Back in August, I predicted on Wisconsin Public Radio that the “supercommittee” charged with creating a deal to reduce the federal budget deficit and debt would fail to do so.
On Thursday, this blog passed on the Washington Post report that “White House officials are quietly bracing for “supercommittee” failure, with advisers privately saying they are pessimistic that the 12-member Congressional panel will find a way to cut $1.2 trillion from the deficit as required” by its deadline Wednesday.
Then, on Sunday, came the expected reports that the two chairs of the supercommittee will issue a joint statement confirming what the White House has been quietly bracing for for a few days. No spending cuts, no tax reform, and no entitlement reform.
It’s like the 1990s never happened and the 1970s never stopped happening for the Washington Obamacrats. The U.S. economy faces two screamingly obvious problems: historically slow growth and historically high government spending leading to massive budget deficits. In this way, American is already frighteningly like Greece and Italy.
Yet Democrats used the SuperCommittee to push a trillion-dollar tax hike and block fundamental entitlement reform. As one GOP aide told Politico, “If they were willing to go a little further on entitlements, we’d see what we can do on revenues. That was the way it would have to work. What we found was, they needed a trillion-plus in revenues, and weren’t willing to do anywhere near that on entitlements.”
It’s been an underappreciated fact just how far left Democrats have moved on taxes in recent years. But it should now be blindingly clear. The SuperCommittee Democrats are perfectly happy to let the top tax rate soar to nearly 45 percent in 2013 (including both income taxes and Medicare taxes) on small business and entrepreneurs and investors. This, even though the exploding eurozone debt crisis threatens to push the U.S. economy from sputter speed to stall. And even if financial contagion doesn’t wash up on our shores, few economists see growth fast enough to substantially reduce unemployment and boost incomes any year soon.
Yet Democrats seem unconcerned or even eager for taxes to rise, thanks in part to the work of liberal economists advocating taxes rates as high as 80 percent. It will also take dramatically higher tax revenue to fund what Democrats argue is an unavoidable surge in government spending due to a) the aging of the population and — as they see it — b) trillions in needed public “investment” catch-up after years of Republican stinginess.
But it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Without market-based entitlement reform — which even many centrists endorse — government health spending will indeed continue to soar.
Rich Galen doesn’t merely place blame on Democrats:
I believe that the need to appoint a Super Committee in the first place was a failure of governance on the part of both parties, in both Chambers and, just to complete the rogues’ gallery, on the part of the President of the United States….
The Super Committee is the latest in a long line of looking for ways not to do what we pay them to do. Automatic triggers are a favorite. I believe the Congress gets an automatic raise every year unless they vote to forego it. Don’t vote? The raise is automatic. …
I feel the same way about a Balanced Budget Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. We PAY the Members of the House and Senate to make good spending and taxing decisions. They have it within their current power to pass a balanced budget each year.
A BBA would just be another opportunity for Members to go home, shrug their shoulders, and tell their constituents they really, really wanted to fight for money to build a new city hall, but “What could I do? The Balanced Budget Amendment took it out of my hands.”
The inability of the U.S. Congress to make even the most simple decisions for fear they will be taken to task by their constituents, is making me re-examine my position on term limits.
I would love to see a serious study of state legislatures which have term-limit laws to see if the decisions made by the members are any better than their peers in states where there are no limits.
The supercommittee certainly was a weasel move and, as I wrote Thursday, an unserious attempt at deficit and debt reduction given the fact that neither U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan (R–Janesville) nor U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson (R–Wisconsin) were on it. But expecting politicians to act against what they think are their best reelection interests is excessively idealistic. And the claim that a balanced budget amendment would prevent politicians from, or allowing them to escape, doing their jobs misses the entire point of most of the U.S. Constitution, which is an entire document of protections for citizens from the government. The Constitution may need to be expanded to protect us Americans from the bad spending and taxing decisions Congress makes.
(As for Galen’s last point, I don’t think term-limit laws make any difference as long as gerrymandering exists; term limit laws merely result in the replacement of a politician with another from that district’s dominant party. The only way better decisions are made is if voters make the correct choices, as the 2008 and 2010 Wisconsin legislative elections demonstrate.)
So another political game commences. When does the federal government run out of money again?
