Columnist.
The vaunted budget plan from the "Gang of Six" is said to be growing in popularity, but all you need to know to oppose the plan is that a "gang" is behind it. Also, President Obama and Sen. Dick Durbin both support it. But let's not stop there. We all know the major drivers of this careening national debt train are entitlement programs, yet this plan proposes no real structural reforms. Now don't tell me this is rocket science. It doesn't take years to come up with a plan to restructure entitlements, yet the president and the Democratic obstructers in Congress continue to apply nonstick bandages instead of major remodeling.
There is an overarching reason we can't move toward a balanced budget, which underscores why we face ongoing stalemates over debt ceilings and continuing resolutions: President Obama doesn't want to balance the budget. I don't say this out of extremism or to be gratuitously controversial or even provocative. It's just that his words and actions lead to the inescapable conclusion that he is unwilling to curb his appetite for big government. In the absence of any such restraint, our alarming budget trajectory cannot be reversed. The debt ceiling may be the last clear chance before the 2012 elections to force meaningful budgetary reforms.
Ordinarily, I'd have difficulty grasping the magnitude of arrogance driving President Obama in budget negotiations that could determine the survival of our nation, but after several painful years of observation, I've come to expect it from him. Obama's personality type does not well handle opposition, so when House Majority Leader Eric Cantor refused to budge on Obama's unreasonable demand that the GOP agree to raise taxes during these economic hard times, which would not raise revenues, Obama blew up and "stormed out of the room."
The depressing debate over the debt ceiling underscores just how recklessly the ruling class has squandered America's sacred heritage -- a heritage I had the privilege of revisiting up close this past week on a family vacation. The contrast between the sublime historical locations we experienced during the day and the alarming news we ingested each night about the dire state of our nation's financial condition couldn't have been starker.
Someone recently emailed and asked me to rebut the claim that fascism is a right-wing system. I have given this question considerable thought over the years; even when I was in college, liberals routinely smeared conservatism as a fascist political ideology. Indeed, how many times have we heard the mantra that communism and Nazism represented the two extremes of the political spectrum, left and right, respectively? This never made sense to me, as I knew that conservatism championed political and economic liberty and that communism and fascism were the direct antithesis of these.
What if -- instead of blaming Republicans, big oil, the "wealthy" and corporate jets -- President Obama had used his recent news conference to say the following? "Look, I've tried my solutions, and they've had ample time to work. If they were going to work, they would have done so by now. So I'm going to ask my party to join with Republicans in focusing on the national debt instead of ginning up envy, jealousy and animosity among people who earn different amounts of money. I'm going to prove that I share the American people's fear about this debt crisis and that I recognize there will have to be structural reform to entitlements. It may involve some cuts in benefits, but if we don't do this now, eventually everyone will lose his benefits, because Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security are headed for insolvency -- and much sooner than we thought.
I was disappointed that Chris Wallace asked Michele Bachmann whether she is a flake, but Wallace's behavior is hardly the most important issue involved. What he was trying to get at is another matter. It is no secret that a good number of people regard Bachmann as a loose cannon who is given to gaffes and hyperbole. And it's not just Bachmann. Indeed, there is an enormous elephant in the room of GOP presidential politics, which is that despite their individual popularity, both female contenders, Bachmann and Sarah Palin, are dismissed in many circles as cartoon characters.
I'll make you a deal: I'll quit accusing Democrats of obstructing spending and entitlement reform when they quit obstructing spending and entitlement reform. Now we even have the nonpartisan, sterile, unflappable Congressional Budget Office virtually predicting a "fiscal crisis," yet the Democratic Senate hasn't passed a budget for 785 days. There ought to be a law. At what point will we go into panic mode? Frankly, I can't comprehend how people are so calm now.
Proponents of a constitutional convention might protest that their goals are far more modest than a new constitution. Well, so were the Framers' plans when they met in Philadelphia to amend the Articles of Confederation. Fortunately, they drafted an entirely new constitution instead, which would be, in the words of former British Prime Minister William Gladstone, "the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man." Don't ever make the mistake of believing that such a miracle of constitutional craftsmanship will ever occur again in this nation, especially considering the social, cultural, demographic, political and, yes, spiritual changes that have since occurred.
If you compare the Carter malaise with the Obama debt doomsday machine, any GOP 2012 presidential candidate should sail to victory with greater facility than Ronald Reagan did in 1980. But will she or he? I am optimistic but also believe that in making his economic case, the Republican candidate will have different challenges because of the ongoing growth of our welfare state and the attitudes it has ushered in, along with heightened class warfare.
