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It’s the Debt, Donald, the Debt

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History can be a fickle judge. Something considered revolutionary in the immediate past can seem quite insignificant later. The long-term reputation of many early twenty-first century American politicians will partly depend on whether they tackle our republic’s colossal public debt.

That includes the incoming President, Donald Trump. He clearly knows it’s a problem. In one campaign stop, he said, “So we have now $19 trillion in deficits. $19 trillion, you know if you look, we owe! … And we’re gonna knock it down and we’re gonna bring it down big league and quickly.”

Any new administration can only do so many things. Yet over the last 16 years, America’s public debt has grown so massive that reducing it must become a priority. And while public finance isn’t the sexiest of subjects, mishandling or simply ignoring the issue will have serious long-term consequences for the United States.

What’s at Stake?

On December 30, 2016, the United States’ official public debt was $19.97 trillion. It’s almost doubled since 2008. It also exceeds the size of America’s economy in nominal GDP in 2016 ($18.56 trillion).

Put another way, America’s public debt is approximately 107% of nominal GDP. To make matters worse, these numbers don’t include state and local government debt or the unfunded liabilities of entitlement programs like Social Security.

The reasons for this rise in public debt aren’t hard to grasp. At its most basic level, it reflects a failure of Congress and the Executive Branch to match spending and revenue since 2000. The gap has narrowed over the past 5 years. Nonetheless, spending continues to exceed revenue. In terms of what’s driving federal expenditures, it is social programs such as healthcare, income security, education, and housing. Spending on activities such as national defense has remained static.

So why should we care? What’s another trillion here or there?

Americans should worry because there’s plenty of evidence that this level of public debt can have grave effects on economic growth.

Once a country’s debt/GDP ratio reaches a particular threshold, one consequence appears to be slower economic growth. Economists argue about the exact threshold at which debt starts to impact growth. Some cite the figure of 85% of GDP. Others say 90%. Economists also debate how fast high debt negatively impacts growth. Yet there’s considerable consensus that, at some point, high debt-to-GDP ratios do have this impact.

Again, some might say, so what? Why should we care about a couple of percentage points less of growth?

Slower economic growth has several negative consequences. Take, for instance, employment. Slow growth means that businesses hire fewer people.

Another effect is that rises in living standards become sluggish, partly because real wage growth slows down. Slow growth also makes it harder for governments to pay down public debt, not least because tax revenues can’t match spending.

Slow growth, however, isn’t the only negative effect of too much public debt. According to a 2010 Congressional Budget Office study, it also undermines “future national income and living standards,” raises the possibility of serious “losses for mutual funds, pension funds, insurance companies, banks, and other holders of federal debt,” and increases the “probability of a fiscal crisis in which investors would lose confidence in the government’s ability to manage its budget, and the government would be forced to pay much more to borrow money.”

What Should We Do?

To address these and other problems associated with high public debt, governments have several options.

One is to raise personal and corporate taxes across the board. That, however, makes a country less competitive. That in turn has negative consequences for growth.

Another option is to cut expenditures in real terms. Here, however, we face a major problem.

A growing majority of federal government spending is now mandated and funded by what are called “permanent appropriations.” This is spending based on existing laws rather than the budget process. That includes “big league” programs like Social Security and Medicare. To get federal expenditures under control in these areas, Congress would have to change existing laws.

2005 was the last time Social Security reform was attempted. It failed, despite President George W. Bush’s willingness to spend political capital on this issue. The opposition was formidable, not least because retirees and about-to-be-retirees vote.

This may explain why Trump has stated he’ll protect Social Security and has ruled out tackling its problems by raising the retirement-age, increasing taxes, or reducing benefits. Trump has said that he’ll seek reform through improving efficiency and reducing waste. It remains to be seen whether this will be enough. Personally, I doubt it.

Why Growth Matters

This leaves us with one option for reducing public debt. And that is to increase the American economy’s rate of growth. A high-growth economy means more employment, a reduced call on the government to help those in need, more tax revenues to reduce debt more aggressively, and a lowering of the debt/GDP ratio.

Here we have some cause for optimism. The new administration is publicly committed to faster growth in the American economy. It wants, for example, to reduce taxes (including corporate taxes which are among the world’s highest) and engage in significant deregulation, especially with regard to the financial sector.

