Earlier today, President Obama delivered a speech at an impromptu event, sans teleprompter, as he was on his way to deliver a thoughtful gift to his British counterparts to reinforce our special relationship. “Let me first start by saying that for the duration of my administration, there will be no more bailouts.” This statement drew a gasp from the crowd of European supporters and press who appeared unprepared for the news. The President continued by laying out a ten point plan for American economic recovery and leadership that seemed to be a …
AMERICA NEEDS A READY AND MODERNIZED FIGHTING FORCE The President’s Budget The Obama Blueprint: While a robust starting point, the Obama budget blueprint fails to fully fund the core defense needs of the United States by about $30 billion in the base defense budget. Creates 10-Year Shortfall: The shortfall likely exceeds $1.3 trillion cumulatively over 10 years against the 4% of GDP benchmark identified as the cost to train, equip, and modernize America’s military for the next five to 10 years. Balanced Defense Program: Congress has sought to restore balance to the …
President Barack Obama’s FY 2010 budget proposal to cut the tax deductions that wealthy Americans can claim for their charitable donations has been roundly criticized, including by us here and by Harvard University economic professor Martin Feldstein here. But Obama does have his leftist defenders, including New York City Coalition Against Hunger executive director Joel Berg who writes: Combined with other progressive Obama tax proposals, that change would not only start to redress the inequality gap that has engulfed America in recent decades but would also help to pay for …
In the past 12 months the Bush Administration, the Obama Administration, and the Democrat controlled Congress have laid out $1.2 trillion in the name of stimulus, $700 billion for the Troubled Assets Relief Program, and over $400 billion for the Omnibus spending bill in debt on future generations of America. As big a hole as all that deficit spending has already put us in, the long term entitlement spending explosion is just as much of a fiscal threat, if not worse. As President Barack Obama said Tuesday, “The biggest problem …
Taxing Every American Even Obama’s “95%”: President Obama’s energy policies will cost Americans more money, limit their access to America’s resources, and provide little, if any, environmental benefit. It is an extreme environmental agenda. Climate “Revenue”: The President’s budget proposes a $646 billion cap-and-trade tax that would cost each household in America between $650 and $1,200 annually. Superfund: The budget would reinstate unnecessary excise taxes that expired in 1995 to fund Superfund’s efforts to clean up toxic and contaminated areas, which may be admirable if these clean-up goals weren’t already supported …
The AP’s Calvin Woodward has an item out today challenging some of the assertions President Barack Obama made in his press conference last night: OBAMA: “In this budget, we have made the tough choices necessary to cut our deficit in half by the end of my first term even under the most pessimistic estimates.” THE FACTS: Not all credible estimates foresee a deficit halved in that time. Obama’s budget forecast a deficit of $530 billion by the end of 2013. That would cut by half the deficit he inherited at …
Ka-thump. That sound you just heard was President Barack Obama throwing 95% of all Americans under the bus. In his opening remarks during last night’s press conference, President Obama said of his budget: “This plan will provide a tax cut to 95 percent of all working families that will appear in people’s paychecks by April 1st.” But pressed later by ABC News’ Jake Tapper about compromises he was willing to make to get his budget passed, Obama said: “When it comes to the middle-class tax cut, we already had that in …
UPDATE: This graph is now over two years old. For up to date information see this post: The Truth about Obama’s Budget Deficits, in Pictures President Barack Obama has repeatedly claimed that his budget would cut the deficit by half by the end of his term. But as Heritage analyst Brian Riedl has pointed out, given that Obama has already helped quadruple the deficit with his stimulus package, pledging to halve it by 2013 is hardly ambitious. The Washington Post has a great graphic which helps put President Obama’s budget deficits …
The AP reports, you decide: WASHINGTON – Barack Obama’s optimistic campaign rhetoric has crashed headlong into the stark reality of governing. In office two months, he has backpedaled on an array of issues, gingerly shifting positions as circumstances dictate while ducking for political cover to avoid undercutting his credibility and authority. That’s happened on the Iraq troop withdrawal timeline, on lobbyists in his administration and on money for lawmakers’ pet projects.
• President Obama’s budget presented at the end of February painted a picture of a fiscal trainwreck. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) today confirmed what many had suspected – the fiscal consequences of the President’s policies would be much worse. • The President is calling for massive tax increases equal to about $150 B a year by 2019. • He raises taxes not just on upper-income taxpayers as he promised, but on all Americans through his misnamed “climate revenues”, and as his budget indicates, this is just a starter program. …
