Tag Archives: Democrat

News

CBO: Unemployment rises to 9.1% in 2013, health care spending doubles by 2022

1 Comment

Here are the raw numbers from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, as reported by CNS News:

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is projecting that if changes in federal taxing-and-spending policies already enacted and set to take effect at the beginning of next year do in fact take place, the unemployment rate will climb to 9.1 percent.

In a report released on Aug. 22, An Update to the Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal Years 2012 to 2022, CBO’s baseline projections show that by the fourth quarter of 2013 the national unemployment rate will be 9.1 percent.

[…]Widely referred to as the “fiscal cliff,” the expiration of the Bush tax cuts and over $1 trillion in automatic defense and discretionary cuts as a result of last year’s failed budget deal are set to take effect in January 2013.

[…]If no action is taken by Congress, current CBO projections show that unemployment will not return to pre-recession levels until 2017.

And more CBO: federal health care spending will exceed all discretionary spending by 2016:

Under current law, federal health care spending is on pace to exceed all discretionary spending by 2016, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

The change is due to large increases in Medicare and Medicaid spending and added spending under the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) over the next decade, a feat the Tax Foundation calls a “truly unprecedented and scary” scenario.

The nonpartisan tax research group analyzed recent CBO projections of the budget for 2012 to 2022, finding that over the next decade Medicare spending will increase from $550 billion to $1.064 trillion, while Medicaid would more than double from $253 billion to $592 billion.

In addition, new exchanges and subsidies under Obamacare will force mandatory healthcare expenditures to grow from $25 billion to $181 billion in 2022.

“In total, healthcare entitlement spending is due to more than double, from $828 billion this year to $1.837 trillion in 2022,” according to the Tax Foundation.

“This means healthcare spending will overtake all discretionary spending in 2016 – Obama’s last year in office if reelected,” the group said.

And more CBO: taxes will shoot up by more than 30% between 2012 and 2014:

The amount of money the federal government takes out of the U.S. economy in taxes will increase by more than 30 percent between 2012 and 2014, according to the Budget and Economic Outlook published today by the CBO.

At the same time, according to CBO, the economy will remain sluggish, partly because of higher taxes.

“In particular, between 2012 and 2014, revenues in CBO’s baseline shoot up by more than 30 percent,” said CBO, “mostly because of the recent or scheduled expirations of tax provisions, such as those that lower income tax rates and limit the reach of the alternative minimum tax (AMT), and the imposition of new taxes, fees, and penalties that are scheduled to go into effect.”

The U.S. economy, CBO projects, will perform “below its potential” for another six years and unemployment will remain above 7 percent for another three.

And the GAO reports that the Obama administration has waived work requirements for welfare programs, which reduces revenues from employee income taxes and increases spending on welfare programs.

Now you might expect that the Democrats would have some bold plan to tackle unemployment, spending and high taxes. And they do!

Bold policy ideas at the Democrat National Convention

Take a look at this video on bold, innovative tax policy from the DNC convention:

That will fix unemployment for sure.

And they want to augment that tax policy with some reasonable pro-growth regulations:

If you don’t think that this is a good plan to solve our economic problems, then Democrats will say that you’re a racist homophobic Islamophobic sexist bigot.

Polemics

New study: marriage drops probability of child poverty by 82%

4 Comments

From the Heritage Foundation.

Excerpt: (links removed)

The collapse of marriage, along with a dramatic rise in births to single women, is the most important cause of childhood poverty—but government policy doesn’t reflect that reality, according to a special report released today by The Heritage Foundation.

Nearly three out of four poor families with children in America are headed by single parents. When a child’s father is married to his mother, however, the probability of the child’s living in poverty drops by 82 percent.

Robert Rector, Heritage’s senior research fellow in domestic policy, provides a brief overview of each state with unique data and 14 charts per state, while also updating his years of related research in the special report titled “Marriage: America’s Greatest Weapon Against Child Poverty.” Heritage’s study, including a national charts slideshow, arrives a week before the Census Bureau’s annual report on poverty, which is expected to show another increase.

“Policymakers on the state and national levels recognize that education reduces poverty, but they’re largely unaware that marriage is an equally strong anti-poverty weapon,” says Rector, a nationally recognized authority on the U.S. welfare system.

In Florida, for example, white families headed by single parents are five times more likely to be poor than those headed by married couples. In Illinois, the poverty rate for a single mother with only a high school diploma is 39.5 percent, compared with 8 percent for a married couple with the same education.

The rate of births to unmarried women—now four out of every 10 babies overall, five out of 10 for Hispanics, and seven out of 10 for blacks—has soared since the mid-1960s, when President Lyndon Johnson launched the War on Poverty. Births outside marriage are mostly to less-educated women—sadly, those with the least ability to support children.

While more Americans grow dependent on welfare, government fails to communicate the benefits of marriage even as it warns young people not to smoke, do drugs, have “unsafe” sex, or drop out of school. Rector calls this “tragic.”

If we  as a society were really serious about solving poverty, we would stop focusing on redistributing wealth and employing unionized drones, and start focusing on promoting marriage. But that’s not politically correct, since feminists don’t like marriage. And that’s why it doesn’t happen. If women have to work to be like men, then they need free contraceptives and abortion, and they have to be taught to have sex early, so that they don’t aspire to marriage and parenting. So what if this causes a lot of premarital sex and the occasional baby? Children don’t matter – feminism matters.

News

Democrats boo as God and Jerusalem are put back in their party platform

9 Comments

The leftist Washington post explains.

Excerpt:

President Barack Obama personally intervened to order Democrats to change language in their party platform to add a mention of God and declare that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, campaign officials said Wednesday.

Scrambling to end the furor, Democrats abruptly changed the platform early Wednesday evening to reinstate language from the 2008 platform that said “we need a government that stands up for the hopes, values and interests of working people and gives everyone willing to work hard the chance to make the most of their God-given potential.” Mitt Romney and other Republicans had seized on the omission to criticize the Democrats.

Democrats also restored 2008 language on Jerusalem, declaring the city “is and will remain the capital of Israel. The parties have agreed that Jerusalem is a matter for final status negotiations. It should remain an undivided city accessible to people of all faiths.”

[…]The platform changes did not sit well with some Democratic delegates gathered in Charlotte, N.C., for the party’s three-day convention. Many in the audience booed after the convention chairman, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, ruled that the amendments had been approved despite the fact that a large group of delegates had objected. He called for a vote three times before ruling.

The revisions came as Obama struggles to win support from white working-class voters, many of whom have strong religious beliefs, and as Republicans try to woo Jewish voters and contributors away from the Democratic Party. Republicans claimed the platform omissions suggested Obama was weak in his defense of Israel and out of touch with mainstream Americans.

Democrats support abortion and gay marriage. And they haven’t done enough to protect Israel from Iran. But they have to pretend that they are moral people and good allies of Israel in order to get elected, even if their hearts are elsewhere. I understand that.