Rick Santorum and his false strawman

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In just over a minute and a half, Rick Santorum pretty much disqualifies himself for consideration for the G.O.P. nomination.




He just doesn't get it with earmarks. It's not that earmarks were a signficant part of spending with respect to the entire budget, it is that they were an integral part of the vote-buying culture of Washington D.C. They were the lube for the whole corrupt machine back there and we don't specifically recall McCain claiming that solving the earmark problem would solve the budget problem.


And if this guy lacks the fortitude to address earmarks, what does that say about his resolve to address the real budget problem: entitlements. We have a sneaking suspicion this "compassionate conservative" has no real desire to tackle this issue.



H/T: Temple of Mut via The Liberator Today

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Dereliction of duty: thy name is the Senate...

... and the office of the President if you're scoring at home.


Good lord. Some truly epic smack from, based upon what he was running on the floor of the Senate last night, a person we hope will be running for President come 2016.

Marco Rubio (D-Florida) expresses yet another reason why this debt-ceiling deadline of August 2nd is complete bu#@sh%t as the Senate has not even proposed let alone passed a budget in over 820 days. Now we're supposed to get serious about passing a budget?

Revel in it, brothers and sisters, as Rubio name-drops and calls out tea-party radicals for their extrmist ways.

Let me tell you how ridiculous the (President's) budget was... not a single member of the Senate including the Democrats voted for it.

97-0.

Where's the (President's) plan? We haven't seen it.

3:23 : Did he just toss his notes onto the floor? Awesomeness.

California budget update (... Updated)

(please scroll down to bottom of the post for update)



Maybe this is where Jerry Brown and the Democrats are going to get that additional $11 billion to help close the state's budget gap.

Err... then again, perhaps not.

Last night, California Democrats reached an agreement with Gov. Jerry Brown on a proposed state budget that, among other things, would force online retailers like Amazon.com and Overstock.com to collect sales tax in California.

Already, Amazon has made its objections clear, threatening to drop the thousands of "Amazon Associates" in California who make money by referring web users to Amazon.com to buy goods.

The Associates program gives a blogger a small cut of the action if a reader purchases something through a link at the blog.

All these people are at risk of being cut off from this revenue source should the California budget pass on Tuesday.

Amazon.com sent its associates an email this afternoon that reads, in part: "We will terminate contracts with all California residents that are participants in the Amazon Associates Program as of the date (if any) that the California law becomes effective. We will send a follow-up notice to you confirming the termination date if the California law is enacted. In the event that the California law does not become effective before September 30, 2011, we withdraw this notice."

Statists: they just never quite grasp the fact that people and companies can and do alter their behavior according to how they are taxed.

Of course, this goes beyond just taxes and the missing revenue from collecting internet sales taxes.

According to Internet Retailer, Amazon more recently offered to create new jobs in Texas if the state would agree not to collect sales tax on Internet sales.

In one fell swoop, the geniuses in Sacramento lose out on projected tax revenue because of the static model they always use and compound the problem by losing real revenue by driving jobs out of the state.


We're in the best of hands.




(UPDATE #1:) Here's a portion of the email our blog buddy Harrison, an Amazon affiliate, received from them:

For well over a decade, the Amazon Associates Program has worked with thousands of California residents. Unfortunately, a potential new law that may be signed by Governor Brown compels us to terminate this program for California-based participants. It specifically imposes the collection of taxes from consumers on sales by online retailers – including but not limited to those referred by California-based marketing affiliates like you – even if those retailers have no physical presence in the state.

We oppose this bill because it is unconstitutional and counterproductive. It is supported by big-box retailers, most of which are based outside California, that seek to harm the affiliate advertising programs of their competitors. Similar legislation in other states has led to job and income losses, and little, if any, new tax revenue. We deeply regret that we must take this action.

As a result, we will terminate contracts with all California residents that are participants in the Amazon Associates Program as of the date (if any) that the California law becomes effective.

Then, in a later email the plug was pulled:

Unfortunately, Governor Brown has signed into law the bill that we emailed you about earlier today. As a result of this, contracts with all California residents participating in the Amazon Associates Program are terminated effective today,June 29, 2011. Those California residents will no longer receive advertising fees for sales referred to Amazon.com , Endless.com , MYHABIT.COM orSmallParts.com.

Read the rest of his post on the subject, here.


To reiterate: losing out on projected tax revenue via the static tax model plus losing out on real revenue because of the loss of jobs is a double-whammy that could only be achieved by the statist brilliance possessed by those at the levers of power in Sacramenton.

