1:38 video

Hat tip to Rich Duff.

43 Previous Presidents

Michael J. Boskin, a professor of Economics at Stanford, identifies what Barack Obama has managed to accomplish in under two years. He certainly has racked up one very startling statistic.

Mr. Obama’s $3.6 trillion budget blueprint, by his own admission, redefines the role of government in our economy and society. The budget more than doubles the national debt held by the public, adding more to the debt than all previous presidents — from George Washington to George W. Bush — combined. It reduces defense spending to a level not sustained since the dangerous days before World War II, while increasing nondefense spending (relative to GDP) to the highest level in U.S. history. And it would raise taxes to historically high levels (again, relative to GDP). And all of this before addressing the impending explosion in Social Security and Medicare costs.

Megan McArdle critiques the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate of the cost of Obamacare.

Thanks to reconciliation instructions, they needed to improve the budget impact by at least $1 billion in the sidecar. They improved it by exactly $1 billion. Which goes back to what I’ve now said several times: the CBO process has now been so thoroughly gamed that it’s useless. …

The proposed changes increase spending dramatically, most heavily concentrated in the out-years. The gross cost of the bill has risen from $875 billion to $940 billion over ten years–but almost $40 billion of that comes in 2019. The net cost has increased even more dramatically, from $624 billion to $794 billion. That’s because the excise tax has been so badly weakened. This is of dual concern: it’s a financing risk, but it also means that the one provision which had a genuine shot at “bending the cost curve” in the broader health care market has at this point, basically been gutted. Moreover, it’s hard not to believe that the reason it has been moved to 2018 is that no one really thinks it’s ever going to take effect. It’s one thing to have a period of adjustment. But a tax that takes effect in eight years is a tax so unpopular that it has little realistic chance of being allowed to stand. …

As I expected, the size of the magic asterisk–the modern equivalent of David Stockman’s infamous “savings to be named later” in the Reagan budgets–has had to be beefed up to offset the new spending. …

[A]re we really going to cut Medicare? If we’re not, this gargantuan new entitlement is going to end up costing us about $200 billion a year next decade, which even in government terms is an awful lot of money. There are offsetting taxes, but they’re either trivial or likely to be unpopular–look forward to a 4% rent increase when your landlord has to stump over the same amount for the new tax on rents. Then look forward to repeal of same.

I think this is a fiscal disaster waiting to happen. But no one on the other side cares, so I’m not sure how much point there is in saying that any more.

Talk about man bites dog news items.

Jacob Weisberg, Slate’s editor in chief, is a liberal, but he seems to have miraculously suddenly developed a healthy concern about the growth of government. I don’t believe there is the slightest possibility of Barack Obama or Nancy Pelosi listening to any of this, but Weisberg’s Make It Stop editorial features both a refreshing dash of libertarianism and the kind of common sense which recognizes both consequences and limits and it is just not the kind of thing one normally ever finds being written by a commentator on his side of the debate.

At this point, Obama and the Democrats may be destined to learn the old lesson once again. But if they hope to avoid a repeat of Clinton’s 1994 fate in 2010, the president and his party might think about fixing a long-term upper limit on the size of government. Because of the bank bailouts and stimulus, federal spending will exceed 25 percent of GDP this year, and public spending at all levels will exceed 44 percent. But if liberals were clear that, in normal times, federal spending shouldn’t be more than 22 percent and that the public sector as a whole shouldn’t exceed a third of GDP—the level during Clinton’s second term—the fear of Democrats covertly foisting a social-democratic model on America would begin to melt away. This kind of ceiling would mean that government couldn’t grow at the expense of the economy, because it couldn’t grow faster than the economy as a whole. To substantiate his commitment, Obama should unilaterally propose large, specific cuts in programs and subsidies to be phased in as the need for stimulus spending recedes. Raising the retirement age, privatizing space exploration, and eliminating agriculture subsidies would make a decent start.

Beyond actually endorsing smaller government, Obama could identify himself with wiser government by developing the responsibility theme he sounded in his inaugural address but has returned to infrequently in the period since. Health care reform based on an individual mandate is a good example of government linking a private duty to a public benefit, but Obama hasn’t emphasized this “values” aspect of the plan. Another example might be to require public service work in exchange for extended unemployment benefits, on the principle of welfare reform. A nicotine-addicted president should also steer clear of paternalistic, class-tinged policies like taxing soft drinks. Letting personal behavior that doesn’t harm others slide means recognizing another kind of limit on government.