Jonah Goldberg (headline with apologies to Jimmy Buffett):
Congratulations, average American! It’s your turn to be blamed for President Obama’s — and America’s — problems. …
Last week at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, Obama explained that, “We’ve been a little bit lazy over the last couple of decades. We’ve kind of taken for granted — ‘Well, people would want to come here’ — and we aren’t out there hungry, selling America and trying to attract new businesses into America.” …
In September, the president reflected in an interview that America is “a great, great country that has gotten a little soft, and we didn’t have that same competitive edge that we needed over the last couple of decades.”
Shortly after that, he told rich donors at a fundraiser that “we have lost our ambition, our imagination and our willingness to do the things that built the Golden Gate Bridge and Hoover Dam.”
So, Obama thinks Americans lack ambition and are soft, but don’t you dare suggest that he also thinks they’re lazy.
The point of all this is pretty obvious. Obama has a long-standing habit of seeing failure to support his agenda as a failure of character. The Democratic voters of western Pennsylvania refused to vote for him, he explained, because they were “bitter.” He told black Democrats lacking sufficient enthusiasm for his re-election that they needed to “Take off your bedroom slippers, put on your marching shoes. Shake it off. Stop complaining, stop grumbling, stop crying.” …
What’s so pathetic here … is that Obama’s objections are so baseless. Americans remain the most productive workers in the world. As Obama himself notes, we attract more foreign investment than any other country.
Meanwhile, it’s Obama and his allies in Congress who’ve been at the forefront of the effort to make America less competitive. Obama delayed free trade deals for years, until he could lard them up with Big Labor giveaways. He’s thrown roadblocks in front a multibillion-dollar U.S.-Canada pipeline project, which many ambitious and imaginative people see as something like this generation’s Hoover Dam or Golden Gate Bridge. He did postpone those new job-killing smog regulations his EPA administrator wants, but he’s also let everyone — including foreign investors — know that he’ll put them back on the agenda if he’s re-elected.
In 2008, Obama said Bush’s deficit of $9 trillion was “unpatriotic.” Now he questions the patriotism of those who think the Obama deficit of $15 trillion argues against spending even more money we don’t have. And of course, there’s that giant unfunded disaster known as ObamaCare, which Nancy Pelosi claimed was a “jobs bill” because it would lead to “an economy where people could be an artist or a photographer or a writer without worrying about keeping their day job in order to have health insurance.”
But, yes, by all means, let’s blame our lack of competitiveness on the American people.
Today in 1955, RCA Records purchased the recording contract of Elvis Presley from Sam Phillips for the unheard-of sum of $35,000.
The number one single today in 1960 holds the record for the shortest number one of all time:
The number one British single today in 1970 hit number one after the singer’s death earlier in the year:
The number one single today in 1979:
Today in 1980, Don Henley was arrested when a naked overdosed 16-year-old girl was found in his apartment. Henley was placed on probation for two years and fined $2,000.
The number one single today in 1981:
The number one British album today in 1992 was “Cher’s Greatest Hits 1995–1992”:
Birthdays begin with Lonnie Jordan of War:
Who is Malcolm Rebennack? You know him as Dr. John, who found himself in …
Jim Brown not of the Cleveland Browns, but of UB40:
Peter Koppes of The Church:
One death of note today in 1995: Matthew Ashman, who played guitar for Adam and the Ants and Bow Wow Wow:
… on the day Bo Diddley made his first appearance on CBS-TV’s Ed Sullivan Show. Diddley’s first appearance was his last because, instead of playing “Sixteen Tons, Diddley played “Bo Diddley”:
The number one single today in 1965 could be said to be music to, or in, your ears:
The number one single today in 1967:
The number one single today in 1971 is about someone they say is a bad mother … (shut your mouth):
Today in 1973, a 19-year-old fan of The Who replaced drummer Keith Moon for a concert in San Francisco after Moon’s drink was spiked with horse tranquilizer:
The number one single today in 1975:
The number one single today in 1979:
Birthdays begin with one-hit-wonder Norman Greenbaum:
Duane Allman …
… was born a year before Joe Walsh:
The number one single today in 1965 could be said to be music to, or in, your ears:
The Supremes became the first all-girl group with a British number-one single today in 1964:
The Supremes had our number one single two years later:
The number one album today in 1994 was Nirvana’s “MTV Unplugged in New York” …
… on the same day that David Crosby had a liver transplant to replace the original that was ruined by hepatitis C and considerable drug and alcohol use:
Britain’s number one album today in 2000 was of a group that hadn’t recorded in 30 years:
Birthdays begin with Fred Lipsius, who played piano and saxophone for Blood Sweat & Tears:
Regular readers over the past nearly four years of my two blogs may have noticed I have a few quirks. (“Now he tells me,” some readers say.)
