Tag Archives: Porkulus

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Judd Gregg says Obama’s budget will bankrupt the country

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UPDATE: Welcome visitors from Free Canuckistan! Thanks for the linky, Binky!

Found this post over at Gateway Pundit. You’ll remember that Judd Gregg is one of those fiscally conservative New Hampshire senators, an expert on business, finance and economics. Despite being a Republican, he was nominated by Obama for the Cabinet position of Commerce Secretary. He backed out of it, though. And now we can guess why.

Last month, he warned that the budget would bankrupt the USA:

A new video from CNN is here. Here’s an excerpt from the transcript:

“The practical implications of this is bankruptcy for the United States,” Gregg said of the Obama’s administration’s recently released budget blueprint. “There’s no other way around it. If we maintain the proposals that are in this budget over the ten-year period that this budget covers, this country will go bankrupt. People will not buy our debt, our dollar will become devalued. It is a very severe situation.”

“Your listeners have to understand how staggering the numbers are. We’re talking about a deficit in the trillion-dollar range for as far as the eye can see. We’re talking about deficits which are 4% to 5% of GDP – which is not sustainable under any form of government. We’re talking about a public debt – this is a debt that people own of the federal government – that will be around 80% of GDP. Historically, it’s been around 40% of GDP in the out years. The practical implication of this is bankruptcy for the United States. There’s no other way around it.”

I know people who denounced Bush, McCain and Palin. They voted for this ACORN lawyer. As if Obama was God’s gift to small government conservatism. They wouldn’t read a single economics book. I remember showing them numbers from Citizens Against Government Waste and American Taxpayers Union, which they rejected.

Here’s one more interesting piece from the always wonderful IBD (editorial, podcast). I include the details of the Bush and Reagan budgets, for comparison with Obama’s budget.

Excerpt:

According to the CBO, the Obama administration lowballed its deficit forecast by $482 billion over the next four years and $2.3 trillion over the next 10. In other words, the CBO says that 10-year deficits will be 33% higher than the president claims, should his plans get enacted.

This makes Obama’s budget one of the worst accounting jobs ever put forward in modern times by a new administration.

When the CBO reviewed George W. Bush’s first budget, for example, the difference between what Bush said his budget would cost and what the CBO said it would cost was minimal.

…Reagan’s first budget, which was widely panned for allegedly employing rosy scenarios to cook the numbers, differed from the CBO by just 1.2% in projected revenues and 5% in spending over the first four years.

So why the huge gap between Obama and the CBO?

Obama’s team employed one of the oldest budget tricks in the books — exaggerating economic growth — to hide the true cost of his tax and spending plans. Budget forecasts are hugely sensitive to predictions about GDP growth, inflation, unemployment and interest rates. Even slight differences can have a huge impact on projected outlays and revenues.

And in his budget, Obama is positively Pollyannaish about the economy, predicting 3.2% real GDP growth next year, compared to the CBO’s 2.9% and the Blue Chip consensus forecast of 1.9%. While the CBO and Blue Chip think unemployment will be 9% in 2010, Obama claims it will be only 7.9%. And so on.

Here’s an image I stole from IBD:

IBD: Publically-held debt
IBD: Publically-held debt

Read the whole editorial! And don’t foget to subscribe to IBD’s podcast feed. It’s FREE!

Michelle Malkin has more details on Obama’s “public-private partnership” plan for economic recovery.

Excerpt:

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France, Germany and Italy warn G20 nations against Obammunism

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I was browsing over at the Anchoress and I found some very interesting links in her link-filled post here. She runs a blog that features a mix of Catholic-oriented reflections and a conservative perspective on the news of the day.

Here’s the part of her post that caught my attention:

Not good: First Putin told him not to, now France and Germany. Boy, didn’t the left HATE when Bush was this stubborn and set on his own way? And he didn’t listen to other countries? I seem to remember the left really, really hating that. About Bush. They hated these things too. When Bush did them.

Here is the warning from France and Germany from the Financial Times, via American Thinker:

Disagreements between the European Union and the US over how to combat the global recession widened on Tuesday as EU governments made clear they had little appetite for piling up more debt to fight the collapse in output and jobs.