There’s a risk of harming the country by failing to address fundamental threats and problems—which is where current Republican policies would leave us. There’s also a risk of Democrats responding in a way that leaves behind more government than we want or need. Obama could help himself by letting people know he’s worried about that danger too.

I think most Republicans really would be fairly content, if an adequate portion of the federal budget remained reliably devoted to defense expenditures, to let the liberals have the equivalent of a spousal allowance, all the rest of the federal budget beyond defense to spend on the charitable, artistic, or environmental good works of their choice, as long as overall federal spending was not consuming so large a portion of the national economy as to curtail growth. But, would a liberal upper limit to government growth and spending ever be conceded by the American left? I have a lot of trouble picturing that.

The left would have to abandon its imperialistic drive toward limitless expansion of the state. It would have to relinquish its favorite tactic of demonizing its political opponents as selfish and greedy and its habit of identifying this year’s chosen socialist scheme as an absolute moral imperative. It would have to, at some point, stop demanding more and try to decide on reallocating what it already has, which seems far, far too difficult to ever happen.

Still, reading Weisberg today brings to mind a pleasant fantasy of a less divisive American political culture, one missing our own’s customary shrieks of hysterical accusation, one featuring occasional bipartisanship and overall rationality. That isn’t the world we live in, but it would be nice.

The Washington Post describes the depth of the fiscal abyss the current administration is driving into.

President Obama’s proposed budget would add more than $9.7 trillion to the national debt over the next decade, congressional budget analysts said Friday. Proposed tax cuts for the middle class account for nearly a third of that shortfall.

The 10-year outlook released by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office is somewhat gloomier than White House projections, which found that Obama’s budget request would produce deficits that would add about $8.5 trillion to the national debt by 2020.

The CBO and the White House are in relative agreement about the short-term budget picture, with both predicting a deficit of about $1.5 trillion this year — a post-World War II record at 10.3 percent of the overall economy — and $1.3 trillion in 2011. But the CBO is considerably less optimistic about future years, predicting that deficits would never fall below 4 percent of the economy under Obama’s policies and would begin to grow rapidly after 2015.

Deficits of that magnitude would force the Treasury to continue borrowing at prodigious rates, sending the national debt soaring to 90 percent of the economy by 2020, the CBO said. Interest payments on the debt would also skyrocket by $800 billion over the same period.

Roger mentions it here.

Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.

Interviewing Robert Duvall about his new film “Crazy Heart” (2009), co-starring Jeff Bridges, in which a broke-down alcoholic country singer is salvaged by the love of a good woman, got Hugh Hewitt reflecting on addiction in a different context.

Thus I was thinking about addicts and their troubles when yesterday’s story about a new “jobs bill” hit the news. Senators Baucus and Grassley had appeared to announce a new era of bipartisanship and an $85 billion dollar spending bill to help create jobs.

The United States doesn’t have $85 billion. It would simply be added to the deficit, the enormous, gigantic and growing deficit.

The “deal” had collapsed by the end of the day as Republicans shuddered and Harry Reid beat a retreat, but the message to the country was clear: The Congress still doesn’t get it. It is still addicted to spending money it doesn’t have in pursuit of a political redemption they cannot earn after TARP and the stimulus that wasn’t, after the takeover of GM and the still underway attempt to takeover all of banking and of course the undead Obamacare monster.

Congress is still hitting the bottle, hard. Even though it is going to kill many of its members politically. Most of the Republicans are in recovery, but as Senator Grassley proved yesterday, each one of them is one shiny press availability away from falling back into the depths of the governing style that proved their undoing in 2006 and 2008.

I doubt we can find anything like the required number of good women needed to redeem all the incorrigibles making up the majority of the current Congress. We’ll have to settled for a major intervention come November.

Barack Obama promised earlier to cut the deficit in half. His new budget slightly reduces last year’s deficit, largely as an artifact of an end to Bush-era tax cuts. The new budget also includes the abandonment of plans to return to the Moon and possibly go on to Mars.

ABC News:

President Obama will send a $3.834 trillion budget to Congress today for Fiscal Year 2011.

