In the course of the first three days of the Nevada County Fair, I have been asked no less than 10 times about our lawless President and what can be done. Well, the first obstacle is that one must show that the President has been lawless. Let's take the example of the lawsuit by the House of Representative and a comment from Michael Chertoff. Imagine that in four years a Republican president decides by executive order that his administration is only going to enforce the tax code up to 10% - meaning that if you owe 28% of your income in taxes but only pay 10% of your income to the IRS, the IRS will not audit you or otherwise enforce the laws of the USA. Is this legal? Well, this example is exactly what Obama has done with the individual mandate. Obamacare states that if you do not obtain health insurance, you owe the IRS a tax. By executive order, Obama has decided to forego collection and ordered the IRS not to enforce such collection of this specific tax that is by law due and payable to the IRS.
I think that we can all agree that these examples demonstrate behavior that is lawless. Further and on the merits, the lawsuit by the House of Representatives (which addresses he individual mandate) is very difficult for Obama to defend and Obama would likely lose on the merits. This lawsuit is not the first example of Obama's overreach, as his administration's position on recess appointments was soundly rejected in the Supreme Court in a 9-0 decision. Unanimous Supreme Court decisions are kind of like a no-hitter in baseball. They do not happen very often, and you do not want to be the team that could not get a single hit. That being said, my personal opinion is that the House of Representatives does not have standing to sue the president, because they were not aggrieved. This case will never see the light of day, and it is going no where.
So what is the remedy? The fact of the matter is that Constitution offers two remedies - term limits and impeachment.
The question proposed to me at the Fair is whether impeaching Obama is the right thing to do. There are two answers to this question. First, is whether impeaching Obama the right thing to do for the health of our democracy. In my opinion, the answer is a resounding yes. See the example above in connection with enforcement of the IRS code. Once the Pandora's box of selective enforcement of the laws created by Congress and the president is opened, amazingly ridiculous things can start happening. If Rick Perry is the president, he could get rid of the EPA and the Department of Education (and all of the statutes and regulations associated therewith) by the stroke of his pen. No more enforcement of the Clean Water Act or the Endangered Species Act or Common Core. Done. If Ted Cruz is the president and as discussed above, Ted Cruz could effectively lower the income tax rate to 10% without consultation of Congress. This Pandora's box opened by Obama is dangerous to our democracy in that it vastly weakens congressional power and vastly expands the power of a single man (whoever the president is), and Congress has a duty to future congresses to not abdicate its power to a totalitarian executive.
The second question is whether there is the political will to impeach a lawless Obama. The answer to this question is a resounding no. By the republicans attempting to impeach former President Clinton for lying under oath in a civil matter, they expended all of their political capital (and that of any party attempting to impeach the president) for decades. Truth be told, people lie in depositions all of the time, and I do not think that lying in a civil deposition was what the founding fathers considered "high crimes and misdemeanors." Now, fast forward 20 years to a time when an impeachment would be based on a true constitutional crisis instead of petty partisan politics, there is no political capital with which to impeach the president. Shame on the republicans 20 years ago for overreaching, but also shame on Obama for overreaching on executive authority now. This lawless precedent set by Obama will most certainly come back to haunt the democratic party for years to come when a republican is the president with democrats in control of only one chamber of Congress.
We are founded as a country of laws, and if the president of the USA can choose which laws to enforce, how is our country any different than the tyranny against which our founders fought?
The Pandora's box is open. The next 20 years of presidential authority will be very interesting to watch. Will the democrats have the political capital to stop a republican president who exercises executive authority like Obama? Doubt it.
Showing posts with label Obama. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Obama. Show all posts
Saturday, August 9, 2014
Sunday, October 20, 2013
Democrat Spending Policies Insure Future Default of the US Economy
"In 2013, federal spending approached $3.5 trillion and the deficit dropped to 'only' $642 billion. Some are using this small improvement in the nation’s fiscal situation to avoid further budget tightening. But as the figures and graphics in this report show, this is the wrong conclusion to draw. Following four years of trillion-dollar deficits, the national debt will still reach nearly $17 trillion and exceed 100 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) at the end of the year. Publicly held debt (the debt borrowed in credit markets, excluding Social Security’s trust fund, for example), is alarmingly high at three-quarters of GDP. Without further spending cuts, it is on track to rise to a level last seen after World War II."
"Deficits fell in 2013 because President Obama and Congress raised taxes on all Americans, the economy saw slight improvement which helped to bring in more revenue, and spending cuts from sequestration and spending caps under the Budget Control Act of 2011 took effect."
