDP by 2020 under current policies. This will result from Washington taxing at 0.2% of GDP above the historical average but spending 6.2% above its historical average.
Entitlements and other obligations are driving the deficits. Specifically, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and net interest costs are projected to rise by 5.4% of GDP between 2008 and 2020. The Bush tax cuts are a convenient scapegoat for past and future budget woes. But it is the dramatic upward arc of federal spending that is the root of the problem.
Spending is the problem, and Obama is spending like a drunken sailor.
And remember, the recession is almost entirely the fault of the Democrats. You can watch videos of them telling the Republicans not to regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to stop them from making mortgage loans to people who cannot afford them. The only other factor is the decision to keep interest rates low to encourage more and more borrowing – the “boom” in spending that necessarily leads to a “bust”.
Here’s a good article that answers the question. (H/T Benjamin from SA)
Excerpt:
Francis of Assisi is said to have said, “Preach the gospel at all times; when necessary, use words.”
This saying is carted out whenever someone wants to suggest that Christians talk about the gospel too much, and live the gospel too little. Fair enough—that can be a problem. Much of the rhetorical power of the quotation comes from the assumption that Francis not only said it but lived it.
The problem is that he did not say it. Nor did he live it. And those two contra-facts tell us something about the spirit of our age.
Let’s commit a little history (let me un-humbly draw on some chapters from my biography of St. Francis).
First, no biography written within the first 200 years of his death contains the saying. It’s not likely that a pithy quote like this would have been missed by his earliest disciples.
Second, in his day, Francis was known as much for his preaching as for his lifestyle.
He began preaching early in his ministry, first in the Assisi church of Saint George, in which he had gone to school as a child, and later in the cathedral of Saint Rufinus. He usually preached on Sundays, spending Saturday evenings devoted to prayer and meditation reflecting on what he would say to the people the next day.
[…]Another early biography talked about how his preaching was received: “His words were neither hollow nor ridiculous, but filled with the power of the Holy Spirit, penetrating the marrow of the heart, so that listeners were turned to great amazement.”
As a result, he quickly gained followers, and it wasn’t long before he told his most devoted adherents to preach as well.
The article goes on to explain where this wimpy trend of not preaching using words comes from, and whether it matches the example of Jesus in the New Testament writings.
WINTERY KNIGHT 