By way of comparison, the FY2010 budget was $3.721 trillion; the FY2009 budget, presented by President George W. Bush, was $3.518 trillion.

The 2011 budget includes $1.415 trillion in discretionary spending and a $1.267 trillion budget deficit representing 8.3 percent of the gross domestic product.

A daunting number, the deficit represents a slight improvement from the FY 2010 budget when it was $1.556 trillion, representing 10.6 percent of GDP.

One reason for the slightly smaller projected deficit include the decision to let the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 expire for individuals making more than $200,000 a year and families making more than $250,000 a year. This tax increase, which will occur automatically, will bring in a projected $678 billion over the next decade, the administration says. The tax cuts are due to expire at the end of the 2010 calendar year.

The Obama administration will ask for the Bush 2001 and 2003 tax cuts to made permanent for individuals who make under $200,000 and families who make under $250,000. …

Goodnight Moon: NASA will also experience some cuts, including a cancellation of the NASA Constellation program to develop spacecraft to replace the Space Shuttle with the goal of sending astronauts to the Moon and perhaps even Mars.

Classmate Scott Drum (a businessman) tries to explain reality to the liberals on our class email list:

Democrats have always had teenager’s approach to household economics. Someone else provides all of the money, and while they may have a vague understanding of how that happens, their primary focus is sparring over how it gets distributed and spent. These issues should be decided by who has the best ideas and who can build the most compelling and emotional stories — but Dad, EVERYONE has a car. It’s not FAIR! Think of all the good things I could do with it! Little thought is given to how it affects Dad’s ability or willingness to bring in more money or what might happen if he were to get sick or lose his job. Because, well, that’s HIS responsibility to us, isn’t it? And if he doesn’t come through, we’ll just scream “I hate you” and tell everyone how mean he is.

Except that in the real world Dad’s interest and ability to keep funding the family is affected by how he’s treated and how the kids spend his money. You simply can’t go on spending sprees, pile up debt, waste money on unproductive pork projects, vilify and punish the very people you’re depending on to produce the money you’re itching to spend. Economic growth and government growth are simply inversely correlated. I know that’s inconvenient, but it’s reality, and eventually people aren’t going to keep lending you more money when you ignore that. The other economic reality is that increasing taxation inhibits growth as well, so the circle of spending and taxing is counterproductive as well. The only way you succeed is with high levels of growth – which requires making it attractive to earn and invest and not spending money on satisfying, but unproductive things. Screaming at Dad, telling him he’s not being fair, and making life difficult for him might make you feel better, but it’s not going to get you where you need to go.

and, mocking the Obama federal spending freeze:

When I opened up my Visa statement, I discovered that my wife had charged a record amount on it last month. “Not to worry,” she told me. “I promise not to spend any more than I did last month – except of course what I have to spend on clothing, restaurants, groceries, home improvements, shoes, things for the kids and travel. My spending on cosmetics and aspirin will be absolutely frozen. Starting a year from now.”

Well, getting ObamaCare to the Senate floor cost US taxpayers $300,000,000 for Senator Mary Landrieu’s vote. Apparently they are four votes short right now, so start breaking open those piggy banks, Americans. Democrats are going to begin writing very large checks on your bank accounts to buy those missing votes.

Do you suppose the Congressional Budget Office will ever start factoring in the massive mordida involved in the passage of spending legislation as part of the overall cost estimate?

Bloomberg:

President Barack Obama plans to head to the U.S. Capitol to press Senate Democrats to agree on health legislation as lawmakers struggle to resolve disputes over issues including a proposed government-run insurance plan.

Democrats met throughout yesterday to seek an alternative to Senate Majority Harry Reid’s plan to create the new national program to cover the uninsured. Opposition within his party leaves Reid at risk of falling four votes short of the 60 he needs to pass the legislation, the most sweeping overhaul of the nation’s health-care system in more than four decades.

Obama’s scheduled visit comes as the bill’s backers need a jolt to come together, said Massachusetts Democrat John Kerry.

“We have to talk about how to put the final pieces together,” Kerry said. “It’s good to hear from the president now, because it’s getting to that stage where you have to come to a decision with your heart as well as your head.”

Reid called the rare weekend session to meet his deadline of getting a bill by year-end. Republicans, unified in opposition, forced the Democrats yesterday to reiterate their support for cutting more than $40 billion in home health-care services funding under Medicare. It was the latest Republican effort to highlight the bill’s potential impact on the elderly.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said Republicans see the debate stretching into 2010 and that they gain the more the public learns. Republicans say Obama’s visit reflects a weakening Democratic position.