Such measures should incentivize entrepreneurship, help start new businesses, and make capital more available. If this boosts business confidence, there’s a chance that what John Maynard Keynes called “animal spirits — a spontaneous urge to action” will further bolster growth.

On the other hand, every regulation has a group willing to defend it. Any deregulation will face political opposition, some of which will be substantial. Moreover, the Trump Administration seems ready to turn America away from a general commitment to free trade and towards more-or-less protectionist policies. This will harm productivity and thus growth. Tax-cuts and internal deregulation matter for growth, but so does the American economy’s exposure to the discipline of international competition.

Excessive public debt is one of those long-term problems that undermine a country’s well-being and which democratically-elected governments have few political incentives to address. It’s politically easier to punt the problem to future generations.

Any serious effort to make America great again, however, requires a willingness to sell hard choices to the American public. That’s the essence of leadership, which is what Donald Trump has promised. And when it comes to public debt, it’s just what we need. (For more from the author of “It’s the Debt, Donald, the Debt” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

California’s Embarrassing Hire of a Failed Attorney General to Take on Trump

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The California Legislature is hiring former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to represent the state in expected fights with the new Trump administration over environmental, immigration, and criminal justice issues.

But based on Holder’s track record, don’t expect to see California racking up legal victories.

Although nobody is questioning the skills of the attorneys at Holder’s firm Covington & Burling, hiring Holder as, essentially, California’s outside counsel seems like an odd choice given that the Justice Department under Holder (and continued under Loretta Lynch) has one of the worst records of any modern presidency before the highest court in the land, the U.S. Supreme Court, losing far more cases than either of the Justice Departments of the prior Bush or Clinton presidencies.

Holder is also the only attorney general in history to be held in contempt by Congress for withholding documents related to Operation Fast and Furious, the most reckless law enforcement operation ever conducted by the Justice Department. That operation has resulted in the death of a U.S. Border Patrol agent, Brian Terry, as well as many Mexican citizens.

That also reflects poorly on Holder’s legal judgment.

Some may say that California is just preparing to do what other states like Texas have done in successfully suing the federal government during the Obama administration. But those cases are very different than what California is apparently planning to do.

The states have been suing to stop unconstitutional conduct by the executive branch when President Barack Obama failed in his duty to “faithfully execute” the law or acted unilaterally in ways that improperly changed the law.

The president does not have the authority to change, rewrite, or ignore federal laws he does not like. And federal agencies do not have the power to issue regulations outside the bounds of the statutes authorizing their conduct.

Stopping that type of misbehavior is the opposite of states attempting to obstruct enforcement of federal law or force the federal government to act outside its limited power.

For example, 26 states were successful in obtaining an injunction against Obama’s immigration amnesty plan because no president has the power to alter federal immigration law to provide amnesty and government benefits that have not been authorized by Congress or to decide that he will wholesale not enforce the law.

But California is going to try to prevent the new administration from enforcing federal immigration law despite the fact that the Constitution clearly gives Congress plenary authority over immigration and imposes a duty on the president (and thus the executive branch) to enforce the law.

Similarly, one of the reasons for California’s economic decline and severe budget shortfall problems is that it has been rated as the worst state in the country to do business in for the past 12 years in an annual survey of CEOs by the Chief Executive Network because of its high taxes and burdensome regulations.

As one CEO said in the survey, “California has been running businesses out of the state for years, and in fact, their policies are getting worse.”

Yet the state is hiring Holder to start a crusade against any efforts by the Trump administration to reduce the severe federal regulatory burden that adds to the negative effects on businesses and consumers that California already imposes.

Furthermore, the news that the California Legislature is hiring Holder came only a day after Gov. Jerry Brown nominated Rep. Xavier Becerra, a Democrat, to be California’s new state attorney general.

Neither Brown nor Kevin de Leon, the Democratic leader of the state Senate who was quoted in a New York Times article praising Holder’s retention, seemed to realize the complete lack of confidence retaining Holder shows in Becerra’s legal ability to carry out his role as attorney general—which is defending the state of California and its interests in environmental, immigration, and criminal justice issues.

This is particularly humiliating for Becerra given that he had told the Los Angeles Times that he intends to protect California’s “progressive” policies on immigration, Obamacare, energy, and criminal justice.

Becerra has already challenged the federal government, saying that “If you want to take on a forward-leaning state that is prepared to defend its rights and interests, then come at us.”

