The Congressional “Super Committee” tasked with cutting the debt has failed. Good. Embrace the joy of failure. Sometimes failure works out for the best. Because in this case “failure” leads to the Holy Grail: $1.2 Trillion in forced spending cuts. That’s the best thing that could have ever come out of this unconstitutional “Super Committee.”

Congress is now forced to accept automatic across the board cuts to spending- including defense spending. This is what the GOP should have been aiming for from day one. Play out the clock and force $1.2 Trillion in spending cuts.

But our GOP friends never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. They are scared, spineless weaklings. They are actually panicking because there wasn’t a compromise that raised taxes. Could they possibly be this dumb?

The GOP had the perfect campaign message tailor-made for a 2012 landslide. “The GOP stands for smaller government, lower taxes, less spending. Obama is for bigger government, higher taxes, more spending.” The same simple clear contrast that led to a historic Tea Party landslide in 2010. All they had to do was play out the clock and let the spending cuts take effect.

Instead the GOP “super committee” members were so scared of actually forcing real, honest-to-goodness, spending cuts that they desperately tried all last week to compromise with Democrats. They practically begged Democrats to increase taxes on the wealthy (by taking away deductions). The GOP was anxious to sell out every small business owner, homeowner, and GOP contributor in America. Listen carefully- it was the GOP who offered a deal based on Obama’s philosophy to punish successful Americans for their hard work, sacrifice, and financial risk-taking.

Republicans offered a deal to Democrats that included only slightly larger spending cuts versus tax increases. And guess where all the tax increases were aimed- at wealthy taxpayers. Even as GOP Presidential contenders lied to our faces during televised debates, all agreeing they would not even accept a deal of 10-to-1 spending cuts versus tax increases, the GOP Super Committee members attempted to sell out the entire conservative base for close to 1-to-1.

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Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT) visited Heritage this week to give the annual B.C. Lee lecture, focusing on the importance of American leadership in the Asia-Pacific region. After his speech, he sat down for a wide-ranging interview.

In addition to fears about losing the additional security gained by the surge in Afghanistan, Lieberman expressed concerns with the signal a premature withdrawal might send to allies and enemies around the world.

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As the Super Committee continues to meet (largely in secret), the lasting impact of its decisions on our national security is still unclear.

The Heritage Foundation recently sat down with Frances Fragos Townsend, former Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism and former New Jersey Governor and 9/11 Comission Chairman Thomas Kean at the first ever Concordia Summit on global extremism to discuss the national security threats we face and the concerns they have for our national defense in light of these looming cuts.

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Below are excerpts from President Obama’s latest address to the nation concerning the debt and deficit talks, followed by “subtitles,” which perhaps provide a more accurate perspective of the points he made:

“For the last decade, we have spent more money than we take in.”

- I won’t mention, of course, that I have added more to the national debt in just my first 19 months in office than all presidents from Washington through Reagan combined.

“In the year 2000, the government had a budget surplus. But instead of using it to pay off our debt, the money was spent on trillions of dollars in new tax cuts, while two wars and an expensive prescription drug program were simply added to our nation’s credit card.”

-Well, no, the nearly trillion dollars in the Stimulus, bailing out the banks, and the auto companies- this was important money spent that could have otherwise been used to pay down the debt if I really wanted to. So, that money doesn’t count…And those Bush tax cuts have been a thorn in my side…I really began to lose my base on that agreement to extend them…And about those wars, I’m referring to the ones in Iraq and Afghanistan that Bush started…not the ones in Libya and Yemen I’ve gotten us involved in… Oops, I probably shouldn’t have dissed that senior prescription drug program because later on in my speech I try to use the seniors as pawns again to get them frightened about how Republicans want to cut their Medicare.

“To make matters worse, the recession meant that there was less money coming in, and it required us to spend even more.”

- That’s this neat Keynesian economics I learned in college. I thought I’d try it out on the country when I became president. We have less money, so we spend more. It really works!

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From The Wall Street Journal:

Our budget, which we call The Path to Prosperity, is very different. For starters, it cuts $6.2 trillion in spending from the president’s budget over the next 10 years, reduces the debt as a percentage of the economy, and puts the nation on a path to actually pay off our national debt. Our proposal brings federal spending to below 20% of gross domestic product (GDP), consistent with the postwar average, and reduces deficits by $4.4 trillion.

A study just released by the Heritage Center for Data Analysis projects that The Path to Prosperity will help create nearly one million new private-sector jobs next year, bring the unemployment rate down to 4% by 2015, and result in 2.5 million additional private-sector jobs in the last year of the decade. It spurs economic growth, with $1.5 trillion in additional real GDP over the decade. According to Heritage’s analysis, it would result in $1.1 trillion in higher wages and an average of $1,000 in additional family income each year.

Here are its major components:

• Reducing spending: This budget proposes to bring spending on domestic government agencies to below 2008 levels, and it freezes this category of spending for five years. The savings proposals are numerous, and include reforming agricultural subsidies, shrinking the federal work force through a sensible attrition policy, and accepting Defense Secretary Robert Gates’s plan to target inefficiencies at the Pentagon.

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It’s been years since Wisconsin’s welfare reforms under Gov. Tommy Thompson inspired Congress to pass the Welfare Reform Act of 1996. Now, spurred to action by a looming $1 trillion federal budget deficit, a national debt of $14 trillion and a growing taxpayer rebellion, some members of Congress are taking a stand against the earmarks so deeply entrenched in defense spending.