"The nation should not take this short-term and modest deficit improvement as a signal to grow complacent about reining in exploding spending. Though deficits will decline for a few more years, existing spending cuts and tax increases will not prevent them from rising soon, and within a decade exceeding $1 trillion once again. Driving this is federal spending which, despite sequestration cuts, will grow 69 percent by 2023."
"The nation’s long-term spending trajectory remains on a fiscal collision course. Total spending has exploded by 40 percent since 2002, even after inflation. Some programs have grown far in excess of that. Defense, however, has been slashed. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare are so large and growing that they are on track to overwhelm the federal budget. While the Budget Control Act of 2011 and sequestration are modestly restraining the discretionary budget, mandatory spending—including entitlements—continues growing nearly unabated. Without any changes, mandatory spending, including net interest, will consume three-fourths of the budget in just one decade."
"Obamacare will add $1.8 trillion to federal health care spending by 2023. By 2015, health care spending will overtake Social Security as the largest budget item, including Obamacare’s coverage expansion provisions: a massive expansion of Medicaid and subsidies for the new health insurance exchanges."
"While mandatory spending is growing out of control and needs reform, there are also plenty of places to cut in the rest of the budget. For example, the Internal Revenue Service spent $4.1 million on a lavish conference in 2010 for 2,609 of its employees in Anaheim, California. Expenses included $50,000 for line-dancing and 'Star Trek' parody videos, $135,350 for outside speakers, $64,000 in conference 'swag' for the employees, plus free meals, cocktails, and hotel suite upgrades."
"Beyond waste, the federal government is too big. Energy spending increased over 2,000 percent since 2002—after adjusting for inflation. Today there are roughly 80 means-tested anti-poverty programs." (Editor's Note: In addition to the ballooning of energy spending and during the recent shutdown, 93% of the EPA was deemed non-essential).
"Washington must stop kicking the can down the road, or we could soon find ourselves teetering on the edge of a Greece-style meltdown. Instead, lawmakers should eliminate waste, duplication, and inappropriate spending; privatize functions better left to the private sector; and leave areas best managed on a more local level to states and localities. And they should make important changes to the entitlement programs so that they become more affordable and benefits help those with the greatest needs."
"It is not too late to solve the impending spending and debt crisis, but the clock is ticking."
Please see here for all of the graphs and the fiscal breakdown (no pun intended).
"Deficits fell in 2013 because President Obama and Congress raised taxes on all Americans, the economy saw slight improvement which helped to bring in more revenue, and spending cuts from sequestration and spending caps under the Budget Control Act of 2011 took effect."
"The nation should not take this short-term and modest deficit improvement as a signal to grow complacent about reining in exploding spending. Though deficits will decline for a few more years, existing spending cuts and tax increases will not prevent them from rising soon, and within a decade exceeding $1 trillion once again. Driving this is federal spending which, despite sequestration cuts, will grow 69 percent by 2023."
"The nation’s long-term spending trajectory remains on a fiscal collision course. Total spending has exploded by 40 percent since 2002, even after inflation. Some programs have grown far in excess of that. Defense, however, has been slashed. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare are so large and growing that they are on track to overwhelm the federal budget. While the Budget Control Act of 2011 and sequestration are modestly restraining the discretionary budget, mandatory spending—including entitlements—continues growing nearly unabated. Without any changes, mandatory spending, including net interest, will consume three-fourths of the budget in just one decade."
"Obamacare will add $1.8 trillion to federal health care spending by 2023. By 2015, health care spending will overtake Social Security as the largest budget item, including Obamacare’s coverage expansion provisions: a massive expansion of Medicaid and subsidies for the new health insurance exchanges."
"While mandatory spending is growing out of control and needs reform, there are also plenty of places to cut in the rest of the budget. For example, the Internal Revenue Service spent $4.1 million on a lavish conference in 2010 for 2,609 of its employees in Anaheim, California. Expenses included $50,000 for line-dancing and 'Star Trek' parody videos, $135,350 for outside speakers, $64,000 in conference 'swag' for the employees, plus free meals, cocktails, and hotel suite upgrades."
"Beyond waste, the federal government is too big. Energy spending increased over 2,000 percent since 2002—after adjusting for inflation. Today there are roughly 80 means-tested anti-poverty programs." (Editor's Note: In addition to the ballooning of energy spending and during the recent shutdown, 93% of the EPA was deemed non-essential).
