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.

The world has done surprisingly well since the Great Recession began at not making things worse with trade protectionism. But that may soon change thanks to the U.S. Senate, which is expected to vote as early as this week on the most dangerous trade legislation in many years, the Currency Exchange Rate Oversight Reform Act. This is when an American President would normally step in and defend the U.S. and world economies, but Barack Obama is bobbing and weaving for his own narrow political ends. This is risky business.

Senators Chuck Schumer and Lindsey Graham have pushed since 2005 to impose punitive tariffs on China if the value of the yuan doesn’t rise faster. The legislation is now coming to the floor because Senate Democrats want protectionist political cover against unions in return for voting on the free-trade pacts with Colombia, Panama and Korea that President Obama finally sent to Congress yesterday. But what is cynical posturing in Washington may look more threatening to the rest of the world, and once trade wars start they can be hard to stop.

The senators speak during a news conference on Sept. 22, to discuss unfair currency manipulation.

Unlike America’s last great trade blunder, the Tariff Act of 1930 (aka Smoot-Hawley), the China bill wouldn’t raise tariffs across the board, but would instead allow companies to seek countervailing duties by treating a “misaligned” currency as a subsidy. This would nonetheless open the floodgates to applications from American companies, and the resulting tariffs would violate World Trade Organization rules. China would undoubtedly retaliate, meaning companies and consumers in both countries would lose.

If other countries follow suit, there would be knock-on effects throughout the global economy. As the erstwhile leader of the world’s trading system as well as one of its main beneficiaries, the U.S. bears a special responsibility to avoid this outcome.

It’s fun and easy for politicians like Sen. Schumer and Sen. Graham to blame China’s monetary policy or “free trade” for the loss of American manufacturing jobs… It’s a much more difficult thing for politicians to admit that the tax and regulatory policies they and their colleagues have saddled American industry with are at least partly to blame for the job losses.

In short Senators Schumer and Graham and their ilk should spend less time worrying about the international economy and more time worrying about our national economy. They should be focusing on comprehensive, common sense tax and regulatory reforms that make it more lucrative for American manufacturers to produce quality, affordable goods here rather than overseas. Instead they’re focused on pushing foolish protectionist trade policies that could set off a global trade war.

One has to wonder what would happen if Washington’s policy makers reduced corporate tax rates, ended the punitive double taxation of repatriated profits from foreign subsidiaries, and reduced regulatory burdens? Call me crazy, but I suspect we’d see a boom in American industry.

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

MARK HALPERIN: Do we have the seven-second delay today? I want to characterize how I thought the President behaved.

MIKA BRZEZINSKI: We have it.  We can use it–right [Executive Producer] Alex?

JOE SCARBOROUGH: Yeah, sure, come on, take a chance. Have faith.

BRZEZINSKI: Let’s see what happens.

SCARBOROUGH: I’m behind you.  You fall down, I’m gonna catch you.

BRZEZINSKI: And the precedent has been set on the show, so you’re good [a reference to Joe dropping an f-bomb back in 2008, leading to the installation of the seven-second delay].

HALPERIN: I thought he was kind of a dick yesterday.

SCARBOROUGH: Oh my God.  Delay that!  Delay that!  What are you doing?  I can’t believe you–I was joking! Don’t do that! Did we delay that?

(Transcript courtesy Newbusters.)

Ouch, there’s a lot of things I could say about President’s performance yesterday, but that’s not one of them…. Look I’m no fan Barack Obama, you don’t have to like or even respect him, but he is the President of the United States and you do have to respect the office he holds… While I might agree Mr. Halperin’s assessment of the president’s performance, his remarks were still inappropriate. You don’t call the President of the United States a “dick” — period.

Anyway, Mr. Halperin has apologized and MSNBC rightly has suspended him indefinitely.

