Four years ago, George W. Bush attempted to reform the entitlement program Social Security, warning that the system was accelerating into collapse and would soon run deficits. Democrats scoffed and claimed the Social Security system was solid and wouldn’t have problems for at least 50 years, as Harry Reid told PBS’ Jim Lehrer in June 2005. Just last year, the CBO — under the direction of Peter Orszag, now budget director in the Obama administration — claimed that the first cash deficits in Social Security would not come until 2019.
Now, however, the CBO has determined that Social Security will run cash deficits next year and in 2011, and by 2016 will be more or less in permanent deficit mode. Hot Air has exclusively obtained the summer 2009 CBO report sent to legislators on Capitol Hill but not yet made public, which shows that outgo will exceed income for the first time since the 1983 fix on an annual basis in 2010…
And it’s actually worse than that.
Check out their update:
Steve at No Runny Eggs, who has been keeping a very close eye on SSA, says that the CBO numbers project some eye-popping payroll-revenue growth numbers to get back to surpluses (briefly) by 2012. According to the numbers, CBO projects a 6.19% growth rate in 2012, and 5.69% in 2013, then dropping to 4.59% in 2014 and declining afterwards. Assuming that they only peak at the 4.59% number for all three years — still a rather optimistic projection — Social Security never actually comes out of its deficits at all…
Here is the story about the 30-second TV ad on RealClearPolitics. You can watch the TV ad on that page.
Excerpt:
Political observers looking to see how the stimulus battle might play out in the 2010 midterms have an early example in the Kansas Senate race. Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R) launched the first TV ad of that campaign today, and it slams President Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi while urging Kansans to join him in his fight against the government spending program.
“These two Washington politicians, Obama and Pelosi, sold America a bill of goods,” a narrator says in the 30-second spot. The Recovery Act hasn’t worked, it continues, but “one Kansas conservative” is fighting to stop it.
Here is the ad’s script:
“These two Washington politicians, Obama and Pelosi, sold America a bill of goods. A so-called stimulus plan. Since then, more homes are in foreclosure. More than two million jobs lost. And the economy is hurting. But one Kansas conservative, Todd Tiahrt, said the bailouts and stimulus were wrong from the start. Now, Tiahrt’s fighting to stop it. Go to this Web site. Help Todd Tiahrt stop Obama and Pelosi now.”
Newsmax has learned that the Obama administration also has zeroed out funding for pro-democracy programs inside Iran from the State Department budget for fiscal 2010, just as protests in Iran are ramping up.
Funding for pro-democracy programs began in 2004, when Congress earmarked $1.5 million of the State Department budget for “educational, humanitarian, and non-governmental organizations and individuals inside Iran to support the advancement of democracy and human rights in Iran.”
The funding ramped up dramatically two years later, when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice requested $75 million for pro-democracy programs. More than half of the $66.1 million Congress finally appropriated went to expand U.S. government-funded Persian language broadcasting services at Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
But no money has been earmarked for such programs in the administration’s fiscal 2010 foreign operations budget request. Congressional sources told Newsmax they doubted that a Democrat-controlled Congress would add it when the budget comes before a committee next week.
Here is Obama’s lame, insecure, moral equivalence, moral relativist, politically correct response:
“The Iranian government must understand that the world is watching. We mourn each and every innocent life that is lost,” Obama said in a statement.
Something tells me that Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush would have gone a lot further. But those two are coming from a worldview where humans have certain inalienable rights, grounded by a Creator, and that no one has a right to take away those rights. Reagan and Bush were not afraid to speak divisively in order to condemn evil, and praise the good. Is that so hard for Democrats to do?
President Obama’s tepid response to the evidence the Iranian election was stolen from the people of that country by current president President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his thuggish allies is disappointing. …
The president says he entertains “deep concerns about the election” in Iran. Well, who doesn’t? Expressing concern is “nice,” it’s “diplomatic”–in the worst sense–but it is not sufficient to the circumstance…
The Nation article also has some nice citations of conservative French leader Sarkozy, who has courage, moral conviction, and moral clarity.
ECM sent me this link to a post on Ace of Spades, regarding the Department of Defense written exam. Do you know know what counts as a form of “low-level terrorism” in Obama’s regime? Is it attacking the Pentagon? IEDs? Hate crimes? or PROTESTS?Click here to find out.
SILENCE is complicity. Our president’s refusal to take a forthright moral stand on the side of the Iranian freedom marchers is read in Tehran as a blank check for the current regime.
The fundamentalist junta has begun arresting opposition figures, with regime mouthpieces raising the prospect of the death penalty. Inevitably, there are claims that dissidents have been “hoarding weapons and explosives.”
Foreign media reps are under house arrest. Cellphone frequencies are jammed. Students are killed and the killings disavowed.
And our president is “troubled,” but doesn’t believe we should “meddle” in Iran’s internal affairs. (Meddling in Israel’s domestic affairs is just fine, though.)
We just turned our backs on freedom.
This article by Ralph Peters is MUST-READ. We used to be a great nation that cared about the plight of the oppressed peoples abroad. But not anymore.
The Berman Post post has a HUGE number of links, if you’re into this story, as I am.
Republican Mike Pence
His resolution condemning the Islamic fascists brutal suppression of peaceful pro-democracy protesters passed in the House.
His speech can be viewed here:
Excerpt:
“This resolution simply states that the House of Representatives expresses its support for all Iranian citizens who embrace the values of freedom, human rights, civil liberties and the rule of law. It also condemns the ongoing violence against demonstrators by the government of Iran and pro-government militias, as well as the ongoing government suppression of independent electronic communication through interference with the Internet and cell phones. And lastly, it affirms the universality of individual rights and the importance of democratic and fair elections.
His full statement following the passage of his pro-democracy bill is here. I should just note that Mike Pence is a devout Christian, and that human rights and human dignity are grounded by his worldview. He is saying such things because it is rational for him to say such things, on his worldview of Christian theism.
WINTERY KNIGHT 