All of a Sudden, the President Says We Don’t Have a Debt Crisis

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Photo Credit: Llima

Presto, change-o! At the beginning of the year, we were sternly lectured that huge tax increases were absolutely necessary to confront our looming debt crisis. America was driven to the edge of the “fiscal cliff,” ostensibly producing business panic that explained a fair measure of Barack Obama’s permanent economic malaise, by the President’s refusal to budge an inch from his demands for those deficit-fighting tax increases.

During the previous years, the President insisted that this “payroll tax cut,” funded by a raid on Social Security, was the vital ingredient to American economic survival. He asked citizens to send him their horror stories about how losing $60 in higher taxes from each paycheck would ruin their lives. But at the end of 2012, Obama let this supposedly crucial tax cut die without saying one single word in its defense. I mean that literally – he made absolutely no effort to protect it during “fiscal cliff” negotiations. The urgency of deficit reduction through tax increases was simply too great!

Throughout the 2012 campaign, every proposal for growth-inspiring tax cuts, and every serious effort at reforming America’s embarrassing tax system – from Mitt Romney’s relatively modest proposals, through the flat tax ideas advanced by Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich, to Herman Cain’s “999 Plan” – was savagely denounced by the President and his team because they would supposedly risk increasing the deficit. A fraudulent study supposedly “proving” that Romney’s plan didn’t “add up” was endlessly cited by the Obama campaign, even after its authors admitted it was bunkum. The same argument is invariably advanced by liberals whenever ideas like the Flat Tax, Fair Tax, or even small tax rate reductions are suggested. The possibility (indeed, to any serious student of economics, absolute certainty) of increased government revenue from the combination of lower rates and higher economic output – a smaller slice of a larger pie – is dismissed out of hand. We simply cannot risk adding a single dollar to the deficit by reducing the tax burden on American consumers and businesses!

But all of a sudden, Barack Obama sat for an interview with George Stephanopoulos of ABC News and breezily asserted that “we don’t have an immediate crisis in terms of debt.”

Well– I understand. Which is why, at some point, I think I take myself out of this. Right now, what I’m trying to do is create an atmosphere where Democrats and Republicans can go ahead, get together, and try to get something done. And, y– you know– I think what’s important to recognize is that– we’ve already cut– $2.5– $2.7 trillion out of the deficit. If the sequester stays in, you’ve got over $3.5 trillion of deficit reduction already.

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House Republicans Meet The New, Same Old President Obama

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Photo Credit: AP

After years of pining for more face time with the president, House Republicans found out Wednesday that Barack Obama looks and sounds the same behind closed doors as he does on TV.

That’s not to say they didn’t appreciate the personal touches — gentle banter, praise for some of their ideas and handshakes all around afterward — but the president’s rare meeting with House Republicans in the basement of the Capitol yielded little in the way of movement on either side of the partisan divide. It’s the first time the president has met with the House GOP since 2011.

Obama still won’t take any big risks on entitlement reform unless Republicans agree to raise taxes again, he declined to say whether he would approve the Keystone XL pipeline, and he still won’t slash discretionary spending. Within a couple of hours of leaving the Capitol, Obama issued a threat to veto a job-training bill championed by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.).

So much for the bipartisan note Obama struck in his closing remarks. Or, as some House Republicans concluded as they shuffled out of the meeting room: Meet the new president, same as the old president.

“I heard what the president had to say. I’ve heard it before,” said Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), who has had his share of failed negotiations with the White House. “I thought it was good for all of our members to hear it, so they have an understanding of where he’s coming from. We’ve got big problems in our country — they need to be addressed, we’re willing to get them addressed. I hope the president continues his outreach.”

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Senate Dem Jokes About Making History By Proposing A Budget For First Time In Four Years

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Senate Budget Committee Chairman Patty Murray, D-Wash., held a hearing on the first budget proposed by Senate Democrats in four years, and the significance of the moment was not lost on her.

“I understand we have a new pope and a committee hearing to mark up a budget; that’s history twice, so that’s good,” Murray quipped at the outset.

Murray, who irritated Republicans by not releasing her budget until after the hearing, proceeded to review the Clinton presidency to make the case for raising $975 billion in tax revenue by “closing loopholes” and increasing by $2.1 trillion over the next ten years.