Some not so random thoughts on Congressional spending

Semi-buried in the front section of Sunday's Union-Tribune ran this story from the New York Times:

The fact that Congress remains a spending disagreement or two away from shutting down the government no doubt strikes some as remarkable. But there is another extraordinary aspect to the fiscal clash unfolding on Capitol Hill: earmarks have disappeared from the budgetary landscape.

It is still sinking in for both those who have lavished money on hometown projects and those who have spent years opposing earmarks that the pork-barrel spending that has driven so many appropriations measures through the House and Senate is, at least for now, at an end.

Even Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio, who made battling earmarks a cornerstone of his Congressional career since his election in 1990, said he would not have predicted that Congress could kick the habit.

“Think of this fight we have had for 20 years,” Mr. Boehner said in a recent interview. “If somebody would have asked me, ‘Will you ever get there?’ I would have had my doubts.”

One of the more extraordinary developments in the sad, sad history of Congressional budgeting gets shoved to the back pages? What gives? Article goes on to report that because of the earmark ban, $2.8 billion was able to be scraped together to go towards the not-yet-agreed-upon continuing resolution.


And then there is this from The Liberator Today:

I think that American business would start investing and growing again if they could be assured that there would be no further tax increases and that the federal governments role would be stabilized. When you think of the Clinton and Reagan expansions, they were made possible due to a stabilization in the role of government, resulting in a predictable business climate. Clinton had help from Republican majorities, but when you think of the accomplishments of his administration, NAFTA, Welfare Reform, and a balanced budget, you would have thought we had elected a Republican to the White House.

Billy-Jeff, Billy-Jeff...


Funny how history works.

And speaking of historical, the current President, with his own Republican-controlled House, is missing his own opportunity by punting on entitlement reform.

Then they came for the who?

The Heritage Foundation sent their cameras to Madison, Wisconsin to see what was happening on the ground there at the state capitol.





Time was a comparison to California was usually meant in a favorable light. No longer.


Also, Governor Scott Walker was on Fox News Sunday and had this to say:

“My hope is that cooler minds will prevail,” Walker said. “Democracy is not about hiding out in other states.”

Walker acknowledged that his battle against the public-sector unions has “large ramifications” for the rest of the country, especially as fellow governors grapple with their own budget gaps. “For us, we have to do this,” he said. “For decades, we had leaders who pushed off the problem.

Walker also had a gentle admonition that perhaps the President ought to worry about his own debt problem.



And this is what they must mean when they talk about the "new civility".

Quotes of the day

Obama and the Democrats are running insane deficits for no business reason at all and he's going to puff himself up and preen before the cameras to yell at investors. Meanwhile, his cronies in Congress are planning to simply skip budgeting this year. Unreal.

That from KT

Precisely. But does the irony ever occur to them or are they so insulated and/or so arrogantly prideful that the notion is completely foreign to them. Even if they did, we doubt they would care.

But the tea partiers are just a bunch of racists, right?


And this:

I am no fan of the cozy relationships that allow the banks and other financial firms to get away with gambling with taxpayer backed dollars and then receiving bailouts when things head south. But the "Restoring American Financial Stability Act of 2010" does not such thing. Instead it grants the administration, of either party in power, the authority to take over any darn business it feels like.

That from B-Daddy.

We're not big fans of dumbing-down so let's just call this an exercise in the art of simplification. We realize some of this legislation, particularly with respect to Wall Street finances can get pretty dense, so consider this: in the absence of knowing anything else about the Wall Street financial reform bill, know that it was written by Chris Dodd. That's it. That's all you really need to know in order to quantify the crap-tastic nature of this bill.

Now, give yourself the rest of the week off and enjoy your weekend.

What did you do with your majorities?

So, what did all that compassionate conservatism get us? The chart below is the tale of the tape.



Crikey! Those look like some actual surpluses in that (far-) righthand column.

This is what happens when you restrict budgetary growth to merely 4%/year vs. blowing out the stops as we did in the Oh-Nos.

A near decade’s worth of folly spent in the pursuit of conservative ends through statist means.

H/T: KT

Today is brought to you by the word...

Pathological (adj.):
Of, relating to, or manifesting behavior that is habitual, maladaptive, and compulsive.

But as I've said, in the long run, we can't continue to spend as if deficits don't have consequences; as if waste doesn't matter; as if the hard-earned tax dollars of the American people can be treated like Monopoly money. That's what we've seen time and time again. Washington has been more concerned about the next election than the next generation.

And in other news today…

Spelling out painful priorities, President Barack Obama urged Congress on Monday to quickly approve a huge new shot of spending for recession relief and job creation, part of a record $3.8 trillion budget that would boost the deficit beyond any in the nation's history while only slowly beginning to put Americans back to work.