Looks like he is not going to get that chance, however, even if he is confirmed as the attorney general. Those cases will instead be handled by Holder and an entire team of lawyers at Holder’s private law firm, Covington & Burling, a premier Washington, D.C., law firm not exactly known for its low billing rates.

There is little doubt that California taxpayers, who are already living in a state with high taxes and huge budget problems, are going to get soaked for a lot of legal costs in addition to the price they already pay for the Office of the State Attorney General, which has 4,500 lawyers, investigators, police officers, and other staff.

Apparently, however, the California Legislature doubts their ability to fulfill their duties of defending the state’s interests.

All of this illustrates that the California Legislature has made a poor—but no doubt a very expensive—choice that will hurt the state.

But it is hardly surprising, I suppose, that the state would hire a former attorney general whose Justice Department did everything it could to defend the mountain of new, out-of-control regulations issued by the Obama administration in order to try to keep those economically costly regulations in place.

Nor is it shocking that an attorney general who did everything he could to avoid enforcing federal immigration law during the Obama administration will now try to help California obstruct the enforcement of federal immigration law during the Trump administration.

Holder’s goals seem to have stayed the same; it’s just the playing field that has changed. (For more from the author of “California’s Embarrassing Hire of a Failed Attorney General to Take on Trump” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Did Voters Trash Conservative Principles by Voting for Donald Trump?

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I have read countless commentaries, many of them by NeverTrump conservatives, on why it is “dangerous” for the Republican party and the American right to embrace Donald Trump’s populist agenda. And on some counts, I agree. Trump’s more ham-handed attempts to “protect” American workers from foreign competition could end up costing more American jobs in the long run. His decision to kick entitlement reform further down the road means that we won’t make Social Security solvent anytime soon. His distrust of U.S. intervention in foreign countries could encourage bad actors on the world scene to fill the power vacuum. There are substantive, prudent arguments to be made about such issues, on a case-by-case basis.

What bothers me isn’t the willingness to stand independent of the GOP’s standard-bearer when the facts seem to point against him. That’s the job of any patriotic citizen who isn’t directly employed by the White House or a political party. Instead, what we ought to question is a largely unspoken assumption that some Trump critics seem to take for granted, namely:

That conservatism is primarily a set of universal ideas, which could apply equally anywhere on earth. We must stand by them even if they seem to directly harm important institutions to which we owe concrete loyalty. That is the cost of being principled.

That was the central argument, I think, of writers like Ross Douthat (and some at National Review) who asserted that a Hillary Clinton victory would be healthier in the long run, because while it gravely harmed churches, the natural family, individual liberty, and national security, at least it would maintain unsullied the purity of conservatism’s principles.

Conservatism was Born, Not Cloned

Let’s remember the origin of the left-right spectrum. It emerged not in a climate-controlled faculty lounge, but in the sweaty halls of the French National Assembly during the tense build-up to the Revolution. Deputies who wanted to tear down the monarchy, dismantle the churc, and put the radically centralized power of the French state in the hands of middle class radicals, grouped themselves together on the left side of the room. On the right were those who supported the monarchy in some form, and those who wished to protect the church.

Yes, you could find abstract political principles which, carefully teased out, might explain the views of each faction. But in fact, they were dividing based not on such abstract arguments, but over a series of concrete, practical questions: Shall we topple the king and guillotine him? Should the state seize my local church’s lands? Or should we retain the monarchy and perhaps reform it? Should we leave the church alone, and perhaps give it more independence from royal power?

Likewise, in 2016 conservative voters — in sharp contrast to the most prominent conservative writers — decided to back a candidate who pledged to protect particular good things that they considered important, rather than abstract principles that line up neatly in a 700-word column.

Most broadly, they wanted to preserve and restore a middle-class America led by tolerant Anglo-Protestant values, which was domestically safe and internationally respected. They asked for the government to concentrate on furthering those goals, and doing whatever was pragmatically necessary to achieve them. If that lines up with the small-government preference of classical liberals, fine. If it encourages other countries to choose tolerant, democratic capitalism, all the better.

But those rather abstract goals ran a distant second or third in the minds of such voters to the concrete, particular promises which Mr. Trump made so effectively. Proof of that fact lies in the otherwise puzzling preference of evangelical voters for Donald Trump over Ted Cruz. (Full disclosure: as a pointy-head myself, I backed Ted Cruz till the end.)