“Mark Halperin’s comments this morning were completely inappropriate and unacceptable. We apologize to the President, The White House and all of our viewers,” in a statement by MSNBC spokesperson Jeremy Gaines. “We strive for a high level of discourse and comments like these have no place on our air. Therefore, Mark will be suspended indefinitely from his role as an analyst.”

~ ~ ~

“I completely agree with everything in MSNBC’s statement about my remark. I believe that the step they are taking in response is totally appropriate,” Halperin said in a statement. “Again, I want to offer a heartfelt and profound apology to the President, to my MSNBC colleagues, and to the viewers. My remark was unacceptable, and I deeply regret it.”

That said the President was clearly posturing and playing to his base yesterday by resorting to the same tired, old partisan class warfare rhetoric. This country faces a serious financial crisis driven by debt and a lack of economic growth.

Washington’s policy makers can’t simply turn a blind eye to that and keep spending beyond our means. No amount tax increases is going to close the budget gap, particularly not while the economy is teetering on the edge of a cliff. Raising taxes now could easily push our already weakened economy back in recession or depression.

Washington’s policy makers have to face reality and make real, what some would call draconian, spending cuts. Not only in discretionary spending, but also through entitlement reform. Whether you agree with Republicans or not they have at least offered a plan. All the President has offered is demonetization and demagoguery.

Related

• The Deficit Is Worse Than We Think – Lawrence B. Lindsey, Wall Street Journal
• President Obama’s war on facts — Jonathan Strong – The Daily Caller

H/T: Darleen Click.

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

Two quick questions, first, why now? And second, will this put end to the birther movement and Donald Trump’s circus sideshow not quite presidential campaign?

Updates as warranted.

Update: Fox News just updated their story to include the following:

White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer said the administration decided to release the full document in response to mounting questions about the president’s birth. He noted that what started as Internet chatter had moved into the national political debate and ended up being discussed regularly on mainstream news outlets.

That answers the first question, I guess Donald Trump made enough noise that they couldn’t ignore questions about President Obama’s birth and/or citizenship any longer.

Update: Dave Weigel has the birth certificate over at Slate.com.

Update: Ed Morrissey is right, this conspiracy theory should have died three years ago.  I have no idea why the President or his handlers let this “issue” fester for so long… The 2012 presidential campaign is about Barack Obama’s policies and actions as President, not his birth certificate. Thankfully this this sideshow distraction now off the table.

The federal government posted its largest monthly deficit in history in February at $223 billion, according to preliminary numbers the Congressional Budget Office released Monday morning.

That figure tops last February’s record of $220.9 billion, and marks the 29th straight month the government has run in the red — a modern record. The last time the federal government posted even a monthly surplus was September 2008, just before the financial collapse.

Ouch… Just how prolific a spender is Pres. Obama? Well, the February budget deficit was larger than Bush’s entire 2007 deficit.

I think Ed Morrissey is right… I must be getting old, because I too can remember the good old days when a $223 billion deficit would send “Democrats screaming to cable news shows about the profligacy of George W. Bush and his ruinous economic policies.” But now days nary a whimper.

The real question now is whether this will cause both sides to get serious about making meaningful spending cuts. Frankly, I’m not hopeful.

Related

• U.S. Treasury Drew Down Its Cash Balance by $81.6 Billion in Just First 4 Days of March – CNSNews.com

Ouch, the sad thing is, this really isn’t a laughing matter… I don’t think there’s intellectually honest person on the left or right who can call the results President Obama’s G20 summit trip anything other than what the Wall Street Journal does… an Embarrassment in Seoul.

Related

• Palin v. Bernanke – New York Sun
• Bernanke’s Folly – Kerem Oner, American Thinker
• Sarah Palin’s Seoul – New York Sun
• The World Against Bernanke – Larry Kudlow
• Palin to Bernanke: ‘Cease and Desist’ – Robert Costa, National Review Online
• Palin’s Dollar, Zoellick’s Gold – Wall Street Journal
• Why Wall Street should fear Sarah Palin – James Pethokoukis, Reuters