“If this budget passes, the total deficit reduction since the Simpson-Bowles report will consist of 64 percent spending cuts, 14 percent tax rate increases on the rich, and 22 percent new revenue by closing loopholes and cutting wasteful spending in the tax code for the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations,” she said in her opening statement, adding later that her budget would “tackle our deficit responsibly, reinvest in the middle class, build a strong foundation for growth, and restore the promise of American opportunity.”

Murray’s budget, like her joke, went over with Republicans like a lead balloon. “The blatant unwillingness of Senate Democrats to write and pass a budget for the federal government is not a joke,” a Senate Republican aide responded. “It has led to the highest annual deficits on record, which will have to be paid for by future generations of Americans. I wonder how funny Sen. Murray’s grand-kids will find it when they’re paying a trillion dollars in annual interest payments?”

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Cuccinelli Swears Off No-Tax Pledge

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Photo Credit: Bill O’Leary

Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II, who has signed Grover Norquist’s anti-tax pledge in the past, has made a new vow: No new pledges.

The Republican gubernatorial candidate told a group of Northern Virginia business leaders this week that he will not sign the pledge pushed by anti-tax activist Norquist, or any other pledges pushed by other groups.

Cuccinelli consultant Chris LaCivita on Wednesday confirmed the comment, which was first reported by Politico.

After giving a speech to the business group, Cuccinelli was asked in a question-and-answer period if he would sign Norquist’s pledge not to raise taxes. Americans for Tax Reform, the group Norquist leads, lists Cuccinelli among its “2013 state legislative signers of the Taxpayer Protection Pledge.” There is only one other elected official from Virginia on the list, Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling (R), who supported the transportation package and announced this week that he would not run for governor as an independent.

LaCivita said that Cuccinelli had signed in the past, “but not in 2013.”

“Ken said, no, he wasn’t going to,” LaCivita said. “We have just adopted a policy of not signing pledges of any nature.”

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Obama Now Blames his Guards for Closing White House Tours

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President Barack Obama is blaming the U.S. Secret Service for the politically damaging decision to close the popular White House tours, and also suggested he would restart the tours.

“You know, I have to say this was not — a decision that went up to the White House,” he claimed in an interview broadcast Wednesday by ABC News.

“What the Secret Service explained to us was that they’re gonna have to furlough some folks,” he insisted to ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos, who worked as top aide to the nation’s previous Democratic president, Bill Clinton.

His claim clashes with a March 7 statement by his press secretary, Jay Carney, who declared that “the White House made the decision that we would, unfortunately, have to temporarily suspend these tours.”

Obama is now trying to backtrack.

“Well, what I’m asking them is are there ways, for example, for us to accommodate school groups — you know, who may have traveled here with some bake sales,” he said. “Can we make sure that — kids, potentially, can — can still come to tour?”

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Germany Defies Calls For Stimulus

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Photo Credit: European University Institute

Germany has ignored calls from its eurozone partners for more economic stimulus by tabling plans to cut spending and balance its budget ahead of schedule on the eve of an EU summit dedicated to growth.

Wolfgang Schäuble, German finance minister, said on Wednesday that his budget for 2014, involving spending cuts of more than €5bn to trim the total below €300bn, was “a strong signal for Europe”.

The plan means Germany will reach budget balance in 2015, a year earlier than required under the “debt brake” written into its constitution.

He described the 2014 spending plan as “growth-friendly consolidation”, intended to prove to the rest of the eurozone that “consistent sustainable budgeting and growth are not mutually exclusive”. Philipp Rösler, economy minister, said Germany’s public finances were the “envy of the world”.

Publication of the budget was deliberately brought forward by a week to bring out the figures before the EU summit, according to German officials. In spite of tough cuts for health, social security and environment, the plan was rushed through the cabinet well ahead of schedule.

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NJ Mother Pressured Turn Over Her Guns, Charged With ‘Terroristic Threats’ After Reading The Constitution At Tax Dispute Assembly

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A New Jersey mother was arrested and told to turn over her guns after reading the Constitution and peacefully protesting at a tax dispute forum, she says.