And voters would not be dissuaded by pundits’ arguments that protecting the things they considered vital to a good life for them and their children somehow violated what seemed to them abstract taboos. For instance, when virtually all domestic terrorism — and most terrorism around the world — emerges from orthodox Sunni mosques, voters overwhelmingly (according to polls) backed Donald Trump’s proposed “pause” on Muslim immigration. They were not at all moved by complaints by Speaker Paul Ryan, for instance, that such a policy was un-American, because it somehow impinged on religious freedom. Nor are voters much impressed by libertarians’ arguments that every human being has an absolute right to pick up and move wherever he wants, regardless of national borders.

The same divide between protecting a concrete good and obeying an abstract principle applied to foreign policy. GOP interventionists such as senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham called for the U.S. to obey some categorical imperative to promote democracy everywhere, all the time, right now, no matter what, by confronting Russia and risking an open conflict in order to protect “moderate rebels” in Syria. Voters rejected candidates such as Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio who touted this principle, in favor of Donald Trump — who narrowed his eyes and judged that we don’t have a dog in that fight.

Street Corner Conservatism Returns

In the Washington Free Beacon, Matthew Continetti recently touted the 1975 book Street Corner Conservative by former Nixon speechwriter, Bill Gavin. A man ahead of his time (whose book is sadly out of print), Gavin called on conservatives to temper their efforts to work out a perfectly self-consistent ideological program, and focus on defending the concrete goods and particular institutions that mattered to GOP voters. It seems that with this election, Gavin has been vindicated — along with the only major politician who took his advice, his one-time White House colleague Pat Buchanan.

We can’t throw principles out the window. Mindless partisanship and economic populism are in the long run the way you end up with a country like Argentina. Instead, we should re-examine our principles and see if perhaps they are too abstract, if we have slimmed them down too much by cutting off their real-world connections. Perhaps the principles dominant inside the conservative movement became unmoored and needed revision — and voters let us know that in the only way they can. It’s our job to listen to them, and respond with an agenda that defends the Golden Egg of freedom without choking or starving the Goose. (For more from the author of “Did Voters Trash Conservative Principles by Voting for Donald Trump?” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Trump Will Have His Hands Full Fixing LGBT Extremism in the State Department

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It may be a new year, but there’s nothing new about the concerns surrounding the State Department’s liberal activism. While Americans were busy unwrapping presents, conservatives were tearing into something else: Obama’s record on social issues. After eight years of watching the State Department operate as a global base for abortion and sexual activism, most Republicans are ready to get back to the real business of diplomacy. That’s a tough job under normal circumstances, but after two terms of President Obama, the Trump team will have its hands full.

Lately, there have been some who have suggested that (after almost a decade of proving otherwise) the State Department has nothing to do with abortion and sexual politics. Tell that to our friends around the globe, who’ve spent the last eight years trying to dodge this administration’s biggest export: rainbow flags and abortion dollars. Under President Obama, this radical agenda has completely infiltrated the State Department — usually eclipsing the agency’s other vital functions, like defending religious liberty. Obviously, America has a sincere interest in stopping the unjust persecution or targeting of any human being. But what’s happened for the last eight years is not the simple defense of those who are mistreated — it’s the elevation of people around the world based on sexual behavior.

State’s Culture of Extremism: LGBT Issues

While some people are falling for the line that social issues are “irrelevant” to the work of the State Department, the Trump team isn’t buying it. They’re keenly aware of the culture of extremism at the agency — so much so that they’ve requested a detailed list of the ways the office has tried to promote “gender equality.” Late last month, the New York Times reported on the Trump memo, which asked the department to provide, among other things, details on the positions “‘whose primary functions are to promote such issues’ — as well as how much funding was directed to gender-related programs in 2016.” (Read more from “Trump Will Have His Hands Full Fixing LGBT Extremism in the State Department” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Trump’s ‘Historic’ Opportunity to Reshape the Federal Courts

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After an election in which the Supreme Court proved to be a deciding factor in how people voted, President-elect Donald Trump has a significant opportunity to reshape the federal judiciary from top to bottom.

In addition to the vacant Supreme Court seat, Trump will inherit at least 103 openings in the lower courts—that is, district and circuit courts. They don’t get the same attention as the top court, but hear many more cases on a variety of issues involving federal law.

