I can’t say it any better than Tina Korbe:

No matter what measure you use, government spending has increased since 1965. Total government spending has more than doubled. Federal spending per household has increased from $11,431 in 1965 to $29,401 in 2010, for an increase of nearly 162 percent. That would all be fine if revenues had kept pace — if, in the same time period, the United States hadn’t also acquired more than $15 trillion in debt.

Under the Obama administration, the deficit and debt has only increased — and, to make matters worse, for all three years of Barack Obama’s presidency, the federal government has indulged in high levels of spending without an official budget. What could possibly be the result of such directionless spending other than unprecedented deficits and increased debt?

The Democrat-controlled Senate is directly to blame for the lack of a budget. Even when Democrats controlled both houses of Congress and the White House, the Congress didn’t bother to pass a plan. Now that Republicans control the House, the House has passed a comprehensive budget plan — but the Senate has still done nothing. The Senate is the true do-nothing chamber, but the president will almost assuredly blame the House as the inactive chamber.

I’m honestly at loss for words here, as Ms. Korbe points out Pres. Obama and Senate Democrats will undoubtedly try blame House Republicans for the lack of a budget, but the reality is they did their job and passed a comprehensive budget plan last April.

It’s Harry Reid, and Senate Democrats who have failed to fulfill one of their most basic responsibilities and it’s they who should be held to account.

From CNSNews.com:

House Republicans are set to vote later this week on a balanced budget amendment (BBA) that would not cap federal spending as a percentage of GDP or require a supermajority to raise taxes.

Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said the vote would probably take place this Friday.

Cantor said that this version of a BBA, H.J. Res 2 — rather than one that would cap federal spending, H.J. Res 1 — was the version “overwhelmingly” favored by House Republicans.

What is it with the Republican leadership and self-defeating Kabuki theater?  This bill is a spectacularly bad idea for several reasons… First, Minority Whip Steny Hoyer is actively whipping against the bill, so it’s an open question whether this turd will even pass in the House. But if buy some miracle it does, the odds of getting the 67 votes needed to pass in Harry Reid’s Senate are about the same as the Miami Dolphins winning the Super Bowl this season.

Second it gives political cover to vulnerable Democrats, who can claim they voted for a Balanced Budget Amendment even though know it has no chance of passing.

Third it paints House and Senate Republicans who favor a tougher version of the amendment, H.J. Res 1, into a political corner. Democrats and their willing allies in the media will trumpet the fact that Republicans have come around to a “reasonable” compromise on the balanced-budget amendment that would have passed save for the objects of few radical extremists.

Finally, and most importantly, under Speaker Boehner’s amendment, federal spending could easily rise to 25% or more of GDP as long as the budget is balanced. This is a recipe for disaster that will ultimately lead higher taxes… We’ve seen this game played out time and again in states that have balanced budget amendments without spending caps — politicians keep spending and raise taxes to pay for it because their state constitution say they have to balanced the budget.

This is how Republicans lose elections, they were winning the debate on fiscal policy, but then they lost their focus and started putting political symbolism over substance. They badly misjudged President Obama’s willingness to cut spending and allowed budget debate to move to secret supercommittee where Democrats will almost certainly torpedo negotiations in and effort to gain a re-election advantage. And now they put forth a hollow balanced budget amendment that Democrats will gladly feign support for, but that has no chance of actually reducing spending or preventing future tax increases… Instead it virtually assures them.

Democrats want tax hikes to be the first item negotiated in “super committee” deficit-reduction talks, trying to force Republicans to confront an issue at the heart of this year’s budget fights, sources told Reuters.

The tough stance by Democratic members of the powerful 12-member congressional panel reflects the party’s wariness that Republicans might try to sideline the issue of revenue increases in the negotiations.

“They’ve raised the idea of doing taxes first,” a Republican aide involved in the discussions said on Friday on condition of anonymity.