One of them is taking place my right now. My handsome photo on this blog, Facebook, Twitter and Google+ is for now inaccurate, because my winter beard is taking shape.
Before I go on, the following chart will be helpful for terminology and for evidence that you can do a lot with your facial hair if you can grow it and you have the patience: This comes up this month because this is the eighth annual Movember, during which clean-shaven men grow mustaches to support prostate cancer research. Male staffers at WAPL in Appleton are participating, with, as you might expect, mixed results.
I am an oddball in my family (“Now he tells me,” my relatives say) because I am the only male currently with facial hair. My father had a beard once, on our Boy Scout trip to New Mexico in 1979. The beard came off a few days after we arrived. I haven’t seen my brother for a while, but given that he works in financial management, I’m guessing he is clean-shaven. My stepgrandfather had a mustache for most of the time I knew him, including when he died in 1984. One of my brothers-in-law also has a beard.
So who else had facial hair? A few of my teachers, including my eighth-grade science teacher, who started growing a beard around this time of year (possibly for deer hunting), and then shaved it off during spring vacation. The father and brothers of one of my ex-girlfriends wore mustaches. The first newspaper publisher to hire me, who had an unpronounceable Dutch name, wore what is sometimes called an Amish beard, a beard without mustache, but is more properly called an “Old Dutch” or a “chin curtain.”
The 1982 Milwaukee Brewers, remembered fondly during this Brewers postseason, had a tremendous collection of facial hair, led by relief pitcher Rollie Fingers’ famed handlebar mustache. (Fingers first grew it because Charles O. Finley, owner of the first team for which Fingers pitched, the Oakland A’s, gave every player who grew facial hair $300.) Most Valuable Player Robin Yount and other players wore Fu Manchus. First baseman Cecil Cooper had a beard. Gorman Thomas had a mustache and appeared to rarely shave beyond that.
Fingers’ spirit can be seen in current relief pitcher John Axford, the (I kid you not) American Mustache Institute‘s 2011 Robert Goulet Memorial Mustached American of the Year:
One of the great traditions of sports is the hockey playoff beard, which has not only filtered down from the National Hockey League to college and other lower levels, but has gravitated into other sports, including football and baseball. Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger has grown a beard during the NFL playoffs.
Terminology is important. Most men who have what are called goatees don’t really have goatees (row 3, second from left); they have Van Dykes (row 2, second from left), supposedly named for Flemish painter Anthony van Dyck. Between sometime around Thanksgiving (or when I feel like it) and approximately Easter, I will have a short boxed beard, with the Van Dyke probably to return thereafter.
I have had some kind of facial hair since our return from our honeymoon in November 1992, when I looked like this:
I grew a beard, then shaved it off to a Van Dyke for one week in the spring, then shaved off the goatee part, leaving me with just a mustache. Then in the fall I grew back the goatee, then grew the rest of the beard. And I repeated that process for several years. The past few years, I’ve alternated between Van Dyke and short boxed beard.
Try as I might, this is the only images I can find of myself with a beard that isn’t one-half inch in size (the photo, not the beard):
The first rule of facial hair is: If you can’t grow it, don’t. The mustacheless beards, such as my first publisher’s Old Dutch or the (correctly termed) goatee, is not, I think, a good look. To correctly grow facial hair, you need to have enough facial hair to have facial hair, but you still need to keep it groomed through regular trimming and shampooing. (Which is why beard-wearers find out that one of the most common reasons for beards, hatred of shaving, doesn’t really apply.)
The obvious function of facial hair is to change your appearance. Mustaches tend to widen the face, goatees and Van Dykes narrow the face, and beards broaden the face. My mother once had a boss who decided to shave his mustache because it was too gray; the mustache returned when he discovered he had, well, a weak upper lip. (Without the mustache, he looked something like actor Robert Ryan.) Mustaches can cover up cleft-palate scars (for instance, actor Stacy Keach), and beards can cover up acne scars.
My facial hair is certainly more gray than my head hair. I’ve always said that gray hair is preferable to no hair. There are some as well who grow facial hair to obscure their thinning, or thinned-out, head hair. That’s not the case with me; I just make sure I don’t walk past people standing on ladders. Hair or facial hair color can be changed, but that requires ongoing applications of hair dye as your hair grows.