A bipartisan majority in the House, including the entire Wisconsin delegation, drew a line in the sand last month and voted against handing out another $3 billion to GE and Rolls Royce for the clearly unnecessary alternate engine for the F-35 joint strike fighter. This second engine would be produced in addition to the engine being manufactured by Pratt & Whitney, the company that won the competitive bidding to supply the engine for the F-35.

Pratt & Whitney is already manufacturing that engine, and it has performed well in the advanced testing required by the Air Force. Nonetheless, the federal government has paid out $1.3 billion to GE over the past 14 years to develop a long delayed second engine. Estimates are that the engine development would cost taxpayers another $3 billion.

The second engine program is obviously unneeded. President Barack Obama and President George W. Bush both tried to kill the second engine program as unnecessary and expensive. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates doesn’t want the second engine, nor does the Air Force. But until the House vote on Feb. 16, Congress had continuously approved an earmark of unrequested spending for the second engine.

Funding production of a second engine is a classic example of the earmarks that inflate the cost of defense spending and have helped build the massive federal debt.

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Today on Coffee and Markets Francis Cianfrocca and I discuss the fiftieth anniversary of Eisenhower’s “military-industrial complex” warning, Defense spending and cuts, and the challenges of Fed policy on inflation.

We’re brought to you as always by Stephen Clouse and Associates. You can find our iTunes feed at CoffeeandMarkets.com. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

Looking Back on Ike’s Farewell Address
Bromund on the Constitutional Mandate for Defense
RCW: Tea Party Views on Afghanistan
The Philly Fed’s Plosser: Speech in Chile
McArdle and Tamny: A Debate on Fed Policy

Should military hospitals be used to save lives or to kill unborn babies? The U.S. Senate may soon take action to overturn long-standing policy by sanctioning the performance of abortions in domestic and overseas military facilities–effectively turning military hospitals and other facilities into abortion clinics. This would be the largest expansion of abortion availability since the original Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court decision in 1973. Overnight, your tax dollars will create 423 new abortion clinics. While much of the media attention on this bill has focused on the “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” debate and now amnesty for illegal aliens, many Americans should be deeply concerned that this bill turns our military healthcare system into domestic and international abortion providers.

This past May, when the Senate Armed Services Committee considered the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2011, Senator Roland Burris (D-IL) offered an amendment to end the current prohibition on performing abortions in military hospitals. If enacted, this amendment would overturn a law that has been in place since 1996, signed into law by President Clinton.

Military healthcare centers — which are dedicated to healing and caring for life — should not facilitate the taking of an innocent human life: an unborn child. Allowing abortions in military facilities will continue to strain already burdened medical personnel who are working to save the lives of our men and women in service. At a time when our nation is at war, are we really going to divert scarce personnel and resources for elective abortions?

This change in policy will also likely hurt recruitment and retention of military medical professionals—possibly driving many health care providers out of the military if they have conscience objections to performing abortion. When President Clinton allowed abortions in military facilities from 1993 to 1996, many military physicians (as well as nurses and support staff) refused to perform or assist in elective abortions. In response, the Administration hired civilians to do abortions. If the Burris amendment were enacted, not only would taxpayer funded facilities be used to support abortion on demand, but tax dollars could also be used to search, hire, and transport new personnel just so abortions could be performed.

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The United States Air Force was handed good news on March 23^rd when the World Trade Organization made its final ruling on a complaint brought by the United States Government.  It found that $178B in launch aid given to France-based EADS/Airbus for its family of jetliners was improper and illegal.

Further, the WTO determined that $5B given specifically to provide EADS with an unfair advantage over America’s Boeing to build new U.S. aerial refueling tankers broke trade laws – and the spirit of legal and fair international competition.

That the subsidies were illegal or that EADS/Airbus cheats to win contracts comes as no surprise to trade watchers.  The ruling that they broke laws and put an American company at an unfair disadvantage should remove any obstacles for the Pentagon to move forward immediately with a contract for these much-needed flying gas stations.

Emphasis, “should.”

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The House and Senate are wrapping up work on the last appropriations bill of the year and rumors are swirling that the controversial Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act, also known as the “Akaka Bill,” will be included in the Defense Appropriations bill.  The defense measure is proving to be controversial, because House and Senate appropriators are using it to carry non related matters like a $1.9 trillion debt limit increase, an extension of unemployment benefits and the Native Hawaiian measure.

The Native Hawaiian bill, a long time priority of Senator Daniel Akaka (D-HI), would set up a race based government of “indigenous, native people of Hawaii.”  Opponents argue that this bill is unconstitutional and unwise.  National Review Online sounded the alarm bells today and sources on Capitol Hill confirmed to Big Government that a version of the Native Hawaiian Bill may end up in the Defense Appropriations bill.  (more…)

Money intended for soldiers fighting war is instead being spent on senators’ home-state pet projects

Defense spending bill contains an earmark that has nothing to do with national defense, $20 million for an institute honoring late Senator Ted Kennedy

Maryland Senator earmarks tens of millions of dollars in a defense spending bill for her top campaign donors

New Jersey receives $4.8 million earmark to increase the size of Long Beach Island beaches and dunes

National Science Foundation hands out taxpayer cash in experiment to determine if birth order affects willingness to make risky economic decisions

Federal grant pays to design and build an exhibit about the significance of lacrosse