Heh, when I first read this on Saturday afternoon, I couldn’t help but laugh… Democrats are as predictable as sunrise, they’ve spent the last several years demonizing “the rich” and trying to divide us along racial, cultural, socioeconomic lines. The numbers however tell a different story:

In 2007, 390,000 tax filers reported adjusted gross income of $1 million or more and paid $309 billion in taxes. In 2009, there were only 237,000 such filers, a decline of 39%. Almost four of 10 millionaires vanished in two years, and the total taxes they paid in 2009 declined to $178 billion, a drop of 42%.

Those with $10 million or more in reported income fell to 8,274 from 18,394 in 2007, a 55% drop. As a result, their tax payments tanked by 51%. These disappearing millionaires go a long way toward explaining why federal tax revenues have sunk to 15% of GDP in recent years. The loss of millionaires accounts for at least $130 billion of the higher federal budget deficit in 2009. If Warren Buffett wants to reduce the deficit, he should encourage policies to create more millionaires, not campaign to tax them more.

The millionaires who are left still pay a mountain of tax. Those who make $1 million accounted for about 0.2% of all tax returns but paid 20.4% of income taxes in 2009. Those with adjusted gross income above $200,000 a year were just under 3% of tax filers but paid 50.1% of the $866 billion in total personal income taxes. This means the top 3% paid more than the bottom 97%. Yet the 3% are the people that President Obama claims don’t pay their fair share. Before the recession, the $200,000 income group paid 54.5% of the income tax.

The “rich” as defined by President Obama and Democrats in congress are a very small majority of tax filers who already pay a disproportionate share of the total federal income tax bill. The notion that we solve our budget problems by raising taxes on that small majority is nuts.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t look at the revenue side, what I am saying have to do it in a comprehensive way that a) broadens the tax base and b) flattens tax rates… There just aren’t a enough “rich” people that can be taxed at a high enough rate to make a significant difference on difference on the revenue side.

The government has to cut spending and make comprehensive reforms to the tax… in short we need more people paying taxes, simply shifting more and more of the burden onto a small minority of taxpayers isn’t going to solve our budget problems.

Related

• Recession Is the Outlook, Despite Manufacturing Report – Larry Kudlow, The New York Sun

It was a bullshit question, first of all unless those spending cuts are immediate they’ll never materialize… particularly when the baseline for negotiations is that the taxes increase are made in the first year, while the spending cuts are made over 10 years. Everyone remember President Reagan’s 3:1 deal? Heh, yeah, we’re still waiting for those spending cuts to be made. At least Republicans learned that lesson.

Second, the notion that we can tax our way out if this debt debacle is pure lunacy. As I’ve explained previously, this is not a revenue problem, it’s spending problem… The federal government spends roughly a $1 trillion more each year than it collects in revenue. President Obama and the Democrats in Congress argue that we can close that gap by raising taxes on the “rich”.

But what does that get us? Blake Ellis answered that very question at CNN Money.com recently:

President Obama has defined the nation’s wealthy as those who make $200,000 or more a year.

According to a recent report from the Internal Revenue Service, that leaves out about 97% of the tax-paying population.

The report, which provides a complete breakdown and analysis of returns for the 2009 tax year, found that only a mere 3% of tax returns were filed by people earning a gross adjusted income of $200,000 or more.

Americans earning $1 million or more were even more rare, comprising just 0.2% of total tax filers and accounting for a mere 236,883 of the 140 million tax returns received in 2009.

The wealthiest taxpayers — those earning $10 million or more in adjusted gross income — are even less prevalent. There were only 8,274 people belonging to that elite club, according the IRS.

Out of the nearly 4 million “rich” people making more than $200,000 a year, 1,470 didn’t pay any income tax whatsoever in 2009. But the people who did pay taxes earned a total of nearly $2 trillion in income — about 26% of total taxpayer income in 2009.

President Obama’s tax proposals — which many Republican’s call “job-killing” tax hikes — include getting rid of some corporate tax breaks enjoyed by oil and gas companies and corporate jet buyers, and restoring some Bush-era tax rates for high-income households. If the Bush tax cuts expire as planned in 2012, the top two income tax rates will revert to 39.6% and 36% from 35% and 33%, respectively.

Yet, even though these high-income earners are a minority, Obama says the proposed tax increases would boost revenue by $750 billion over a decade.