To prove that nearly everything (except apparently a photo of me with a beard) can be found on the Internet, beard-wearers have their own website, Beards.org, which passes on a 1973 study by psychologist Robert Pellegrini of eight men who grew various forms of facial hair:
The tabulation of the results showed a generally positive correlation between the amount of hair on the object person’s face and his being perceived as masculine, mature, good-looking, dominant, self-confident, courageous, liberal, non-conforming, and older. The results also suggested a similar correlation regarding perceptions of intelligence, strength, health, and likableness. In view of the results, Pellegrini suggested that the presence of hair on a young man’s face is associated with an idealized image of the male personality. …
In his discussion of the experiment’s results, Pellegrini stated, “Judging from the data in the present research, the male beard communicates an heroic image of the independent, sturdy, and resourceful pioneer, ready, willing and able to do manly things.” He finished his discussion by stating, “In conclusion, it may very well be true that inside every clean-shaven man there is a beard screaming to be let out. If so, the results of the present study provide a strong rationale for indulging that demand.”
Growing a beard is an affirmation of manliness and masculinity. The beard itself is a physical characteristic that separates men from the boys, girls, and women. In our culture that has downplayed good old-fashioned masculinity, growing a beard shows that you are not afraid of being a manly man. You can reclaim a too-often-lost aspect of manliness by growing a beard.
Another website, biggerbetterbeards.org, gives 10 reasons to grow a beard, beginning with:
Obviously your ability, or lack thereof, to grow facial hair makes you neither a man nor an invincible murder machine. But in this metrosexual, gender-neutralizing world of ours where the traditional masculine virtues are being threatened and seen as threatening, perhaps facial hair is a way to, in the words of (clean-shaven) National Review founder William F. Buckley Jr., “stand athwart history yelling stop.”
Want a Biblical justification for facial hair? Someone named Aymon de Albatrus, beginning with Isaiah 50:6: “I gave my back to those who strike, and my cheeks to those who pull out the beard; I hid not my face from disgrace and spitting”:
Even without the testimony of Scripture we can be absolutely sure that Jesus wore a beard. Why? Well who gave the beard to the males of the species? God did, of course. And why? One sure reason is to differentiate between the two sexes for: “Male and female created he them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created.” (Gen 5:2) So He created them differently and as it is stated all over His Scripture, God differentiates between the things He has made, for example: Jews and Gentiles, Masters and Slaves, Men and Women, etc. God is NOT an egalitarian God, but a God of distinction. Even the way man and woman dress Deu 22:5 is to be different and also the way they wear their hair 1Co 11:14-15, and everything else, including functions, between them has to have a clear distinction.
That God gave the beard to the man to be kept is certain and if God has given something is to be had for sure for God is perfect in every way, by definition. Thus when imperfect man is shaving off the beard God gave him what is he really saying to God? “Look God, you made a mistake here, I know better, let me help you, and negate what you erroneously gave and I shall fix it by removing it. Indeed if I could I would eradicate it completely, for my wife does not like it.” The shaving of the beard off is a rebellious act toward God and His creation, if not a defying act of arrogance.
The way that God has made Man is with a beard. When we shave it to “beautify” ourselves, as the ancient Greeks and Romans did, we alter God’s design for us. It is a profaning or defiling and rejection of what God has made.
(I’ll have to mull that over come Easter.)
The facial hair counterargument comes from John Molloy, the author of Dress for Success, who wrote in 1975:
Most men should not wear facial hair of any kind. The response to facial hair is always negative in corporate situations, and the only men who should wear it are those men who must compensate for some other weakness in their appearance or personality. A beard and/or a mustache can make a man more powerful and more masculine looking. If a man looks very young, a mustache or beard can speed up the aging process.
Often a younger sales representative or service professional will grow a beard or goatee to look more mature to prospects, customers or clients. However, additional research by [Molloy] suggests that wearing facial hair can cost a sales or service professional as much as 30% in sales success, because a large number of decision-makers find beards to look sinister or offensive. They see the representative wearing a beard or goatee as not being as trustworthy as a representative who is clean-shaven. In a recent study reported by Fox News, over 90 percent of the women surveyed prefer men to be clean shaven over those with facial hair. You need to ask yourself if allowing staff members to dress down or wear a beard is worth the lost revenue to your organization.
