Feeding the Deficit: The Ultimate Obesity

Controlling obesity is all the rage now in America as, indeed, it should be. Feeding the American appetite with too many of the wrong kinds of calories is exacting a terrible toll on the health of Americans of all ages. Obesity, like cigarettes, kills. In recent years, Congress, along with a compliant President Bush and now with an enthusiastic President Obama, has been appeasing another kind of appetite with reckless abandon. The toll this fiscal obesity will exact from America and our people is incalculable and Jenny Craig will be of no help.

Clearly, most Americans do not want to be force fed programs they haven’t asked for and that they know neither they, their children nor their grandchildren can possibly afford. People throughout the country are beginning to dig in their heels and a growing number of congressmen and senators know it. Seventy years ago, Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto is quoted, following his successful and deadly attack on Pearl Harbor, “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.” It appears that the American electorate, long apathetic and used to acquiescing by default to reckless government spending may be awakening from its long slumber. Let’s hope so, for it is the last best hope we have to rein in the destructive behavior of so many of our elected representatives of both parties in Washington and the White House strategists who lead them on.

As we noted in this column two weeks ago, Moody’s has fired the first warning shot over the bow of our ship of state. The international credit-rating agency warned that America’s AAA credit rating would be in jeopardy (given our spiraling debt) if economic growth does not keep pace with the projections made by the Obama Administration. China and Japan, our largest sovereign creditors, fired two more warning shots at last week’s treasury auction when they decreased their purchases of U.S. debt. But is anyone in Washington listening?

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Tags: bank bailout, carmen reinhart, Christina Romer, deficit spending, entitlement spending
Posted Mar 3rd 2010 at 3:11 pm in Congress, Culture, Economics, News, Politics, federal spending | 83778138 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/oftheeising/2010/03/03/feeding-the-deficit-the-ultimate-obesity/Feeding+the+Deficit%3A+The+Ultimate+Obesity2010-03-03+23%3A11%3A14Of+Thee+I+Sing+1776

Obama’s First Year

Wednesday will mark the first anniversary of the presidential inauguration of Barack Obama — who began his Presidency, as nearly all new first-term Presidents do, high in the polls. At that time, Obama’s approval ratings were, in fact, in the stratosphere. In the last twelve months, however, they have fallen further and faster than those of any President since polling began; and, and, as developments in Massachusetts suggest, his party is now in danger of suffering in November an historic defeat — which is likely to rival its fate in 1938, 1966, and 1994 if the Democrats do not, as I believe they may, do even worse. In a poll released on Thursday, the National Journal reports that half of the adults sampled responded that, if new Presidential elections were held right now, they would vote against Barack Obama, and less than a quarter of those questioned indicated that they would vote to re-elect the President. It is an appropriate time in which to pose this question: Why have Obama and his supporters fallen so far and so fast?

We must, I think, begin before the beginning. The Obama campaign was predicated on a fraud. With a skill that was breathtaking, Barack Obama managed during that campaign to signal to the left within the Democratic Party with a wink and a nod that he was their man and that he meant business — that he really intended to “transform” America. To those in the middle and on the right who are ashamed of the nation’s historic sins in matters of race, he offered absolution, and he promised that the penance that they would have to perform after leaving the confessional would not be harsh. He was not, he said, a tax-and-spend liberal.

I was not taken in. Late in 2008, after reviewing the page proofs of Soft Despotism, Democracy’s Drift, I persuaded my editor to allow me to add the following to the book:

Once again, as in the 1920s, rational administration has failed us. As on that other occasion, the Federal Reserve Board and the Department of the Treasury pursued over an extended period under more than one administration an easy-money policy bound in the end to give rise to “irrational exuberance” in the markets and to a bubble followed by a catastrophic decline in prices and a collapse of the credit markets. And, to make matters worse, we responded to this set of circumstances precisely as we did on that earlier occasion — by electing a president and choosing a Congress intent on dramatically increasing the scale and scope of the administrative state.