Does anyone else see the fallacy of the President’s argument? The simple truth is there no way in hell we’re going to balance the federal budget on the backs of just 3% — three percent of income taxpayers. $750 billion in new revenue over a decade — $75 billion a year doesn’t even begin to put a dent in the annual budget deficit much less the debt.

As you can see, the idea that raising taxes on a small minority of taxpayers can solve our budget problems is just… its nuts!

If we’re going to talk about our nations budget problems and tax policy, let’s do it, let have serious adult conversation about it. Not simply toss around the same old, worn out class warfare rhetoric.

Step 1, amend or repeal the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 to eliminate baseline budgeting and force the federal government to live by the same Generally Accepted Accounting Principles as everyone else.

You may not realize this, but baseline budgeting automatically increases the federal budget every year. What Congress likes to do is use a bit of smoke and mirrors to make spending cuts that aren’t really cuts at all. For example if program is scheduled to see and 8% increasing in spending Congress will reduce it to 3% and call it a cut when it’s still a 3% percent increase over the previous year. Frankly, if a publicly traded company managed its finances the way the federal government does it would a) go bankrupt and b) the management would be indicted for fraud.

Step 2, undertake comprehensive tax reform that broadens the tax base and flattens rates. Personally, I’d scrap the entire current income tax code and replace it with a simple, no deductions, no loopholes 15% flat rate income tax. In short, it would work like this everyone would keep the first $10,000 they earn each year income tax-free. After that everything, earned income, interest, dividends, capital gains etc. would be taxed the same 15% rate. In other words someone who earns $30,000 a year would pay an income tax of 15% of 20,000 or $3,000… Someone earning $300,000 would pay an income tax of 15% of $290,000 or $43,500. I’d follow a similar model for the corporate income tax rate.

Step 3, undertake comprehensive regulatory reform with an eye toward merging or eliminating agencies with overlapping jurisdictions and reducing regulatory impediments  to economic growth.

And that’s the bottom line, if we’re going to get out of this hole we have to get our economy moving again… The goal of the federal government should be creating an environment where 5% GDP growth year over year is the norm.

Related

• Debate flashback: Which candidates would support a 10:1 mix of spending cuts and tax hikes? – Hot Air

As a result they’re lashing out ordinary Americans who have the temerity to demand Washington change its ways and cut spending – drastically. Politicians and pundits alike have dismissed these people as “extremists” or “racists” and referred to them derisively as “Tea baggers” or more recently “Hobbits” and “Terrorists“. These so-called extremists, aren’t really all that extreme most of them have never been politically active, much less protested anything before in their lives. Most of them are well-informed, well-intentioned people who believe in traditional American values… and yes, there are a few cranks and crackpots who give the rest a bad name.

Regardless they’ve all come together for common reason, they’re deeply concerned that this country is headed in the wrong direction and want to see to it put back on the right track. In the words of Ronald Reagan “The federal government has taken too much tax money from the people, too much authority from the states, and too much liberty with the Constitution.”

Let’s be clear about something Washington doesn’t have a revenue problem, it has spending problem… Robin Hood is not going to save from out debt problems. If you look at the numbers, over the last 50 years revenue to the federal government has remained remarkably consistent averaging roughly 18% of GDP. What’s changed is that spending has risen sharply over the last two decades to roughly 21% of GDP under President George W. Bush and now to roughly 25% of GDP under Pres. Obama.

The simple truth is we can’t raise taxes enough to close the current budget deficit much less begin to pay down our $14.2 trillion national debt. We have to cut spending — drastically, that means both sides are going to have to give up some of their sacred cows. Republican are going to have to accept some cuts in defense spending and Democrats are going to have to accept some entitlement reforms. We don’t have a choice in this anymore, our current spending levels are simply unsustainable.

The dirty little secret in this whole debate is that Congress never actually cuts spending, all they ever do is reduce the rate of growth that’s already built into to the government’s baseline budget… and that’s exactly what they’ve done here. There aren’t any real spending cuts in the deal they’ve just agreed to… spending is still going to go up, it’s just going to go up less than would have otherwise. This deal will add roughly $7 trillion to the debt over the next 10 years.

