GayPatriot

The Internet home for American gay conservatives.

The Reality of America’s Finances

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That’s the title of a nice post recently from Jon Gabriel at FreedomWorks.

America’s fiscal crisis is not that our debt ceiling was too low, the fiscal crisis is that our debt is too high. When I mentioned this to left-leaning folks, they seemed indifferent…So I made this infographic…

RTWT. As a further tease, here is Mr. Gabriel’s graphic:
America's finances: deficit, revenue and debt

ADDENDUM: Gabriel notes one leftie talking point that’s been making the rounds, “Obama lowered the deficit.” Umm, not really!

First, President Obama’s annual deficits are still larger than President Bush’s were. (Count the FY2009 deficit as Obama’s because his signature is on that budget, not Bush’s. In 2008, the Democrat Congress deliberately held back the FY2009 budget from Bush’s signature, so that Obama could sign it in early 2009 with lots of so-called “stimulus” spending added. Not fair to make Bush responsible for that. Also, even aside from that, Obama’s average deficit is still vastly larger than Bush’s average.)

Second: actually, the Tea Party lowered the deficit. In 2011-13, they have dragged Obama reluctantly into the sequester budget cuts – which Democrats officially haaaaaaaate, remember? Don’t mix up your talking points, lefties! 🙂

Guess Who actually calls its opponents unpatriotic and wants to jail them?

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Item #366,720 in the archives of “The Left is and does, that of which it falsely accuses the Right.”

At MoveOn.org, more than 44,000 have called for the GOP leaders to be arrested for ‘seditious conspiracy’ over the recent government shutdown (and ‘default’ scare). As ZH points out, that’s more people than have signed up for Obamacare.

Needless to say, MoveOn’s petition is a FAIL on several levels: [Read more…]

ObamaLies – in action

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First, the facts.

  • October 16: U.S. national debt is $16,747,370,534,090.62.
  • Then they raise the debt ceiling.
  • October 18, at 3pm: U.S. debt is at $17,075,590,107,963.57.

That’s a $300+ billion increase, in two days. It’ll continue (albeit, at a slower pace). It moves the U.S. mathematically closer to its coming default, and the added interest will cost taxpayers (especially if interest rates rise in the future).

Now, here’s what Obama said during the shutdown. October 3:

I want to spend a little time on this. It’s something called raising the debt ceiling. And it’s got a lousy name, so a lot of people end up thinking, I don’t know, I don’t think we should raise our debt ceiling, because it sounds like we’re raising our debt. But that’s not what this is about.

It doesn’t cost taxpayers a single dime. It doesn’t grow our deficits by a single dime…it’s not something that raises our debt.

Or, October 8:

…it’s called raising the debt ceiling, I think a lot of Americans think it’s raising our debt. It is not raising our debt. This does not add a dime to our debt.

‘Nuff said.

GOP Establishment preferred to lose?

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I think the argument could be made, re: the recent confrontation over the debt ceiling and Obamacare. Via Ed Morrissey, Sen. Cruz hints at it in his ABC News interview:

“I will say that the reason this deal, the lousy deal was reached last night, is because, unfortunately, Senate Republicans made the choice not to support House Republicans,” Cruz told ABC News. “I wish Senate Republicans had united, I tried to do everything I could to urge Senate Republicans to come together and stand with House Republicans.”

First, let’s note that eighteen GOP Senators did stand with House Republicans, leaving 27 who didn’t.

But what about the 27? Some seem clueless about the larger issues, as for example, Sen. McCain who said “The real losers [in the shutdown] were the American people,” when the reverse is true: Americans lost when government re-opened under terms of greater debt, and with Obamacare intact.

As Morrissey didn’t support the recent confrontation, he goes on to argue that “The only way to dismantle ObamaCare is to win [future] elections.” I disagree.

Since raising the debt ceiling brings America closer to its coming default, and since Obamacare is bad law that harms our economy: then patriotic lawmakers should use any legal, constitutional means available to obstruct or delay them, with whatever votes they can muster today. Yes, rock the boat!

But 60% of Senate Republicans, it seems, would rather undercut the boat rockers – or even attack them. If their problem isn’t a form of Stockholm Syndrome, then I suspect it’s the GOP’s real civil war, K Street vs. the Tea Party.

K Street, or the GOP’s Washington / Big Government wing, has won a round and now presses the advantage by trashing the boat-rockers in the media. But I say, kudos to Sen. Cruz for at least having tried to do the right thing.

As former Sen. Jim DeMint has just said, of Obamacare:

The reason [we fight] is simple: to protect the American people from the harmful effects of this law…

More and more people have had their work hours cut, their jobs eliminated and their coverage taken away..

We know that premiums are going up due to ObamaCare—Americans are getting notices in their mailboxes every day…

[Americans] shouldn’t have to wait three more years for Congress to give them relief from this law, especially when the president has so frequently given waivers to his friends. Full legislative repeal may not be possible while President Obama remains in office, but delaying implementation by withholding funds from a law that is proven to be unfair, unworkable and unaffordable is a reasonable and necessary fight.