The 103 vacancies is nearly double the 54 openings President Barack Obama had upon taking office in 2009.

Another 12 federal judges have announced plans to leave their posts later this year.

While the Supreme Court reviews roughly 75 cases a year, the nation’s 13 regional circuit courts (or federal courts of appeals) heard more than 55,000 cases last year. The Supreme Court accepts 1 percent of the cases submitted to it, so in the great majority of cases, the circuit courts set a legal precedent when they decide appeals.

“If you are a cultural warrior watching for rulings on gay marriage and abortion, the Supreme Court is where you should look, but if you are a business, a taxpayer, an employee involved in a workplace dispute, or someone making a discrimination complaint, the circuit court is often the final word,” Curt Levey, a legal affairs fellow at FreedomWorks, said in an interview with The Daily Signal.

Conservative groups such as FreedomWorks say they expect Trump to quickly nominate justices to the lower courts, taking advantage of an opportunity given to him after Senate Republicans declined to confirm some of Obama’s judicial nominees the past few years.

Before the last Senate ended its two-year term, 25 of Obama’s court nominees did not get a vote on the floor after the Judiciary Committee approved them, The Washington Post reported.

The nonpartisan Judicial Conference of the United States, a national policymaking body for the federal courts created by Congress, has deemed 41 of the openings to be judicial emergencies, because cases in those jurisdictions are severely backlogged as a result of long-vacant seats.

Though Trump did not talk about the lower court openings on the campaign trail, the circuit courts often serve as a pipeline of judges considered qualified for a Supreme Court appointment. Of the current Supreme Court justices, only Elena Kagan, an Obama appointee, did not serve on a U.S. appeals court.

Trump could get additional opportunities to nominate Supreme Court justices, beyond Antonin Scalia’s replacement.

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 83, and Stephen Breyer, 78, both liberals, and Justice Anthony Kennedy, 80, considered a swing vote, may choose to retire soon.

District and circuit judges, like Supreme Court justices, serve lifetime appointments unless they retire before they die.

“President-elect Trump realizes this issue gave him the election, that there’s a historic interest in the Supreme Court and the courts in general, and that the public increasingly recognizes the significance of the president’s role in shaping the courts’ composition,” Carrie Severino, chief counsel and policy director of the conservative Judicial Crisis Network, said in an interview with The Daily Signal.

‘Big Fight’ Ahead

Democrats eager to strike back at Republicans are likely to try to thwart Trump’s effort to name more conservative judges, even if their ability to vote down potential judges is limited.

When Democrats controlled the Senate, they changed the rules to allow for confirmation of all presidential nominees, except for the Supreme Court, by a majority vote. Republicans now have a 52-vote majority.

But Senate leaders usually follow a tradition of considering lower court nominees only if they are supported by both senators representing the state in which the court is situated. Democratic senators are represented in 28 of the 50 states in the new Congress, including large ones such as California, Florida, and New York.

“Trump won’t automatically get who he wants,” Russell Wheeler, an expert on judicial nominations at the Brookings Institution, said in an interview with The Daily Signal. Wheeler added:

The Democrats will put up a big fight and say, ‘There were nominees for these vacancies which were bipartisan and you refused to bring them for a vote when you could have confirmed them in an afternoon.’ It will be the fight over the Scalia vacancy, only multiplied by 100 because there are a lot more players in this.

Obama’s Influence on Federal Courts

Even with Republicans’ resistance to Obama’s nominees in his second term, the outgoing president was able to dramatically reshape the federal judiciary.

In his eight years, Obama ended up with three more judicial confirmations than his Republican predecessor, President George W. Bush, 329 to 326.

Today, nine of the 13 circuit courts have a majority of justices appointed by a Democrat, compared to only one when Obama took office.

Wheeler says Trump’s appointments won’t significantly shift these appeals courts because only about 10 percent of the 179 circuit judgeships—17 of them—are vacant.

This is significant because the Supreme Court, experts say, tends to take cases on issues in which the circuit courts split on their rulings. So if more of the courts are liberal-leaning, they likely will be more cohesive in their decisions, and those rulings, without making it to the Supreme Court, would become the law of the land.

According to Wheeler’s research, the Republicans’ challenge today is compounded because the majority of district and circuit court judges who are most likely to retire in the coming years are Republican appointees.