“The vote tally must be going in the wrong direction,” said Senator Richard Burr, a North Carolina Republican.

Michael D. Tanner lists some of the reasons we need to defeat the democrat Health Care Bill: staggering costs resulting in higher taxes and insurance premiums for which working Americans will get lower quality and rationed services.

Just in time for Thanksgiving, Sen. Harry Reid has given us a giant turkey of a health-care bill. At 2,074 pages and more than 370,000 words, it’s officially “scored” as costing $849 billion over 10 years — $400 million per page, or $2.3 million per word.

But that doesn’t come close to measuring its true cost. The bill uses various accounting gimmicks to hide its true cost. For example the bill doesn’t include more than $200 billion needed to prevent a 21 percent cut in Medicare next year. [The CBO “score” actually assumes Reid cuts Medicare 23 percent — Ed.] That cost has been spun off into a separate bill, even though the Senate voted down that approach last month.

Moreover (as Jeffrey H. Anderson notes), much of the spending is back-loaded. The bill doesn’t start spending until 2014, and only costs $9 billion that year. But by 2019, the annual cost hits $196 billion. The minority staff of the Senate Budget Committee reports that, if you factor out all the budget gimmicks and look at the 10 years of actual implementation, the cost is closer to $2.5 trillion. …

much of the cost has simply been shifted from the federal budget onto the backs of workers, businesses and state governments. Judging by previous reforms, as much as 60 percent of the cost won’t show up in government accounting.

To pay for all the new spending, Reid would enact at least 15 new or increased taxes totaling more than $493 billion.

But the cost alone doesn’t begin to describe how intrusive this bill would be for the average American. For instance, it would require everyone to buy a government-designed insurance plan, even if it was more expensive than their current policy. Failure to comply brings a penalty of up to $6,750 for a family of four.

Another provision would mandate that employers provide insurance to their workers. If they fail to do so, and if even a single worker qualified for federal subsidies, the employer could be fined up to $750 per employee. The CBO estimates that those penalties will amount to more than $28 billion.

Unemployment is now 10.2 percent, and the Senate bill will make it more costly to hire workers. And because the penalty only applies in the case of subsidy-eligible workers, it is low-wage and unskilled workers that will suffer the most.

Of course, the plan contains the government-run “public option” that many experts believe will ultimately crowd out private insurers. And don’t be misled by Reid’s “opt-out” provision: It comes with so many restrictions that it will be nearly impossible for a state to actually opt out.

Besides, there won’t be any opting out of the taxes that will ultimately be necessary to pay for it.

Finally, the bill sets the stage for government-imposed rationing. If you think the recent controversy over mammograms is something, just wait until the dozens of new boards, commissions and agencies created by this bill get to work. The “reform” also gives the secretary of Health and Human Services broad new powers to determine “quality,” “efficiency” and “appropriate utilization.”

At first, these restrictions would only apply to government programs like Medicare, but they’d create the framework for eventual extension to private insurance.

If Reid gets the 60 votes he needs to pass this, US taxpayers, businesses and patients can expect to pay a high price for this congressional feast.

Rightwingliberal is extremely impressed with the success of the democrat’s stimulus package. The government’s own web-site (Recovery.gov) demonstrates that Washington has managed to figure out a way to spend money, and save jobs, in Congressional districts that don’t exist.

I really, really wanted to believe this was an Onion move; then I actually feared some clever lefty had laid a trap for over-eager center-right bloggers.

It is neither. The Stimulus tracking site really does tout – and proudly, money that goes to phantom Congressional Districts.

Bill McMorris (Watchdog.org) has the details on North Dakota.

On a whim, I took a look at Virginia.

Among other things . . .

Over $2.26 million was spent in the “12th Congressional District,” which only exists in the fevered recesses of Tom Davis’ ambition.

Another $2M- plus went to the “00 Congressional District” (creating or saving exactly 2.5 jobs in the process)

More than $2M went to such venerable Virginia Districts as the 36th and 26th (neither seen since the 19th Century), plus the 79th (which can only mean Obama has created a new and more perfect dimension to spend the money)

Hat tip to Adam Bitely.