The truth is if a publicly traded company managed its finances the way the federal government does it would a) go bankrupt and b) the management would be indicted for fraud.

Edit: I should also point out that the latest Gallup Poll of political ideology shows roughly twice as many Americans self-identify themselves as conservative than liberal.

Related

• Analysis: Debt mess shows Washington’s awful side – Associated Press
• Sputter to stall: U.S. economy dips into danger zone for recession -  James Pethokoukis, Reuters
• The Obama Recovery – The Wall Street Journal
• The Tea Party, Right About Everything- Randall Hoven, American Thinker
• Obama’s power grows as debt deadline approaches – Byron York, the Washington Examiner
• Open Letter: Why I Oppose the Debt Ceiling Compromise – Senator Rand Paul
• Debt Deal is a Blank Check – Peter Schiff, CNBC
• Debt deal doesn’t dispel downgrade fear – Reuters

White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley took heat from business executives Thursday for the Obama administration’s regulatory expansions. Daley also said he didn’t have any good answers for some of what President Obama is doing and expressed frustration about the “bureaucratic stuff that’s hard to defend.”

“Sometimes you can’t defend the indefensible,” Daley said at a National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) meeting.

Daley couldn’t answer basic questions and continually faced criticism from the executives in the room. The business leaders even applauded each other’s criticism of the administration. “At one point, the room erupted in applause when Massachusetts utility executive Doug Starrett, his voice shaking with emotion, accused the administration of blocking construction on one of his facilities to protect fish, saying government ‘throws sand into the gears of progress,’” wrote Peter Wallsten and Jia Lynn Yang in the Washington Post.

Ouch, talk about throwing your boss under the bus.

We could spend days talking about how President Obama’s attempts to impose his political agenda by through regulatory extremism has strangled business and stifled economic growth. But we don’t have to, the President’s own Chief of Staff admits the President’s policies are “indefensible”… If nothing else this helps illustrate just how much of an uphill fight the president is going to have in 2012.

Related

• Federal Judge Rebukes EPA- Kathleen White, Nation Review Online
• How Miserable? Index Says the Worst in 28 Years – CNBC

Investor’s Business Daily has the highlights:

• GE’s domestic workforce shrank by 25,000 — almost 16% — between 2001 and 2010, according to the company’s annual reports. (The number of overseas GE jobs climbed over those years.)

• AmEx employed 28% fewer workers in 2010 than it did a decade ago.

• Kodak’s workforce cratered to just 18,800 last year from 75,000 in 2001.

• Xerox’s employee base shrank by nearly a third between 2001 and 2009, before it acquired Affiliated Computer Services and its 74,000 workers in 2010.

• Even Intel has trimmed the number of workers it employs over the past decade.

What’s more interesting than who is on the President’s jobs council is who isn’t… There isn’t one representative of from America’s small and mid-sized businesses, who are responsible for creating two-thirds of the nation’s new jobs.

It’s pure symbolism over substance, that simply highlights the incestuous relationship between big business and government… It’s little surprise, and of little comfort, that council’s list of must-do, job-creating ideas includes the same tired old big government ideas that get trotted every time the economy slows: More money to retrain workers, more tax dollars retrofitting commercial buildings to boost energy efficiency and more government loans passed out by the Small Business Administration.

If the President was truly serious about job creation he’d do the simplest most effective thing available: Get government out of the way. Businesses in are drowning in sea of taxes, and regulation that are choking off job growth. The President’s Jobs Council did at least pay lips service to all the job-choking red tape by calling on the administration to streamline permitting processes.

But they mad no mention of much need reforms, like an immediate cut in corporate and capital gains taxes… The Wall Street Journal examined the need for corporate tax reform last December is story highlighting how the our ‘temporary’ tax code puts the nation in a lasting bind.