"Washington must stop kicking the can down the road, or we could soon find ourselves teetering on the edge of a Greece-style meltdown. Instead, lawmakers should eliminate waste, duplication, and inappropriate spending; privatize functions better left to the private sector; and leave areas best managed on a more local level to states and localities. And they should make important changes to the entitlement programs so that they become more affordable and benefits help those with the greatest needs."
"It is not too late to solve the impending spending and debt crisis, but the clock is ticking."
Please see here for all of the graphs and the fiscal breakdown (no pun intended).
Monday, October 14, 2013
The Debt Crisis - Congressman Tom McClintock
The debt limit exists for a simple reason: to assure that public debt isn’t recklessly piled up without Congress periodically acknowledging it and addressing the spending patterns that are causing it. If a debt limit increase is supposed to be automatic, as the President suggests, there really is no purpose to it.
A new dimension has now appeared in this discussion. Unlike every one of his predecessors, this President has vowed that unless Congress unconditionally raises the debt limit, the United States will default on its sovereign debt.
But a failure to raise the debt limit would not by itself cause the nation to default. The Government Accountability Office has consistently held that the Treasury Secretary has “the authority to choose the order in which to pay obligations of the United States” to protect the nation’s credit. Such authority is inherent in the 1789 act that established the Treasury Department and entrusted it with the “management of the revenue” and the “support of public credit.” The affirmative duty of the Treasury Department to do so is underscored by the 14th Amendment.
Our revenues are more than ten times our debt payments, so paying the debt first to prevent a sovereign default is well within the financial ability of the federal government – and indeed, it is a fiscal imperative.
Earlier this year, the House passed HR 807, which not only explicitly requires the payment of the national debt in the case of an impasse over the debt limit, but even allows the President to exceed the debt limit itself in order to protect the nation’s credit.
That measure languishes in the Senate under the threat of a Presidential veto.
Protecting the sovereign credit by prioritizing payments would mean delaying paying other bills – which is untenable, unthinkable and something much to be avoided. But it would not imperil the nation’s sovereign credit. Only the President can do that.
The House leadership met with the President last week and offered to extend the debt limit until November 22nd with no strings attached. The President refused. Senate Republicans offered a six month extension, but the Senate Democratic leader refused.
What the President threatens to do would be catastrophic and unprecedented. The full faith and credit of the United States is what gives markets the confidence to loan money to the federal government. Even a credible threat of default – exactly the kind the President is now making -- could have dire consequences to a nation that now owes more than its entire economy produces in a year.
So where do we go from here?
Republicans have miscalculated on two key assumptions: First, that the Democrats would negotiate the issues that divide the country; they have not. Second, that Democrats would seek to minimize the suffering caused by the impasse; they have not.
Given the ruthless and vindictive way the shutdown has been handled, I now believe that this President would willfully act to destroy the full faith and credit of the United States unless the Congress acquiesces to all of his demands, at least as long as he sees political advantage in doing so. His every statement and action is consistent with this conclusion.
If the Republicans acquiesce, the immediate crisis will quickly vanish, credit markets will calm and public life will return to other matters.
But a fundamental element of our Constitution will have been destroyed. The power of the purse will have shifted from the representatives of the people to the executive. The executive bureaucracies will be freed to churn out ever more outlandish regulations with no effective Congressional review or check through the purse. A perilous era will have begun, in which the President sets spending levels and vetoes any bill falling short of his demands. Whenever a deadline approaches, one house can simply refuse to negotiate with the other until Congress is faced with the Hobson’s choice of a shut-down or a default.
The nation’s spending will again dangerously accelerate, the deficit will again rapidly widen, and the economic prosperity of the nation will continue to slowly bleed away.
This impasse may have started as a dispute over a collapsing health program but it has now taken on the dimensions of a Constitutional crisis.
Yesterday in Washington, a group of America’s veterans rose up to take a stand against these constitutional usurpations. I believe the salvation of our nation now depends on the American people joining them.
A new dimension has now appeared in this discussion. Unlike every one of his predecessors, this President has vowed that unless Congress unconditionally raises the debt limit, the United States will default on its sovereign debt.
But a failure to raise the debt limit would not by itself cause the nation to default. The Government Accountability Office has consistently held that the Treasury Secretary has “the authority to choose the order in which to pay obligations of the United States” to protect the nation’s credit. Such authority is inherent in the 1789 act that established the Treasury Department and entrusted it with the “management of the revenue” and the “support of public credit.” The affirmative duty of the Treasury Department to do so is underscored by the 14th Amendment.