Still, Wheeler predicted that by mid-2020, Republican appointees would hold about half of the 673 district judgeships, compared to the current 34 percent.

In the circuit courts, Wheeler expects Democratic appointees to fall from 51 percent to about 43 percent by mid-2020.

“It’s not insurmountable in four years for Trump to restore the courts almost to what they were before Obama took office,” FreedomWorks’ Levey said. “If he can do that, the chances are conservatives will be in great shape if Trump serves eight years.”

Policy Impact

Legal experts say many of Trump’s policy priorities could be affected by the makeup of the courts.

For example, if Trump fulfills his plans to repeal some Obama administration regulations dealing with issues such as the environment, labor, and energy development, he likely will meet resistance from opposition figures and groups who could challenge his changes in the federal courts.

“In general, what will happen is as the Trump administration and his Cabinet appointees try to pull back, amend, change, or otherwise void regulations issued by the Obama administration in many different areas, you will see a huge number of lawsuits filed by everyone from environmental groups to perhaps state attorneys general to try and stop regulations from being changed or rewritten,” Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation, said in an interview with The Daily Signal.

Ernest Young, a Duke University law professor focused on the federal courts, said he expects Democrat-led states to respond to Trump’s potential regulatory changes by issuing their own regulations on issues such as climate change and immigration.

If that happens, Young predicts the lower federal courts will see cases involving conflicts between federal and state law.

“Progressive policy experiments at the state level will raise questions about what extent the federal government can shut those down,” Young told The Daily Signal in an interview, adding:

I expect you will see more challenges dealing with the validation of state law—about how easy or hard it is for federal statutes to preempt state law. Some of those may go to the Supreme Court, but the lower courts are critical on issues like that.

(For more from the author of “Trump’s ‘Historic’ Opportunity to Reshape the Federal Courts” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Is God Capturing the Heart of Donald Trump?

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When I walked in Mr. Trump’s office in April 2016 at his invitation, I knew I had been sent by God. I went with confidence in the Lord, trusting that He would speak through me. I was impressed to ask Mr. Trump’s second son, Eric, to join us for the first few minutes. I felt he would want to say some things about his father, and I would say some things about the need for a fatherless nation to have a father. The interaction was gratifying — more than I could have hoped.

Eric said, “I have a great father.” I said, “Let’s join in prayer and hope that he will learn what it is to be a wise father figure to a fatherless nation.” Eric agreed, and I don’t think we’ve ever stopped agreeing in our hearts and in prayer that President-elect Trump can actually become that kind of example.

Not many thought what is happening with Mr. Trump would have been likely, perhaps even possible, and certainly not probable. As I look in from the outside, and also from the inside as a result of the journey I’ve had in interaction and prayer with Mr. Trump, I sense that he is being captured by the heart of our Father.

I think many of his decisions may even surprise him — not that he lacks a brilliant mind, tremendous insight and ability to make a deal. This is beyond that. In my opinion, Mr. Trump is receiving wisdom only God can provide. The Lord freely offers it to anyone willing to hear, seek and heed. I think Mr. Trump is hearing, and I believe he is diligently seeking to heed what every American must know: America cannot be great without God.

The Great Shepherd in Stormy Times

I believe God is seeking to impart to President-elect Trump, Vice President-elect Pence and every prospective cabinet member the very heart of the ultimate Father and the Great Shepherd. Our Lord made it clear that when we allow Him to become our Shepherd, we need not want. He is our source. However needy we may be, He is the solution and He will often use compassion-filled people to meet our needs. But we will never, never become dependent on a source other than God our Father and Shepherd.

When we understand the freedom the Shepherd offers, we refuse to become pawns to any power-broker, power source or political party; for the Shepherd, who loves us with the love of the Father, will lead us in green pastures, not barren deserts. He will meet our needs. He will give us opportunity and productivity. He will lead us beside water made calm by His Spirit.

The raging storms of terrorist activity and continual threats to freedom can be miraculously calmed. The enemy will not cease to scheme, plot and attack, but when we move into the presence of overwhelming peace that only God can offer, there will be supernatural calmness and security. We will find our souls being restored, just as Betty’s and mine are being restored now.