Photo Credit: the Hart family

Eileen Hart was with her husband Keith and her 7-year-old daughter on Saturday at the Gloucester Community Center to dispute a mandatory home re-evaluation that would roughly double her property value (and therefore dramatically increase her rates), objecting on multiple grounds. As an Orthodox Jew, she refused to have the inspectors in her home when her husband was away at work. As an American citizen, she objected to the seemingly arbitrary reappraisal, noting that she is not planning on selling her home and hasn’t renovated her kitchen in 30 years.

But at the forum, Hart was allegedly told that since she didn’t let the inspectors into her home, they had a right to “assume” its value under the New Jersey state constitution.

“How could they assume that my value had doubled when there is absolutely no housing market?” she asked TheBlaze rhetorically over the phone. “There is basically no GDP growth.”

After Hart started citing the Constitution, a representative of Appraisal Systems, Inc.– the company contracted by the state to conduct appraisals– started “freaking out,” she said, and called for Gloucester County tax assessor Robyn Glocker-Hammond.

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Oklahoma Lawmakers Approve Bill To Allow Armed Teachers

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Public school districts across Oklahoma could decide whether to allow armed teachers in classrooms under a bill approved late Tuesday in the Oklahoma House.

The Special Reserve School Resource Officer Act passed by the House on a 68-23 vote despite concerns raised by opponents over the safety and liability allowing armed teachers.

“Our children are grossly unprotected from an active violent threat,” said Rep. Mark McCullough, R-Sapulpa, who introduced the bill in part as a response to the deadly school shooting in Newtown, Conn. “We don’t need to be willfully ignorant of the fact that this could happen.”

The bill would give districts the option of paying for teachers to receive a minimum of 120 hours of specialized training in order to carry a firearm into the school. The Council on Law Enforcement Education and Training would be directed to develop a specialized training course for volunteer teachers.

Some members questioned whether 120 hours is adequate training for a teacher to be able to carry a gun around children.

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Wisconsin’s VISTA Program Wants Volunteers to Overcome Their White ‘Privilege’ Bias

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The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI) wants its white VISTA volunteers who work with low-income, racially diverse public schools to examine the “privilege” their Caucasian race confers on them.

DPI devotes an entire Web page to “Power and Privilege,” including links to racial justice workshops and online tests where VISTA volunteers can “learn about your personal bias.”

One “diversity” document linked to DPI’s Web site suggests that white people “wear a white wristband as a reminder about your privilege, and as a personal commitment to explain why you wear the wristband.”

The document — written by a diversity resource center in New Jersey — also suggests that white people ask themselves questions, such as: “How do I ignore privilege? What am I doing today to undo my privilege? How do I fool myself into thinking I am powerless?”

Other suggestions for white people include:

— Set aside sections of the day to critically examine how privilege is working.
— Put a note on your mirror or computer screen as a reminder to think about privilege.
— Make a daily list of the ways privilege played out, and steps taken or not taken to address privilege.
— Find a person of color who is willing to hold you accountable for addressing privilege.

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U.S. to Let Spy Agencies Scour Americans’ Private Financial Records

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The Obama administration is drawing up plans to give all U.S. spy agencies full access to a massive database that contains financial data on American citizens and others who bank in the country, according to a Treasury Department document seen by Reuters.

The proposed plan represents a major step by U.S. intelligence agencies to spot and track down terrorist networks and crime syndicates by bringing together financial databanks, criminal records and military intelligence. The plan, which legal experts say is permissible under U.S. law, is nonetheless likely to trigger intense criticism from privacy advocates.

Financial institutions that operate in the United States are required by law to file reports of “suspicious customer activity,” such as large money transfers or unusually structured bank accounts, to Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). The Federal Bureau of Investigation already has full access to the database. However, intelligence agencies, such as the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency, currently have to make case-by-case requests for information to FinCEN.

The Treasury plan would give spy agencies the ability to analyze more raw financial data than they have ever had before, helping them look for patterns that could reveal attack plots or criminal schemes.

The planning document, dated March 4, shows that the proposal is still in its early stages of development, and it is not known when implementation might begin.

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