If I'd heard the following words, instead of reading them, I might have assumed they were being delivered by a President Obama impressionist on "Saturday Night Live." But the words were from Obama himself in his latest weekly radio address. "I wish I could tell you there was a quick fix to our economic problems," he said. "But the truth is we didn't get into this mess overnight, and we won't get out of it overnight. It's going to take time."
Ann Coulter's chilling two-chapter recapitulation of the French Revolution is worth well more than the price of her new book, "Demonic," but that's just a bonus. Also priceless are Coulter's plethora of one-liner skewerings of the liberal mob, but I digress. What make this her best book are her incisive demonstration that the revolution was the mother of the many totalitarian "revolutions" it spawned in the name of the people, her dissection of the mob mentality that drove it, and her case against today's American liberals as exemplars of this mob mentality.
The liberal media's most recent effort to turn Sarah Palin into a dolt over her version of Paul Revere, on which historians are now defending her, has prompted me to share with you some confusing points of European history I have recently re-encountered in my lay study of the subject. With apologies in advance to professional and amateur historians, here are a few fun "facts."
Do you think it's conceivable that yet another round of dismal economic news might cause President Obama to finally dig deeply enough in his id to find some hidden humility and consider reversing course? Let's be serious. Why should he do that when it's much easier -- and more profitable politically -- to just demonize Republicans? But will there ever be a time when the inescapable reality of our impending financial panic will compel him and other Democrats to act like grown-ups and help solve this problem before it "solves" itself and destroys countless people and institutions in its wake?
My advice for the GOP: No more Mr. Nice Guy. No more putting the pretense of civility above the best interests of the nation. Democrats are playing cynical games with our national debt crisis, and it's time they were called out on them -- directly, volubly and repeatedly. Senate Democrats haven't passed their own budget plan in more than two years, despite having strong control of that body. Meanwhile, the nation is teetering on bankruptcy. I don't make that statement lightly. Our national debt is $14.3 trillion, and our federal deficit is $1.65 trillion. This might be less shocking but for the facts that our projected annual deficits as long as Obama is in charge average $1 trillion, and our unfunded entitlements exceed $88 trillion.
Conservatives are worried that an ideal Reagan conservative has yet to emerge and lead the 2012 GOP presidential field. But are we allowing the liberal media (and establishment Republicans) to manipulate the narrative to prevent such a result? Obviously, the liberal media do not have the best interests of Reagan conservatives in mind when they do their "reporting." So when they tell us certain GOP candidates are unelectable or electable, common sense would counsel us to take their advice with mounds of salt. But do we?
What kind of surreal world are we inhabiting where the political party that is trying to address our debt problem is on the defensive at the hands of the reckless party that chooses to mock, demagogue and delay? The national dialogue, at least the one being choreographed by Democrats and their amen chorus in the liberal Beltway media, has been distorted beyond measure. We are asking the wrong questions and getting the wrong answers.
I think people are missing the main point of Obamacare's alleged "death panels": Obama has forfeited any claim to moral authority in pursuit of his so-called health care reform. It is indisputable that the thrust of Obama's push for Obamacare was that too many Americans were being denied access to medical care, and that health care "should be a right for every American." He obviously believes insurance companies let his mother die in refusing to cover her medical bills because of her pre-existing condition. So, Obama concluded, as a matter of morality and legality, there should be universal access to health care among Americans. Anything less is immoral.
Can you imagine how insufferable President Obama would be about his record in office if he actually had abundant positive accomplishments? Have we ever seen a starker contrast between a politician's record and his self-assessment of it? It's not as though the president just avoids or downplays his failures. It's more like he showcases them, but only after completely revising history to put his actions in a favorable light. I have this recurring dream where I'm watching the president give a speech and he makes a claim about his record wholly at odds with what we have witnessed and I have to question my memory. Did he just say what I think he said, or did I miss a word or phrase that would have changed the meaning to something far less inaccurate -- and outrageously absurd? The trouble is, these are not dreams.
The Washington Examiner reports that it's been 768 days since the Democratic-controlled Senate passed a budget. What's the big deal? It's not like the nation is facing financial difficulties or anything. I realize it's convenient for President Obama to pretend he's a bystander on fiscal matters when it suits him and to pass the buck that never stops with him back to Congress, but how about a little leadership on the issue for a change?
