We just finished watching President Barack Obama’s press conference on his plan to save taxpayers $40 billion a year by reforming government contracting. And with apologies to the Wendy’s franchise, “Where’s the beef?” There was zero substance in that speech. Not one specific idea for exactly how he will achieve this alleged $40 Billion in savings by removing blank checks for defense contractors. If he were serious about reforming business as usual, he could have started with all the defense earmarks in the latest omnibus bill. But it looks like …
The American dream used to consist of the one underlying principle that every generation had the opportunity to do better than the generation that preceded it. Sometimes this dream is realized in grand fashion as it is with our President, who was raised by a single mother with a father he barely knew living on another continent and who had access to school choice programs. Sometimes it simply means making a little more, living in a better neighborhood and sending your kids to a better school or even college through …
If there was an award for bonehead defense reporting it should go to The New York Times for “Military Contractors Await Details of Obama’s Budget.” The opening paragraph includes this howler…”The good news for big military from President Obama’s budget this week was his proposal to increase the basic budget by 4 percent to $534.” If the reporter had bothered to talk to any credible military analyst, he would have learned Obama’s plan will likely be anything but a “real” increase in the budget. Here’s why: The Pentagon budget looks …
Here’s a test: Guess who made most of the charitable contributions in 2006, according to the most recent data available from the Internal Revenue Service? If you guessed “taxpayers with high incomes”, you’d win the prize. Now, guess which class of taxpayers the Obama administration wants to discourage from making charitable contributions. If you guessed “taxpayers with high incomes”, you just won again. The new Obama budget for Fiscal Year 2010 proposes that Congress reduce the tax deduction for charitable contributions by high income taxpayers. That worries many charities who …
Classic Tax and Spend Budget Increase, Raise and Hike: The President’s budget proposal increases taxes by $1.3 trillion; raises entitlement spending by $700 billion (including the health care fund), and hikes discretionary spending by a steep 12%. Creating Deficits, Not Eliminating Them: Given the budget deficit has already quadrupled in one year, the President’s pledge to halve it by 2013 is hardly ambitious. Even with the assumption of peace and prosperity, the 2013 budget deficit target of $533 billion would exceed any under President Bush. Taxes Spent: Before the recession, …
President Obama released his budget blueprint yesterday. Titled, “The New Era of Responsibility,” the full 140-page blueprint, broken down by department, can be found here. The Environmental Protection Agency’s budget, which balloons from $7.8 billion in 2009 to $10.5 billion in 2010, includes the following paragraph: After enactment of the Budget, the Administration will work expeditiously with key stakeholders and Congress to develop an economy-wide emissions reduction program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions approximately 14 percent below 2005 levels by 2020, and approximately 83 percent below 2005 levels by 2050. …
While many aspects of the Obama budget are questionable and just plain wrong, they recognize the need for more Americans to be able to save for retirement. The budget includes the Automatic IRA, a cross-ideological proposal developed jointly by The Heritage Foundation and the Brookings Institution which will give up to 80 million workers a simple and easy way to save for retirement. It also has support from publications as diverse as National Review and the New York Times. The Auto IRA allows employees who don’t have any other types …
Budget Trickery The President also employs budget trickery on spending. He first assumes that Iraq spending will continue indefinitely at 2008 levels (which was never going to happen, according to the military’s own Joint Campaign Plan), and then calculates $1.5 trillion in savings against that baseline. If you eliminate that gimmick, President Obama increases spending by nearly $500 billion over ten years – not even counting the $634 billion health care reserve fund The budget proposes $1.133 trillion in regular discretionary spending in 2010, and claims that is a 7 percent …
The title to President Obama’s budget refers to a new era of responsibility. Responsible budgeting begins with credible economic forecasts. The Obama economic forecast doesn’t merely reflect the return of the famous Rosey Scenario, but puts Rosey in fantasyland. Don’t take my word for it, just look at the numbers compared to what the Blue Chip consensus of private forecasters are saying. To begin, the Obama budget assumes the economy will contract only 1.2 percent this year. In the current quarter, the economy is already contracting at an annualized rate …