Finance ministers from the 27-nation bloc insisted in Brussels that it was doing enough to support world demand and did not need at present to adopt another fiscal stimulus plan, as Washington is urging.

The US-European differences are casting a shadow over next month’s summit in London of leaders from the G20 group of advanced and emerging economies, an event to be attended by Barack Obama on his first visit to Europe as US president.

It’s true that France, Germany and Italy have all elected conservative leaders recently, (along with Japan, Canada, the Czech Republic and Mexico). I thought that these European socialist countries were to the left of the USA. Are we now to the left of France, Germany and Italy?

You might remember that I posted recently about former-communist Russia warning Obama about the dangers of socialism. Former-communist China also warned Obama to stimulate the economy with tax cuts, not spending. Instead, Obama raised taxes and spent trillions.

Canada, Japan and Mexico also elected conservatives governments. Why can’t we be more like them? Why do we have to embrace Obama’s unilateral, cowboy-communism? Why must Obama anger the world with unpopular economic policies that fail the “global test”? Why does Obama make the world hate us?

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Michele Bachmann and Marsha Blackburn defend free market capitalism

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Representative Michele Bachmann
Representative Michele Bachmann

UPDATE: For all the people that are searching for Michele Bachmann, this blog is FILLED with stories on Michele Bachmann!!!  Here is a good summary of some of her best material. Here’s her latest video.

More recent posts

Here are my recent posts on Michele Bachmann:

Videos of Michele and Marsha defending capitalism

Here’s Michele Bachmann, on the floor of Congress, explaining economics and defending free market capitalism. She touches on many important topics: intentions versus incentives, learning from past economic failures, American exceptionalism, economic growth, private ownership of property, the rule of law, private contracts, tax law, the law of unintended consequences and the “forgotten man”.

Well, if we’re going down as a nation, it won’t be because no one understood what was happening. Michele knows – because she is a trained tax lawyer and she understands economics and business – she and her husband Markus own a small business. They have 5 children and 23 foster children, so they know enough not to saddle the next generation of Americans with debt. Life experience matters.

And then there is another “M.B.” in the house, Marsha Blackburn.

Representative Marsha Blackburn
Representative Marsha Blackburn

Marsha Blackburn also voted against porkulus 1 and porkulus 2, and the cramdown bill:

Congressman Marsha Blackburn (TN-7) today voted against passage of H.R. 1106, a housing bill that will allow bankruptcy judges to “cramdown” the principle on a mortgage, change the interest rate, or extend the life of the loan. The consequence of this legislation for new homebuyers and homeowners who have lived within their means is dire. As banks attempt to absorb the cost of crammed down mortgages, they will be forced to raise fees, increase down payment requirements, and increase interest rates for potential home buyers.

“This is yet another bailout for bad actors. It rewards those that gamed the system or knowingly lived beyond their means at the expense of responsible taxpayers. I would have been more comfortable with a bill that helped those who legitimately fell on hard times and excluded unscrupulous borrowers and lenders.” Blackburn said.

“Some of my colleagues claim that this program is cost-free. It isn’t. Struggling banks, who are at the core of our economic problems, will be forced to rebuild their bottom line somehow in order to remain solvent. That cost will be paid for by the first time home buyer who will now have a much harder time getting a mortgage as banks insure themselves against risky loans. It will be paid for by responsible home owners who will watch their bank fees increase as bankruptcy judges cram down home values in their neighborhood.”

Congressman Blackburn supported proposed Republican changes to the bill that would have prohibited taxpayer assistance to any borrower that misrepresented or lied about their income on a mortgage or to any lender that failed to follow proper underwriting standards.

Mary Fallin and Sue Myrick, two of my other favorite representatives, also voted against all 3 of these socialist bills. Not only are these 4 representatives fiscal conservatives, but they are also pro-life.

You might remember that Sue was the one who wanted to revoke Jimmy Carter’s passport when he met with Hamas.

UPDATE: More Michele Bachmann here and here. She is also Mrs November in a new 2010 calendar. A full list of all of my many posts on Michele Bachmann is here.