That may be applicable in the sales world. In the creative world (which includes the media), however, conformity is not a positive. When I first interviewed for the Marketplace Magazine editor position in 1994, my mother asked if I was going to shave off my beard for the interview. And I replied that I wasn’t, because if a potential employer was going to judge me based on my appearance instead of my work, I wasn’t interested in working there. (That goes far beyond facial hair, of course, and I got the job anyway.) Obviously one’s appearance should not be a negative (for instance, excessive piercings or tattoos), but a smart employer should be interested first and foremost in job performance, particularly in an era of labor shortages in many job sectors. The point is to look, but more importantly act, professional.
One area in which facial hair — in fact, anything beyond stolidly dull personal appearance — is quite rare is in politics. (Another reason I am unlikely to get elected to the U.S. Senate.) Our last president with facial hair was William Howard Taft, successor of the mustachioed Theodore Roosevelt. Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain has what could best be called a “cop-stache,” but unfortunately for Cain he won’t have the American Mustache Institute‘s endorsement. That appears to leave those facial-hair-wearing members of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy needing to hope for former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton to run.
What does “Face the Face” refer to? Not facial hair, but you try to find a headline that matches this subject:
Today in 1954, ABC Radio banned Rosemary Clooney’s “Mambo Italiano” for what it termed “offensive lyrics” (decide for yourself):
The number one album today in 1978 was Billy Joel’s “52nd Street”:
Birthdays begin with John Parr …
… who was born the same day as Charles Williams of KC and the Sunshine Band:
Kim Wilde:
Kirk Hammett of Metallica:
One death of note, today in 1972: Danny Whitten, a member of Neil Young’s band, Crazy Horse, of a heroin overdose. Whitten’s death prompted Young to write “The Needle and the Damage Done”:
I am shocked — shocked! — to read this from the Washington Post:
White House officials are quietly bracing for “supercommittee” failure, with advisers privately saying they are pessimistic that the 12-member Congressional panel will find a way to cut $1.2 trillion from the deficit as required. …
[President] Obama has stopped short of issuing a blanket veto threat if the committee tries to undo the severe cuts that would take effect in 2013 if an agreement is not reached. Obama has simply said that Congress “must not shirk its responsibilities” and, in a news conference from Hawaii, said he would not comment on the potential for a veto. …
With time running out — the deadline is Nov. 23 — it is unclear whether the lawmakers can strike a bargain, and, if they do, whether that deal will pass Congress by the next deadline, Dec. 23. In a potential preview of how he could respond to anything short of a compromise, Obama has been railing against Congress for its partisan gridlock. At a campaign event in Hawaii on Monday, he made the pitch that “change” takes more than a single presidential term to achieve.
That’s as surprising as reading that the U.S. Postal Service lost billions of dollars last fiscal year.
I’m not surprised that the supercommittee, which is not a serious deficit-reduction effort since neither U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan (R–Janesville) nor Sen. Ron Johnson (R–Wisconsin) is on it, is failing. I predicted as much on Wisconsin Public Radio back in August. To not even be able to maintain the same debt-to-Gross Domestic Product ratio as now — which would require $4 trillion, not $1.2 trillion, of cuts — shows that the supercommittee was not even a worthwhile effort as political cover.
And of course politics gets in the way, as the Weekly Standard’s Matthew Continetti points out:
I’m pessimistic that the supercommittee will reach any deal. There is no political or economic incentive for a grand bargain. Politically, Democrats want to campaign by attacking Republicans as guardians of the rich, while Republicans want to campaign by attacking Democrats as profligate spenders. Actual compromise that reduces debt while not raising tax rates would undermine these lines of attack. Economically, the crisis in Europe has convinced me that governments only limit themselves when forced to do so by the bond markets. That was the case with Canada in the 1990s, and it is the case with Greece and Italy today. For Americans voluntarily to restrain their government, and thus restrain themselves, would be nothing less than extraordinary.
Continetti’s right, but so is Brian S. Wesbury of FirstTrust Advisors:
According to government estimates, if spending is cut by $1.2 trillion over the next 10 years, government spending will fall from a peak of about 25% of GDP to 22%. This is a positive (but somewhat minor) movement in the correct direction. Cutting spending is the most important thing Congress can do to boost economic growth, create jobs and lift stock markets to new highs.
