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News

Democrats say they rescued the economy, Republicans ask where are the jobs?

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Barack Obama will announce today “We rescued the economy”. (H/T ECM, Breitbart TV, Hot Air, Gateway Pundit)

Gateway Pundit adds:

President Disaster will quadruple the US budget deficit his first year in office. He will reportedly spend $23.7 trillion to “fix” the economy… or bankrupt it by next year.

…Government Motors sales drop 22%. (H/T ECM, Gateway Pundit,

Meanwhile, 134 House Rebublicans ask “Where are the Jobs?”.

Gateway Pundit adds:

President Obama and democrats in Congress, of course, promised that their stimulus would prevent unemployment from rising about 8%. Today it is at 9.7% and House Republicans who unanimously opposed the Stimulus Bill want to know where are the jobs?

The unemployment rate during the Bush years was 5.27%.
President Disaster’s unemployment rate is averaging above 8.6%.

Jim Demint contends with the leftist media trying to get the word out.

Pundit and Pundette give him a gold star!

They’ve got the transcript, too!

Excerpt:

LAUER: . . . But over the past couple of days, I don’t have to tell you, you’ve ignited a firestorm, and people are saying that you are playing pure politics with this issue. How do you respond?

DEMINT: Well, it has nothing to do with politics or it’s certainly not personal. But, but the President’s policies have not matched up to his promises so far. We saw that in this giant stimulus, his trillion dollar stimulus that has stimulated the government, but really cost American jobs and, and, and loaded lots of debt on top of future generations.
LAUER: But, but sticking to health care reform, let, let me, you know, give you your own words here. You, you were addressing the group Conservatives for Patients Rights about the health care debate and you said quote, “If we’re able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him.” Now are you rallying conservatives to the cause of health care reform? Or are you rallying conservatives to the cause of breaking a president?

DEMINT: Oh, we need to put the brakes on this President. He’s been on a spending spree since he took office. And we need health care reform. Unfortunately, when the President was in the Senate, I’ve probably offered more health care reform proposals than anyone in the Senate. And the President voted against every proposal that would have made health insurance more available and more affordable to people. His goal seems to be a government takeover, not making insurance more available. So I do think we need to stop the President on this. We need to stop his policy, because if we allow him to continue to ram things through Congress before we even get a chance to read them.

LAUER: But-

DEMINT: Matt, I just brought one of the bills this morning. I mean, if you look at this bill, it’s one of the three bills that we’re gonna have to look at.

LAUER: It’s a complicated issue. There are a lot of details in that bill.

DEMINT: Well why do we need to pass it in two weeks before we go home in August?

LAUER: Well that’s, that’s a good question. And I’m gonna get to that in a second. But, but the words you chose were very specific. “It could be his Waterloo, it could break this President.” I, I guess the obvious question is, it wouldn’t break your heart if you break this President, would it?

DEMINT: Well, again, it’s not personal, but we’ve got to stop his policies, Matt. The policies are not matching up to the promises. They’re loading trillions of dollars of debt onto the American people. And the thing is we need real health care reform. I’ve introduced proposals that would help individuals own their own health insurance policies if they don’t get it at work.

LAUER: Right.

DEMINT: There are a lot of ways to do this without a government takeover and a government plan.

LAUER: And I read, I read some of your plan. You wrote it in an op-ed, and I, and I did read that, and would encourage people to go see that. Is the deadline dead, Senator?

DEMINT: It appears to be, and I hope it is. And that’s what I mean, the Senate is supposed to be the body that deliberates and debates and actually reads bill, bills. You know, I hear that more than anything else, as I go around the country. Why don’t you guys read the bills before you pass them? There are a lot of things in these bills that are gonna alarm the American people. I’m afraid the President knows that. He wants to push it through before we’re able to take a look at what’s really in it. And that shouldn’t happen in Congress. This doesn’t take effect for four years, Matt. We don’t need to pass it in two weeks. It’s 20 percent of the American economy.

LAUER: Right.

DEMINT: It’s one of the most personal issues that we deal with as Americans. The government shouldn’t take it over and we shouldn’t pass a bill in two weeks.

LAUER: Senator Jim DeMint. Senator thanks for joining us this morning. We appreciate your time.

DEMINT: Thank you Matt.

Worst. President. Ever.

Commentary

Sarah Palin crushes cap-and-trade in the Washington Post

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Sarah Palin’s op-ed in the Washington Post is called “The ‘Cap And Tax’ Dead End”. (H/T Watts Up With That, Gateway Pundit, Stop the ACLU)

Excerpt:

American prosperity has always been driven by the steady supply of abundant, affordable energy. Particularly in Alaska, we understand the inherent link between energy and prosperity, energy and opportunity, and energy and security. Consequently, many of us in this huge, energy-rich state recognize that the president’s cap-and-trade energy tax would adversely affect every aspect of the U.S. economy.

There is no denying that as the world becomes more industrialized, we need to reform our energy policy and become less dependent on foreign energy sources. But the answer doesn’t lie in making energy scarcer and more expensive! Those who understand the issue know we can meet our energy needs and environmental challenges without destroying America’s economy.