Four years ago, just three days after Christmas and three days before the new year, we lost our baby girl, Robin — our miracle baby. That beautiful baby we did not expect and was so difficult to carry to term came into this world to sow seeds of life for the next 40 years that will reap eternal dividends. When we think of our precious daughter, our Lord restores our soul. He binds up our broken heart. Yes, it is still broken, and He is still binding it with His love and peace. We will depend on that from now until we see our beautiful daughter in His presence when we enter forever the house of the Lord. And we will say with her, “I was glad when they said, ‘Let us go into the house of the Lord.’”

I can promise you that God our Father and Shepherd wants to restore the soul of every person reading these words and every broken heart in this nation. He will lead us not in paths of religious pretense and the “traditions of men taught as the commands of God” but rather in His righteousness, and He will do it for His name’s sake, for His glory — and He will be exalted.

“Surround Me”

I want to be honest with you. I think the leadership we have chosen in our nation wants that deep in their hearts. They may not say it the way we as Christians would want to hear it, but I believe it is the longing of their hearts. Yes, I believe it is the longing of President-elect Trump and Vice President-elect Pence. I believe Mr. Trump wants for you something so far beyond what he can give you that he knows it must come from above. The morning after the election, I talked to him by phone. “We’re going to keep surrounding you with prayer, love and all the help we can give you,” I said. He responded, “Surround me. Don’t let me ever forget! Surround me!”

I’m saying to every person who knows how to pray, who knows God as Father, and who has experienced the watch-care of the Great Shepherd, please pray for our nation’s leadership and all they appoint, for they will be under fierce assault.

You can rest assured there will be a non-stop, all-out attack on every decision Mr. Trump makes. Some will be as fierce and potentially damaging as the father of lies, the enemy of truth and wisdom, can bring to pass. You will see venomous hatred spewing from expected and unexpected sources.

The poisoned darts will also be aimed at those he appoints. I’ll be sharing in another column their willingness to wear the bull’s-eye on their backs and sacrifice for their country, knowing the cost for taking this journey with President-elect Trump.

Our experience with our daughter confirms that even when we “walk through the valley of the shadow death,” we “fear no evil” because He is with us. As the passage says, “His rod and His staff comfort us.” That means we receive His correction and direction through the rod and the staff of the loving Shepherd. He will, in fact, “prepare a table before us in the presence of all our enemies and anoint our heads” with the oil of His love, compassion and mercy. We will be able to say we are witnesses of the fact that “goodness and mercy” indeed follows us all the days of our lives and throughout eternity. And we know that we “will dwell in the house of the Lord forever,” beginning now, as we choose to live in His shelter.

This is the heart of the Father and the heart of our Shepherd. I believe it’s what the people who voted for correction, hope and change in our nation desire — whether they’ve confessed the Lord or not. How I pray that all will come to know Him and experience Him with all the evidence of His grace and glory. I believe the desire of our Father and Shepherd is the desire of the leadership we have chosen in our nation. We must pray for that because if that is not their desire, it must become their desire. Our desire must be His desire.

We Can Make a Kingdom Imprint

Let me sum it up. Although I was not initially a Donald Trump fan or supporter, God sent me to him. The love God has given me for him is totally supernatural. Although he might not put it in these terms, I believe Mr. Trump wants what our Father in heaven wants for all people: God’s best for you and every American. I think he knows that if we receive God’s best, we are in fact going to be a blessing and an inspiration to the nations of the world, and we will be a beacon of hope and freedom until Christ comes. We can make a kingdom imprint in today’s very sick world. (For more from the author of “Is God Capturing the Heart of Donald Trump?” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Democrats Take Aim at Trump Nominees, Unlike Republicans’ Speedy OK of Obama Cabinet

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Senate Democrats are mounting an aggressive effort to reject or delay President-elect Donald Trump’s choices for major Cabinet positions, in a reversal of the deference Republicans showed in speedily confirming President Barack Obama’s nominees eight years ago.

In January 2009, the Senate confirmed 10 of Obama’s Cabinet choices within his first week as president, nine of them by voice vote, in which senators’ yes and no votes aren’t recorded.

Now, though, the Senate’s top Democrat has put the chamber’s top Republican on notice that at least eight of Trump’s picks are in Democrats’ crosshairs, beginning with one of their own colleagues—Trump’s choice for attorney general, Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala.

Others targeted are Trump’s picks for secretary of state, treasury, education, labor, and health and human services.