We know this is not what our college professors teach us. We know this is not what conventional wisdom believes. But, history shows the truth. …
Federal spending increased from 18% of GDP in 1965 to 23% in 1982. During that time, stock prices went nowhere, P-E ratios fell, unemployment rose and the economy suffered. From 1982 to 2000, government spending was cut back to 18.5% of GDP. Stocks soared, unemployment plummeted and the economy boomed. Since 2000, as government spending shot up again, the economy has suffered, unemployment has climbed and stocks have flat-lined again.
The bigger the government is the smaller the private sector is and the smaller the private sector is the fewer jobs an economy creates. Cutting spending should be the focus of government policy.
As it happens, this afternoon’s supercommittee hearing (superhearing?) will be at the same time that the Tea Party Debt Commission meets. The TPDC, a project of FreedomWorks, has an online debt-reduction calculator in which participants can choose one of two options in a series of choices (with savings estimated by FreedomWorks) to reduce the federal deficit and debt.
The first time I tried the calculator, I chose:
Cut all discretionary spending to 2008 pre-stimulus levels, saving $20 billion in the first year and $748 billion over 10 years.
Convert Medicaid to a state block grant program, saving $750 billion over 10 years.
Use more accurate measures of inflation for all government programs, saving $1 billion in the first year and $96 billion over 10 years.
Break up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, saving $30 billion the first year and $300 billion over 10 years.
Eliminate the Department of Housing and Urban Development, saving $53 billion the first year and $530 billion over 10 years.
Reduce unused or underutilized federal building space by 25 percent, saving $56.75 billion the first year and $567.5 billion over 10 years.
Reduce the federal workforce to 2008 levels, saving $1 billion the first year and $35 billion over 10 years.
Eliminate the Department of Education, saving $95 billion the first year and $950 billion over 10 years.
Add all that up, and in the space of maybe three minutes I came up with $224 billion in first-year savings and $3.649 trillion in 10-year savings. So I tried it again:
End the Troubled Asset Relief Program, saving $4 billion the first year and $18 billion over 10 years.
Reduce Social Security benefits for those with high incomes, saving $6 billion the first year and $60 billion over 10 years.
Reduce the U.S. nuclear arsenal to “align with modern needs and threats,” saving $56.75 billion the first year and $567.5 billion over 10 years.
Privatize Amtrak and end federal rail subsidies, saving $3.1 billion the first year and $31 billion over 10 years.
Convert the federal food stamp program into a capped block grant to the states, saving $45 billion the first year and $350 billion over 10 years.
Recalibrate Medicare reimbursement rates in high-cost regions of the country, saving $11.7 billion the first year and $117 billion over 10 years.
Eliminate the Department of Energy and transfer nuclear research to the Defense Department, saving $21 billion the first year and $210 billion over 10 years.
End “paid volunteerism” by ending the AmeriCorps program, saving $1 billion the first year and $10 billion over 10 years.
That batch of cuts saves $148.55 billion the first year and $1.3635 trillion over 10 years. Let’s take another shot:
Eliminate “certain federal job training programs,” saving $4.3 billion the first year and $43 billion over 10 years.
Reduce Medicare subsidies to “actual cost of hospitals’ graduate medical education,” saving $20.5 billion the first year and $205 billion over 10 years.
Cut the federal employee travel budget to $4 billion, half of fiscal year 2000 spending, saving $10 billion the first year and $100 billion over 10 years.
Enact a federal statute reforming state medical malpractice laws, saving $2 billion the first year and $54 billion over 10 years.
Reduce federal subsidies for crop insurance from 60 percent to 50 percent, saving $400 million the first year and $12 billion over 10 years.
End orders for “obsolete and unnecessary military parts and supplies,” saving $35.3 billion the first year and $353 billion over 10 years.
Repeal ObamaCare, saving $9 billion the first year and $1.8 trillion over 10 years.
Cancel the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, saving $22.5 billion the first year and $225 billion over 10 years.
That batch of cuts saves $104 billion the first year and $2.792 trillion over 10 years. One more time:
Eliminate the U.S. Small Business Administration, saving $1.4 billion the first year and $14 billion over 10 years.
Cancel V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft purchases, saving $6 billion the first year and $60 billion over 10 years.
Gradually increase the retirement age to 70, saving $56 billion over 10 years.
Privatize air traffic control, saving $3.8 billion the first year and $38 billion over 10 years.
Reduce and limit the growth of federal payments to states for cash welfare programs, saving $1 billion the first year and $14 billion over 10 years.
End urban mass transit grants, saving $5.2 billion the first year and $52 billion over 10 years.