If Congress goes along with Obama's election-year plan, the nation would still end the year with unemployment pushing double digits at 9.8 percent and this year's pool of government red ink deepening to $1.56 trillion — by the administration's accounting.

The spending blueprint for next year calls for tax cuts for workers and business and more aid for cash-starved state governments as well as the unemployed. The jobs initiative largely mirrors last year's stimulus bill, but is about one-third its size. The president is asking for nearly $300 billion for recession relief and job stimulus.

The budget paints a remarkably dire picture of a federal government that will have to borrow one-third of what it spends next year as it runs a deficit that still would total some $1.3 trillion.

At the same time, Obama is acutely aware that persistent joblessness is the issue most likely to spell political trouble for Democrats in this year's midterm elections — and perhaps for his own re-election chances in 2012.

(emphasis, ours)

Additionally, Obama is calling for a $100 billion jobs bill, or as we like to call it Son of Porkulus or Porkulus the Younger. Porkulus the Elder, you may recall, was the gargantuan $787 billion stimulus bill passed 11 months ago that was not going to let unemployment go above 8 percent.

Perhaps we should temper our criticism a bit as it is entirely possible the President suffers from a disorder that he simply cannot help or control. After all, reading that quote at the top from December of last year and listening to the SOTU, we were convinced that after the profligate spending of 2009, 2010 was to be the year of the deficit hawk.

Oh well. Maybe next year.

A constitutional republic is, like, hard

Article I, Section 8 of the United States Constitution reads:

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

Unless, of course, they don’t really feel like it. Congress has borrowed the Obama administration’s ideas-that-suck generator and have come up with the notion to just farm-out their responsibilities in budgetary matters

The awful idea is for Congress to divest itself of the core competence that the Constitution vests in it -- the power to make the taxing and spending choices that shape the nation. This power would be given to an 18-member panel assigned to solve the budgetary crisis.

Under legislation drafted by Sens. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., and Judd Gregg, R-N.H., and endorsed by 33 other senators, the Bipartisan Task Force for Responsible Fiscal Action would be composed of 16 members of Congress (four each selected by the House speaker and minority leader, and the Senate majority and minority leaders) plus the Treasury secretary and someone the president selects. The panel would propose spending cuts and tax increases to put the government on a glide path to solvency. The menu of proposals would be guaranteed an up-or-down vote -- no amendments permitted -- in both houses of Congress.

George Will suggests that an idea, especially a bad one, is bested only by monetary incentives, so he proposes the following amendment to the Gregg-Conrad legislation:

"During the life of this task force, which will perform Congress's fundamental duties, all senators and representatives will be considered on vacation and will not be paid. If the task force's recommendations are accepted by Congress, there will be no congressional pay until 2050."

Can we see a show of hands in favor?

KT has more on the subject here.

Quickies

L.A. Times: Hey, that fine on the uninsured in the Baucus bill? Yeah, it’s way too low.

But remember, they’re doing it in the name of “inclusiveness”.
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Senators diverted $2.6 billion in funds in a defense spending bill to pet projects largely at the expense of accounts that pay for fuel, ammunition and training for U.S. troops, including those fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to an analysis.

Among the 778 such projects, known as earmarks, packed into the bill: $25 million for a new World War II museum at the University of New Orleans and $20 million to launch an educational institute named after the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat.

Allah Pundit correctly notes that the age-old budget dilemma of “guns vs. butter” has been re-racked to “guns vs. pork”.

Remember a few years back when Democrats were in full throat over the fact that Humvees in Iraq were not properly "armored-up"? Remember that? Just checking.
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Foot in mouth award. Harry Reid on the savings that would result from tort reform: Pffft…. What’s $54 billion when you are talking a $2 trillion price tag for health care.

Harry, Rahm Emanuel is on line 2.
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And finally, how about a ballot initiative that would prohibit union member money from being automatically placed into the accounts of union fat cats for political purposes? This would certainly put a dent in the unholy alliance between the public employee unions and Sacto power-brokers. Sounds entirely reasonable and plausible to us except for the fact that this is California so it probably doesn't stand a chance in hell but we can all dream, can't we? Temple of Mut has the goods, here.

Soak the rich, lose the rich

One of the reasons why states are having troubles balancing their budgets is because most pols believe that raising taxes will generate revenue by a geometrically corresponding degree. Simply raising the sales or income tax by say, 3% will not necessarily garner you a 3% gain in revenue. And this goes double for raising taxes at the margins on rich people.