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Tags: ACORN, auto bailout, Barack Obama, cap-and-trade, Charles Grassley
Posted Jan 16th 2010 at 6:08 am in ACORN, Big Labor, Congress, Earmarks, Economics, Featured Story, Healthcare, History, News, Obama, Politics, State Politics, Tax Reform, Tea Party, federal spending | 59998130 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/prahe/2010/01/16/obamas-first-year/Obama%27s+First+Year2010-01-16+14%3A08%3A30Paul+A.++Rahe

What They Won’t Talk About at the White House Jobs Summit

So the President holds a jobs summit, but doesn’t invite the biggest actual producers of jobs — instead stacking the deck with people who believe there just hasn’t been enough government reallocation of taxpayer money. We’ll talk about the summit and the latest details of upheaval at General Motors in today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, a daily podcast from The New Ledger on politics, policy and the marketplace with Francis Cianfrocca, brought to you by BigGovernment.com.

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Related Links:

ABC News: Real Progress or PR Stunt?
Romer on the Jobs Summit
Cianfrocca: Near an Inflection Point on the Economy?
Samuelson on Job Growth’s Challenges

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Tags: Christina Romer, Economy, Fritz Henderson, GM, Job Summit
Posted Dec 3rd 2009 at 8:59 am in Coffee and Markets, Economics | 4044218 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/newledger/2009/12/03/what-they-wont-talk-about-at-the-white-house-jobs-summit/What+They+Won%27t+Talk+About+at+the+White+House+Jobs+Summit2009-12-03+15%3A59%3A06The+New+Ledger

Stimulus Job Creation = Bigger Government

On Friday, in the name of holy transparency, the White House released the list of jobs created or saved with the stimulus funds. Now, let’s assume that the government can create jobs even though it can’t. Let’s assume that “job saved” is not the lamest excuse for government spending I have heard in my life time as a budget analyst. And let’s look at what this data means.

The White House claims that 640,329 were created or saved. That, by the way, is way less than what Christina Romer claimed would be created. Last week, she mentioned 1.4 million during a Joint Committee hearing. Remember.

First, $159 billion has been spent so far. That’s $248,273 per job.

However, when you look at some specific contracts that were awarded you find that some jobs were created or saved at an insane cost to taxpayers. For instance, $1,359,633,501 were awarded to CH2M WG IDAHO LLC, in WA to create 2,183 jobs. That’s $622,827 per job. That’s not as bad though as the  $258,646,800 awarded to the Brookhaven Science Associates, LLC in NY, to create 25 jobs. That’s over $10.3 million per job.

I would be happy with one of these jobs.

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Tags: Christina Romer, federal spending, government grants, government jobs, job creation
Posted Nov 2nd 2009 at 4:03 pm in Economics, Obama, Politics | 2420651 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/vderugy/2009/11/02/stimulus-job-creation-bigger-government/Stimulus+Job+Creation+%3D+Bigger+Government2009-11-02+23%3A03%3A20Veronique++de+Rugy

OBAMACARE IS “BIG GOVERNMENT”

I believe that President Obama’s address to Congress, and our Nation, did not go far enough to put the numerous concerns Americans have to rest with the healthcare reform proposals before the House and the Senate.  There are still too many unanswered questions surrounding these discussions and too much at stake to simply pass any bill without intensive scrutiny and review.  After reading the over 1,000 page House Democrat proposal and fielding over 8,000 constituent correspondences into my office, it is clear that there is much work to be done.  

 During the August district work period, I attended numerous meetings across my congressional district and met with hundreds of constituents who made it clear that they are unhappy with the way Congress is conducting the current health care debate.  Democrat Congressional leadership continues to rush health care legislation through both chambers, without any real explanation.  Constituents in Ohio’s Fifth District, in addition to millions of other Americans, have asked Congress to slow this process down and thoroughly examine probably one of the most important pieces of legislation Congress has debated since the New Deal.  No one will argue that our nation does not need health care reform, but it is clear that Congress must start over with real bipartisan negotiations where Republicans can be included and have input into the final legislation.

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Tags: Barak Obama, Christina Romer, Congress, Congressional Budget Office, Fifth District
Posted Sep 16th 2009 at 6:15 am in Congress, Healthcare | 244674 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/blatta/2009/09/16/obamacare-is-big-government/OBAMACARE+IS+%E2%80%9CBIG+GOVERNMENT%E2%80%9D2009-09-16+13%3A15%3A04Rep.+Bob+Latta+%28R-OH%29