Eliminate Department of Commerce grants for ethanol and “unproven energy technology subsidies,” saving $17 billion the first year and $170 billion over 10 years.
That group saves $34.4 billion the first year and $404 billion over 10 years.
Add up all four and these cuts would save $510.55 billion the first year and more than $8.2 trillion over a decade. My choices of cuts equal the supercommittee’s $1.2 trillion goal plus Obama’s September call for $3 trillion in cuts plus Obama’s deficit-reduction commission’s call for $4 trillion in cuts (the amount needed to keep the same debt-to-GDP ratio as earlier this year), without raising taxes by even $1.
Many of these cuts would obviously be controversial, and doubtless all of the spending listed here has its own constituent and special-interest groups. National security is not served by spending money on obsolete equipment, weapons not needed in the post-Cold War world, or cool stuff (such as the Osprey, which I saw at an EAA AirVenture) whose price tag exceeds its value. You cannot reduce the deficit and debt without dealing with entitlements, which is why I made the Social Security and Medicare choices. If the country survived for 200 years without federal education and energy departments, it can survive today without them.
Maybe I should run for the Senate against U.S. Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D–Madison). Or maybe the Republicans should take this entire list, introduce it as their deficit-reduction proposal and dare Democrats to vote against it and Obama to veto it. Then voters will know that Republicans are serious about deficit and debt reduction (which has not always been the case) and Democrats are not.
The perpetual hissy fit that is the Union Democrat Party in this state has launched its campaign to recall Governor Scott Walker. The rallying cry of Walker’s Republican supporters is “I stand with Scott Walker”.
Well, not me. I don’t stand with Scott Walker.
Nope. I stand for the right to work. I stand against compulsory unionization. I stand for the right of every employee to join a union, and for the equal right of every employee to work free of union impairment. I stand for the right of every union to collect its own dues directly from its members. I stand for the right of every business owner to deal directly with his/her employees or to work through an intermediary as he or she sees fit. I stand for the right of any business to refrain from political activity altogether without being targeted for boycotts by extortionists. …
I stand for fiscal responsibility. I stand for balancing the state budget. I stand for making government services both accessible and affordable. I stand for repaying our old debts and not taking on any new ones. I stand against raiding trust funds set up for one purpose to pay for another. I stand against increasing taxes on the overtaxed to fund lavish new benefits for the over-lavished. …
I stand for letting local school boards, teachers, parents, and taxpayers decide how best to educate their kids. I stand for rewarding the great teachers and I stand against letting the bad ones waste one more hour of our children’s precious learning time. I stand against spineless administrators, conniving pension-grubbers, placeholders counting down their days to retirement and serial indoctrinators who see 4th graders as political props. …
I stand against the seizure of our public places, the occupation of our streets. I stand against those whose twisted moral compass equates breaking a monopoly with killing millions of Jews. …
I stand for jobs. I stand for job-creators. I stand for free markets, lower taxes, and sensible regulation. I stand for a business climate that attracts employers, not one that drives them away. I stand for private property rights for every citizen. I stand for developing our natural resources, for encouraging entrepreneurs, for rewarding hard work and for celebrating those who succeed in global competition. …
I don’t let the Koch brothers or Fox News or Rush Limbaugh or Vicki McKenna to tell me what to think. I am a grown man, a self-sovereign with my own conscience and beliefs. Those beliefs do not include overturning election results because my side didn’t win. We have learned that the effort to recall Governor Scott Walker was initiated before he even took office; this has nothing to do with policy and everything to do with privilege. …
The Democrat Party in the state of Wisconsin believes they have a Divine right to rule; perhaps it explains why so many are hostile to real Divinity. It is inconceivable to them that the citizens of this state would have decided to give the Republicans an opportunity to fix what the Democrats could not or would not. It is humiliating to them that their coarse and unrefined rivals achieved in just a few months what they could not do in a decade. Their panic is understandable, but that does not make it actionable for the rest of us. …
I will not tell you “I stand with Scott Walker” and slam the door in your face. I will tell you instead that I stand for Liberty, and then I will ask you why you will not stand with me. It is a reasonable question, and I expect you to answer it. It is the least you can do if you want me to help you turn the whole state upside down to rehash your grievance over again for the umpteenth time.
Nerenz (who is a Libertarian, not a Republican) adds: “I don’t stand with Scott Walker. Scott Walker stands with me.” And the only thing I can add to this is a popular phrase from my UW days: What he said.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 