Related

• 1.9 Million Fewer Americans Have Jobs Today Than When Obama Signed Stimulus – CNSNews.com
• Don’t Look Now, But Stagflation May Be Here – Fox Business
• A Welfare State or a Start-Up Nation? – Allan Meltzer, Wall Street Journal
• US inflation rise ties Fed’s hands on further easing – Financial Times
• Lack of Retirement Funds Is Americans’ Biggest Financial Worry – Gallup
• Is Carter A Best Case Scenario? – W.R. Mead, The American Interest
• In Boeing Case, Machinists Are Picking the Wrong Fight – Bloomberg.com
• Federal Reserve Bank Presidents: Washington is Killing Business – Heritage Foundation

The court found a committee of lawmakers was not subject to the state’s open meetings law, and so did not violate that law when they hastily approved the measure and made it possible for the Senate to take it up. In doing so, the Supreme Court overruled a Dane County judge who had struck down the legislation, ending one challenge to the law even as new challenges are likely to emerge.

The majority opinion was by Justices Michael Gableman, David Prosser, Patience Roggensack and Annette Ziegler. The other three justices – Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson and Justices Ann Walsh Bradley and N. Patrick Crooks – concurred in part and dissented in part…

Legislative leaders had said they would have inserted the limits on collective bargaining into the state budget late Tuesday if the court hadn’t acted by then. But the high court ruled just before that budget debate was to begin…

In its decision, the state’s high court concluded that “choices about what laws represent wise public policy for the state of Wisconsin are not within the constitutional purview of the courts.”

Frankly, the court’s decision shouldn’t come as surprise to anyone, and despite what some will argue the court’s decision has politics and everything to do with separation of powers a fact noted by the court in it’s decision:

¶6 IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that all orders and judgments of the Dane County Circuit Court in Case No. 2011CV1244 are vacated and declared to be void ab initio. State ex rel. Nader v. Circuit Court for Dane Cnty., No. 2004AP2559-W, unpublished order (Wis. S. Ct. Sept. 30, 2004) (wherein this court vacated the prior orders of the circuit court in the same case).

¶7 This court has granted the petition for an original action because one of the courts that we are charged with supervising has usurped the legislative power which the Wisconsin Constitution grants exclusively to the legislature….

¶9 Although all orders that preceded the circuit court’s judgment in Case No. 2011CV1244 may be characterized as moot in some respects, the court addresses whether a court can enjoin publication of a bill. The court does so because whether a court can enjoin a bill is a matter of great public importance and also because it appears necessary to confirm that Goodland remains the law that all courts must follow. State v. Cramer, 98 Wis. 2d 416, 420, 296 N.W.2d 921 (1980) (noting that we consider questions that have become moot “where the question is one of great public importance . . . or of public interest,” or “where the problem is likely to recur and is of sufficient importance to warrant a holding which will guide trial courts in similar circumstances”). Accordingly, because the circuit court did not follow the court’s directive in Goodland, it exceeded its jurisdiction, invaded the legislature’s constitutional powers under Article IV, Section 1 and Section 17 of the Wisconsin Constitution, and erred in enjoining the publication and further implementation of the Act.

¶10 Article IV, Section 17 of the Wisconsin Constitution vests the legislature with the constitutional power to “provide by law” for publication. The legislature has set the requirements for publication. However, the Secretary of State has not yet fulfilled his statutory duty to publish a notice of publication of the Act in the official state newspaper, pursuant to Wis. Stat. § 14.38(10)(c). Due to the vacation of the circuit court’s orders, there remain no impediments to the Secretary of State fulfilling his obligations under § 14.38(10)(c).

¶11 IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that we have concluded that in enacting the Act, the legislature did not employ a process that violated Article IV, Section 10 of the Wisconsin Constitution, which provides in relevant part: “The doors of each house shall be kept open except when the public welfare shall require secrecy.” The doors of the senate and assembly were kept open to the press and members of the public during the enactment of the Act. The doors of the senate parlor, where the joint committee on conference met, were open to the press and members of the public. WisconsinEye broadcast the proceedings live. Access was not denied.[1] There is no constitutional requirement that the legislature provide access to as many members of the public as wish to attend meetings of the legislature or meetings of legislative committees.