Raising the debt ceiling is equally bad law. Would that more of the GOP had seen clearly on that as well as Obamacare, and stood up to obstruct both.

Hostage crisis quieting down?

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These past few weeks, President Obama has (metaphorically or morally) held a gun to America’s head, demanding that his profligate borrow-and-spending be fully funded or else he’ll default on America’s debt payments.

Now it looks like the crisis is receding, with the hostage-taker mostly getting his way. It isn’t clear if the GOP achieved anything, except yet another committee to look into the nation’s fiscal turpitude.

Knowing that the Tea Party doesn’t have the votes it needs (yet) to break through that turpitude, I didn’t really expect a different outcome. So, I’m not too upset. But was the time & drama worth it?

I say yes: at least it shed light on these issues. Even if you can’t stop lying would-be dictators from succeeding, it’s still worthwhile to rip their masks off. Seeing Obama lie outright about the debt (as I always suspected he would, when cornered) was priceless.

Perhaps Pascal Emmanuel Gobry at Forbes would feel as I do? He writes about the crisis showing Tea Party mettle, and about the hope he feels from seeing the House GOP at least demand (even if they didn’t win) Congress being put on Obamacare like the rest of us. But he also notes that the crisis may have distracted much-deserved attention from Obama’s other troubles, like Obamacare’s launch failure.

Your thoughts?

Thought for the day

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Re: the Obamacare, shutdown, budget, default and debt ceiling debates…

I’m sick and tired of people who say that if you debate and disagree with this administration, somehow you’re not patriotic. We need to stand up and say we’re Americans, and we have the right to debate and disagree with any administration.

Oh wait, did I say that? Or some jihadist American Taliban terrorist bomb-throwing hostage-taking TeaBaggerParty Ted Cruz-loving anarchist wingnut grandmother, maybe?

No, it was Hillary Clinton saying it about an earlier administration that was quaintly civil to its critics, compared to the present one.

Obama threatens to default – again!

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While hopes of a government budget deal today flicker on and off, you surely heard the latest example yesterday of President Obama threatening a default:

Talking to reporters at an event in Washington D.C. Monday, President Obama said the U.S. faces “a good chance at defaulting.”

“This week if we don’t start making some real progress, both the House and the Senate, and if Republicans aren’t willing to set aside their partisan concerns in order to do what’s right for the country, we stand a good chance of defaulting. And defaulting could have a potentially have a devastating affect on our economy,” the president said.

Remember, default would be Obama’s choice because he has two Constitutional ways to avoid it:

  1. He could negotiate his differences with the GOP in good faith, like a leader.
  2. Failing that, he could prioritize debt service spending (the U.S. “minimum debt payment”) ahead of other government spending. Tax revenue alone is enough to cover it many times over. If there is a legal issue, he could ask Congress (Democrats) to help.

Thus, Obama talking about any serious possibility of default is Obama planning to default if he doesn’t get his way 100%. That is a very bad threat to be making; in no way fitting for a President of the United States.

In effect, Obama has put U.S. creditors on notice that he will prioritize them last in any real budget crisis. That means U.S. debt (the Treasury bond) is unsafe and unsound whether or not he defaults this time, and investors are fools to hold it (unhedged).

UPDATE via HotAir: Sen. Rand Paul agrees, and pushes the idea of a Full Faith And Credit Act to make prioritization explicit. And even liberal Cokie Roberts (NPR) admits that Obama has been trying to talk the stock market into crashing. “Thanks, Obama!”

UPDATE: Nice piece a couple of weeks ago from Jeffrey Dorfman at Forbes. Key idea: Not raising the debt ceiling means simply that the government must live within a balanced budget until these issues are worked out.

And that, to Democrats, is “a fate worse than default”. Literally. Democrats would literally rather choose default (which means, according to them, the collapse of our economy, the end of the world, yadda yadda) than a 20-25% net spending cutback to live within a balanced budget.

How to rationally discuss the ‘shutdown’ and budget

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No discussion is grownup, if the participants don’t know/acknowledge certain facts which President Obama, the Democrats and their media try to have people forget:

  1. The government is supposed to spend by a budget.
  2. Between April 29, 2009 and March 23, 2013, Harry Reid’s Democrats didn’t even bother to pass a budget. Nearly four years!
  3. Under the U.S. Constitution, the budget is supposed to originate in Congress and particularly the House of Representatives. Which means,
  4. The House IS supposed to be able to impose its budgetary will on the President, including by shutting down the government, as Democrat Houses have shut down the government many times before to successfully impose their will on GOP Senates and presidents.
  5. On a district-by-district basis (as required by the Constitution), the American people elected a GOP House in 2012. To coin a phrase, “they won”.
  6. The current so-called “shutdown” only affects 17% of the government. (83% is still open.)
  7. The current House has passed many bills to keep most of the remaining 17% open – bills which the Democrats have rejected.
  8. Obama has given us more debt than any president in U.S. history.
  9. Contra Obama, raising the debt ceiling does indeed mean raising our debt further. And it does cost taxpayers a lot of money.
  10. Contra Obama, there is no reason for the government to default on its debt, even if the debt ceiling isn’t raised. You default only if you fail to make your minimum debt payment. Our ongoing tax revenue exceeds our minimum payment by many times over, leaving lots of money for the rest of government spending after debt service. (Just not as much as Democrats want.)
  11. Which is probably why Obama and the Democrats are the only side talking about having a default happen. (They want to at least dangle the threat – and they might carry out the threat – even if it’s unnecessary.)
  12. Contra Obama, our future spending isn’t “paying a bill”. Spending that Congress has budgeted or authorized (but not yet actually spent) can be stopped or cut any time Congress says so, or under-spent if the money simply doesn’t exist for it.

The people who run GayPatriot welcome intelligent disagreement with our views. If your disagreement ignores the above facts, sorry but it’s not intelligent.

As the adage goes, “Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts.”

NB: Originally, point 2 stated incorrectly that the Senate hadn’t passed a budget since 2009. Error fixed. (thanks Kurt!)

ADDENDUM: 13. Contra Obama, borrowing money “to pay our bills” is NOT paying our bills. When you buy something on credit, have you paid you bill? No, of course not. You’ve merely changed to whom you owe the payment (and perhaps when).

Obama ups his rhetoric (much of it lies) another notch

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Now we’re being given the Nuclear metaphors. Current Yahoo! headline: Obama: Default like ‘nuclear bomb’ hitting economy.

President Barack Obama warned Tuesday that Congress would be dropping the equivalent of an economic “nuclear bomb” on the country if it failed to raise the debt ceiling, triggering a first-of-its-kind default…

Obama also described the consequences of a default as dire, quoting economists as saying it would be “insane” or “catastrophic,” spreading “chaos”…

But, as I explained yesterday, even if the debt ceiling isn’t raised, a default is entirely optional. It would be President Obama’s choice. By denying the choice, Obama effectively promises to deliver a default. That is, he threatens us with it (while pretending not to).

In the let’s-break-the-irony-meter department, we also have this:

Obama also pressed Republicans to reopen the government without conditions…

But Obama is the one pressing for conditions: He demands that the Republicans give away every bit of their negotiating leverage, before he’ll sit down with them.

I haven’t seen a full review of Obama’s press conference today, but I’ll bet lunch money that he also couldn’t resist repeating his outright lies about the debt ceiling (that raising it somehow doesn’t increase our debt, or cost us anything). And about future spending (that future spending is somehow all-or-nothing and unchangeable, like “paying our bills” for past spending).

UPDATE: They’ve added to the Yahoo! article.

“I’m not budging,” said the president…

Boehner reiterated his call for the president to negotiate…“The long and the short of it is, there’s going to be a negotiation here. We can’t raise the debt ceiling without doing something about what’s driving us to borrow more money and live beyond our means,” Boehner said. “The president’s position that we’re not going to sit down and talk to you unless you surrender is just not sustainable. It’s not our system of government.”

Good on Boehner!

UPDATE: Transcript here. Obama did keep up his lies about his profligate spending somehow being the equivalent of “paying bills”, and his debt -ceiling- increase somehow not meaning a debt increase. Here, he twists them together:

…it’s called raising the debt ceiling, I think a lot of Americans think it’s raising our debt. It is not raising our debt. This does not add a dime to our debt. It simply says you pay for what Congress has already authorized America to purchase…Whatever it is that Congress has already authorized, what this does is make sure that we can pay those bills.

Lie, lie, lie.

  1. The whole reason Obama wants a debt ceiling increase is precisely so he can add to our debt.
  2. He will add A LOT of debt (hundreds of billions) within days of the ceiling increase, costing taxpayers a lot of money.
  3. Budgets, made by Congress or otherwise, are not “bills to be paid”. They’re future spending plans. It would be right to under-spend our budget from this point forward, and we badly need to.

ZH is right: This never gets old

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This graphic was probably constructed for fun – except that the words, from then-Senator Obama, are quite real:
Senator Obama opposing a debt ceiling increase, from the Congressional Record

h/t Zero Hedge. Obama’s longer, original speech is here in the Congressional Record, 3/16/06, p. S2237.

FROM THE COMMENTS: EH tips us off to some info at Fraters Libertas and Powerline. It appears that, while Senator Obama carefully inserted his fiscal-responsibility speech into the Congressional Record, he never said it out loud to his colleagues. Yet he began it with a flourish to make it sound like he had: “Mr. President, I rise today to talk about America’s debt problem…”