Job losses are so certain under this new cap-and-tax plan that it includes a provision accommodating newly unemployed workers from the resulting dried-up energy sector, to the tune of $4.2 billion over eight years. So much for creating jobs.

In addition to immediately increasing unemployment in the energy sector, even more American jobs will be threatened by the rising cost of doing business under the cap-and-tax plan. For example, the cost of farming will certainly increase, driving down farm incomes while driving up grocery prices. The costs of manufacturing, warehousing and transportation will also increase.

The ironic beauty in this plan? Soon, even the most ardent liberal will understand supply-side economics.

…The Americans hit hardest will be those already struggling to make ends meet. As the president eloquently puts it, their electricity bills will “necessarily skyrocket.” So much for not raising taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year.

Even Warren Buffett, an ardent Obama supporter, admitted that under the cap-and-tax scheme, “poor people are going to pay a lot more for electricity.”

Meh. It’s merely excellent. Somewhat superlative.

Not nearly as good as Michele Bachmann could do, and Michele is conservative on vouchers and illegal immigration, unlike Sarah. See, Sarah writes about supply-side economics once in a while, but Michele gives passionate speeches about supply-side economics every day:

And Michele likes Christian apologetics more than Sarah! Sarah probably doesn’t even know who William Lane Craig is! Michele should be President, Sarah can be Secretary of Energy.

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air comments on Sarah’s article:

We need to make all of this clear.  Cap-and-trade rations energy production, which means there will be less of it for a long time.  Alternatives are not ready for the kind of mass production that would allow a complete replacement of energy, and probably won’t be for decades, if ever in some cases (notably wind power, as GreenChoice showed and as T. Boone Pickens finally realized).  That means a lower standard of living that will impact America regressively, with the lowest income earners getting hit the hardest.  The drain on the economy from high energy prices means less jobs and higher retail prices for goods and services, again a regressive consequence of energy rationing.

Obama and his Utopian allies promise that government will help close the gap by offering more services to the unemployed and the poor at the expense of the “rich”.  What will that do?  It will further handicap the economy by keeping capital out of the markets.  Even worse, it will vastly expand the dependent class in America who have to go on the dole to survive.  And many of those ardent liberals will be pretty happy with that outcome, too.

We need to stop this thing. It’s good that Sarah came out against it.

Commentary

Understanding what cap-and-trade actually does

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I thought I would put together a few snippets to help everyone understand what Obama’s cap-and-trade energy tax actually does.

It’s a massive government intervention in the free market

The Heritage Foundation explains the point of cap and trade.

One of the most contentious provisions in the bill is the use of offsets to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, in which “a manufacturing plant in, say, Gary, Ind., that is exceeding its ‘permitted’ expulsion of CO2, could continue to commit this sin against humanity by paying for a Brazilian farmer to plant some trees in the rain forest…. Of course, to guard against some nefarious polluter trying to cheat Uncle Sam and the world by claiming bogus ‘offsets,’ here must be a monitoring mechanism. Enter the ‘Offsets Integrity Advisory Board’ — yet another group of scientific ‘experts’ that would be tasked with compiling a list of qualifying offsets around the globe.”

Cap and trade is a regulatory nightmare that would hand over more power and money to the government with the intention of reducing global temperatures. The problem with that, however, is the Waxman-Markey cap and trade bill will only reduce temperatures by an amount almost too small to measure. The bigger problem is that consumers’ pocketbooks will be hit hard by this bill. The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis found that by 2035, gasoline prices would increase 58 percent, natural gas prices would increase 55 percent, home heating oil would increase 56 percent, and worst of all, electricity prices would jump 90 percent. After all, the goal of cap and trade is to drive up energy prices so high that people will use less. Yet in Missouri, state legislators are considering a bill that would charge consumers for saving electricity.

That’s enough to scare the snark out of you, but there’s much more to it than that.

The bill provides opportunities for corruption

Consider this National Review Online post, which counts 50 reasons why cap-and-trade is bad. (H/T Club for Growth)

I cannot excerpt the 50 points. I read through them and each one is more horrible than the last. Any of the 50 would be sufficient to cause an honest man to cry like a baby. (The print version of the article is easier to read – please send it to all your friends, too!)

The Democrats didn’t even read the bill

And remember, none of the Democrats who voted for the energy tax actually read it.

Excerpt:

Recall the passing of Waxman-Markey by the House, which had 300 pages added 18 hours before the floor vote–almost certainly going unread by most members of Congress. Furthermore, the nonplussed responses from administration backers and Democrats in Congress–when pressed to read the legislation they vote on or support–should be infuriating to anyone in favor of transparency and responsibility in government. As CEI Adjunct Fellow Fran Smith noted, some on the left went as far to claim that members of Congress uncomfortable with voting for climate change legislation in the dark were guilty of “treason against the planet.”

Yes, there’s that vaunted leftist morality again. Cutting missile defense is good, but not passing an energy tax is treason.