~ ~ ~ ~

¶13  It also is argued that the Act is invalid because the legislature did not follow certain notice provisions of the Open Meetings Law for the March 9, 2011 meeting of the joint committee on conference.  It is argued that Wis. Stat. § 19.84(3) required 24 hours notice of that meeting and such notice was not given.  It is undisputed that the legislature posted notices of the March 9, 2011 meeting of the joint committee on conference on three bulletin boards, approximately 1 hour and 50 minutes before the start of the meeting.  In the posting of notice that was done, the legislature relied on its interpretation of its own rules of proceeding.  The court declines to review the validity of the procedure used to give notice of the joint committee on conference….

Bottom line: this a sweeping victory for Governor Scott Walker and the Republicans in the state legislature, and stinging rebuke of judge Sumi’s purely partisan judicial activism. The only open question is how this ruling will effect next month’s recall elections? I’m not convinced will have a significant impact, but given the furor surrounding the Prosser/Kloppenburg race that it may turn out to animate the left far more than they would otherwise be… Time will tell.

Frankly, I have to wonder how the Fed will spin this mornings  news about the surge in wholesale prices, which were lead by the largest jump in food prices in 36 years:

Wholesale prices jumped last month by the most in nearly two years due to higher energy costs and the steepest rise in food prices in 36 years. Excluding those volatile categories, inflation was tame.

The Labor Department said Wednesday that the Producer Price Index rose a seasonally adjusted 1.6 percent in February — double the 0.8 percent rise in the previous month. Outside of food and energy costs, the core index ticked up 0.2 percent, less than January’s 0.5 percent rise.

Food prices soared 3.9 percent last month, the biggest gain since November 1974. Most of that increase was due to a sharp rise in vegetable costs, which increased nearly 50 percent. That was the most in almost a year. Meat and dairy products also rose.

Energy prices rose 3.3 percent last month, led by a 3.7 percent increase in gasoline costs.

I suspect they’ll argue that food and gas prices aren’t part of “core” inflation, so they don’t enter in to their policy calculations. While that may be technically correct it ignores the practical reality; which is that food and energy prices are usually a leading indicator of rising inflation.

Sarah Palin was right when she urged Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke to “cease and desist” his “pump priming.” back in November:

All this pump priming will come at a serious price. And I mean that literally: everyone who ever goes out shopping for groceries knows that prices have risen significantly over the past year or so. Pump priming would push them even higher. And it’s not just groceries. Oil recently hit a six month high, at more than $87 a barrel. The weak dollar – a direct result of the Fed’s decision to dump more dollars onto the market – is pushing oil prices upwards. That’s like an extra tax on earnings. And the worst part of it: because the Obama White House refuses to open up our offshore and onshore oil reserves for exploration, most of that money will go directly to foreign regimes who don’t have America’s best interests at heart.

We shouldn’t be playing around with inflation. It’s not for nothing Reagan called it “as violent as a mugger, as frightening as an armed robber, and as deadly as a hit man.” The Fed’s pump priming addiction has got our small businesses running scared, and our allies worried. The German finance minister called the Fed’s proposals “clueless.” When Germany, a country that knows a thing or two about the dangers of inflation, warns us to think again, maybe it’s time for Chairman Bernanke to cease and desist. We don’t want temporary, artificial economic growth bought at the expense of permanently higher inflation which will erode the value of our incomes and our savings. We want a stable dollar combined with real economic reform. It’s the only way we can get our economy back on the right track.

The simple truth is the effects of the Feds unconventional monetary policy have finally come home to roost, and we’re paying for it in the form of higher food and energy prices. It’s time for the Fed to turn off the printing presses and focus on restoring a strong and stable dollar. The rest of the economy will take care of itself.

Related

• Housing starts see biggest drop since 1984 – Reuters
• World Food Prices Jump to Record on Sugar, Oilseeds – Bloomberg
• Import Prices Rise in February – Wall Street Journal
• Let them eat iPads – Scott Johnson, Powerline
• The $4-Per-Gallon President – Sarah Palin

Heh, never mind the math, this might come as a surprise to a good socialist like Mr. Moore, but it’s not your money or the governments money to confiscate Michael.

Related

• There Aren’t Enough Millionaires – Kevin D. Williamson, National Review Online