Maryland couldn't balance its budget last year, so the state tried to close the shortfall by fleecing the wealthy. Politicians in Annapolis created a millionaire tax bracket, raising the top marginal income-tax rate to 6.25%. And because cities such as Baltimore and Bethesda also impose income taxes, the state-local tax rate can go as high as 9.45%. Governor Martin O'Malley, a dedicated class warrior, declared that these richest 0.3% of filers were "willing and able to pay their fair share." The Baltimore Sun predicted the rich would "grin and bear it."

One year later, nobody's grinning. One-third of the millionaires have disappeared from Maryland tax rolls. In 2008 roughly 3,000 million-dollar income tax returns were filed by the end of April. This year there were 2,000, which the state comptroller's office concedes is a "substantial decline." On those missing returns, the government collects 6.25% of nothing. Instead of the state coffers gaining the extra $106 million the politicians predicted, millionaires paid $100 million less in taxes than they did last year -- even at higher rates.

Unlike you and we, the rich are much more mobile and have houses in tax-friendly states such as Florida and South Carolina to which they can relocate.

Such is the folly though of having the rich, you know, pay their fair share.

Because the poor don’t pay much in the way of income tax anyway and the rich can get up and get out of town that leaves but our humble little platoons in the middle bearing the costs of a recession and an expansionist government.

H/T: Carpe Diem

Being propositioned

We’re debating how much time we will devote to breaking down the 5 propositions that will be on the ballot for the state-wide special election on May 19. Actually, we do know: not much – as these props are the result of a “compromise” made in the midnight hour a few months back in order to get the state budget passed. A “compromise” that resulted in an income tax and sales tax hike.

These propositions (1A through 1D) are a mix of smoke and mirror budgetary shell games that rely on the Assembly actually following through on promises (not bloody likely) and pathetic political grandstanding.

Another reason why we’re not voting for these props: they should’ve never been needed in the first place. If Sacramento merely kept spending increases confined to the rate of inflation plus population growth since 1990, the state would have a budget surplus of $15 billion today instead of a $42 billion deficit.

But it gets even better. From the Dept. of Totally Predictable Consequences, we bring you this:

April, the state's largest tax-collection month, has fallen short of expected revenue by more than $1.8 billion in personal and corporate income taxes. The state was $750 million behind projected tax collection on April 1.

There's good reason to believe April's sales tax receipts may disappoint, too. New car sales the first three months of this year fell by 43 percent compared with the same period last year, according a report last week by the California New Car Dealers Association.

Auto-related sales tax (car sales, parts, etc.) make up about 20 percent of the state's sales tax receipts, said Paul Warren, a revenue and taxation analyst for the Legislative Analyst's Office.

You mean to say that perhaps raising the sales tax may have had a negative impact on tax revenues? No way. The Legislative Analyst’s office predicts a budget shortfall of $8 billion by next year.

Can’t wait to see what propositions will be rolled out to fix that mess.

More splashy multi-colored graphics

For our friends on the other side of the aisle who have been quick to criticize conservatives for not being critical (enough) of the Bush deficits (completely untrue, by the way), perhaps the graph below would explain something about inertia, momentum and tipping points.



...got red ink?

Posts that more or less write themselves (UPDATED)

From the L.A. Times:

President Obama railed against pork barrel projects on Wednesday. Then he signed a massive spending bill stuffed with them.

Obama said he was signing the $410-billion spending bill, which funds the operations of all but three Cabinet departments, to keep the federal government running. The bill had won final approval Tuesday, just before a stopgap funding measure was due to expire.

"I am signing an imperfect omnibus bill because it is necessary for the ongoing functions of government, and we have a lot more work to do," Obama said. And he didn't want Congress "bogged down" in a discussion about earmarks rather than working on more pressing problems.

With all that Congress has graced upon us, lately, who’s for a little (a lot of?) “bogging down”, raise their hand.

"But I also view this as a departure point for more far-reaching change," Obama said.

See! Just what more proof do you people need in order to realize we have a problem than me signing this bill?

Obama also said that earmarks benefiting for-profit companies should be subject to the same competitive bidding requirements as other federal contracts. He called such earmarks "the single most corrupting element of this practice."

Just, not this time around – but, you know, next time.

House Democrats replied with a reform package of their own, with Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) saying that federal agencies would now be asked to review the earmarks that members propose.

The fox was asked to “review” the plan that would send the house a dozen more hens.

Read entire story here. Also, complete listing of earmarks for California can be found here. Open only if you have a few spare hours on your hands.

UPDATE #1: B-Daddy has his take on this spending bill and focuses on Obama's use of "signing statements" of which Obama was critical of Bush's use but which appears to be just another Bush hold over in the HopeandChange administration.