Our revenues are more than ten times our debt payments, so paying the debt first to prevent a sovereign default is well within the financial ability of the federal government – and indeed, it is a fiscal imperative.
Earlier this year, the House passed HR 807, which not only explicitly requires the payment of the national debt in the case of an impasse over the debt limit, but even allows the President to exceed the debt limit itself in order to protect the nation’s credit.
That measure languishes in the Senate under the threat of a Presidential veto.
Protecting the sovereign credit by prioritizing payments would mean delaying paying other bills – which is untenable, unthinkable and something much to be avoided. But it would not imperil the nation’s sovereign credit. Only the President can do that.
The House leadership met with the President last week and offered to extend the debt limit until November 22nd with no strings attached. The President refused. Senate Republicans offered a six month extension, but the Senate Democratic leader refused.
What the President threatens to do would be catastrophic and unprecedented. The full faith and credit of the United States is what gives markets the confidence to loan money to the federal government. Even a credible threat of default – exactly the kind the President is now making -- could have dire consequences to a nation that now owes more than its entire economy produces in a year.
So where do we go from here?
Republicans have miscalculated on two key assumptions: First, that the Democrats would negotiate the issues that divide the country; they have not. Second, that Democrats would seek to minimize the suffering caused by the impasse; they have not.
Given the ruthless and vindictive way the shutdown has been handled, I now believe that this President would willfully act to destroy the full faith and credit of the United States unless the Congress acquiesces to all of his demands, at least as long as he sees political advantage in doing so. His every statement and action is consistent with this conclusion.
If the Republicans acquiesce, the immediate crisis will quickly vanish, credit markets will calm and public life will return to other matters.
But a fundamental element of our Constitution will have been destroyed. The power of the purse will have shifted from the representatives of the people to the executive. The executive bureaucracies will be freed to churn out ever more outlandish regulations with no effective Congressional review or check through the purse. A perilous era will have begun, in which the President sets spending levels and vetoes any bill falling short of his demands. Whenever a deadline approaches, one house can simply refuse to negotiate with the other until Congress is faced with the Hobson’s choice of a shut-down or a default.
The nation’s spending will again dangerously accelerate, the deficit will again rapidly widen, and the economic prosperity of the nation will continue to slowly bleed away.
This impasse may have started as a dispute over a collapsing health program but it has now taken on the dimensions of a Constitutional crisis.
Yesterday in Washington, a group of America’s veterans rose up to take a stand against these constitutional usurpations. I believe the salvation of our nation now depends on the American people joining them.
Sunday, March 10, 2013
Ryan: New House Republican budget includes ObamaCare repeal
"Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee, said Sunday that his new budget includes the repeal of President Obama’s health-care reform law known as ObamaCare."
"Ryan told 'Fox News Sunday' that the new proposal will make enough cuts to balance the federal budget in 10 years, compared to his previous one that tried to achieve that goal in 25 years."
"'We think we owe the American people a balanced budget,' the Republican congressman said."
The rest of the article is here.
Usually, congressional consideration of the federal budget begins once the President of the United States submits a budget request. The budget request includes funding requests for all federal executive departments and independent agencies.
As required by the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921, President Obama was supposed to submit a budget request to Congress no earlier than the first Monday in January, and no later than the first Monday in February. To date, President Obama has failed to follow the law and submit a budget to Congress. In fact, Obama has missed the budget deadline more than any president since the 1920s.
Failing to follow the law (again) is simply another political move by President Obama, as President Obama likely does not want to have his budget taken as an opening offer in the coming fight over raising the nation's $16.4 trillion debt ceiling.
"Ryan told 'Fox News Sunday' that the new proposal will make enough cuts to balance the federal budget in 10 years, compared to his previous one that tried to achieve that goal in 25 years."
"'We think we owe the American people a balanced budget,' the Republican congressman said."
The rest of the article is here.
Usually, congressional consideration of the federal budget begins once the President of the United States submits a budget request. The budget request includes funding requests for all federal executive departments and independent agencies.
As required by the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921, President Obama was supposed to submit a budget request to Congress no earlier than the first Monday in January, and no later than the first Monday in February. To date, President Obama has failed to follow the law and submit a budget to Congress. In fact, Obama has missed the budget deadline more than any president since the 1920s.
Failing to follow the law (again) is simply another political move by President Obama, as President Obama likely does not want to have his budget taken as an opening offer in the coming fight over raising the nation's $16.4 trillion debt ceiling.
Thursday, March 15, 2012
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