“Any attempt by Republicans to have a series of rushed, truncated hearings before Inauguration Day and before the Congress and public have adequate information on all of them is something Democrats will vehemently resist,” new Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Monday in a statement to The Washington Post.

“If Republicans think they can quickly jam through a whole slate of nominees without a fair hearing process, they’re sorely mistaken.”

In addition to Sessions, The Washington Post reported, those targeted by Democrats include Rex Tillerson, the Exxon Mobil CEO who is Trump’s choice for secretary of state, and Steve Mnuchin, the former Goldman Sachs executive who is Trump’s pick for treasury secretary.

Other Trump choices on the hit list, Democratic aides told the newspaper:

— Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., for secretary of health and human services.
— Rep. Mick Mulvaney, R-N.C., for director of the Office of Management and Budget.
— Philanthropist and education activist Betsy DeVos for education secretary.
— Restaurant chain executive Andy Puzder for labor secretary.
— Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt for environmental protection administrator.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., answered the Democrats on Tuesday by releasing statistics and quotations he said illustrate how much deference Republicans gave to Obama’s nominees in 2009—and how much Schumer and other Democrats have said they respected such deference.

Why Democrats Have Few Options

Democrats don’t have the numbers to outright defeat Trump nominees, thanks to a procedural change they made when they last controlled the Senate.

Republicans need a simple majority of 51 votes to move to confirm the president’s Cabinet appointments, rather than the supermajority of 60 previously required, and they have 52 seats. In addition, incoming Vice President Mike Pence will have the power to break any tie votes.

Democrats’ requirement of only a simple majority to avoid a filibuster and put a confirmation to a floor vote, or advance other business, is known on Capitol Hill as “the nuclear option.”

“They have tied their own hands on this,” Heritage Foundation procedural expert Rachel Bovard said of the Democrats, “and because of ‘going nuclear,’ essentially they have put every … nominee at a 51-vote threshold and there’s 52 Republicans.”

Referring to Republican leadership and the Trump transition team, Bovard added in a phone interview with The Daily Signal:

So, if they can get every Republican on board for each nominee, which I think that they’ll be able to do, there’s not much that Senate Democrats can do against that. It’s completely their own fault.

Sixty votes still are required to end debate and proceed to a vote to confirm a nominee for the Supreme Court, though a simple majority is required to confirm.

Democrats controlled the Senate in 2009, and would for two years, but Republicans put up little or no resistance to the choices of a new Democrat president, Obama, for top executive branch offices.

Now that Republicans control the Senate, however, Democrats appear to be showing little such deference to a new Republican president’s picks to run major government departments.

‘A Longstanding Tradition’

Bovard, director of policy services at The Heritage Foundation, previously was policy director for the Senate Steering Committee and an aide to several Republican senators and House members.

She told The Daily Signal that Obama’s Cabinet nominees enjoyed an easy confirmation process because of the well-established tradition of senatorial respect for a president’s major appointees, who run executive branch departments as the president expects.

Bovard said of the traditional attitude of senators:

They may not agree with everything that the nominee says or does or pledges, but it has been a longstanding tradition particularly in the Senate just to say, ‘Look, the president has the right to pick his own people.’ That is sort of the underlying trend.

Obama’s immediate predecessors as president, Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Bill Clinton, also enjoyed relatively speedy Cabinet confirmations.

The Senate confirmed 11 of Bush’s Cabinet appointees in the first week of his first term; it confirmed 17 of Clinton’s nominees in the first week of his first term, according to Senate records.

Interestingly, the Senate used the voice vote more in confirming Obama’s initial Cabinet choices than it did in conforming Bush or Clinton nominees.

The Senate confirmed eight of Bush’s initial Cabinet picks by voice vote, and three of Clinton’s initial choices.

McConnell’s release of confirmation statistics for Obama includes a quote from Hillary Clinton’s 2016 running mate, Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va.

“I think we owe deference to a president for choices to executive positions, and I think that that is a very important thing to grapple with,” Kaine said at a 2013 hearing held by the Armed Services Committee.

In November, the release from McConnell’s office reminded, Schumer suggested he would work with Republicans to get things done in Congress and avoid needless delays.

“We have a moral obligation, even beyond the economy and politics, to avoid gridlock and get the country to work again,” Schumer told Bloomberg. “We have to get things done.”

Senate Democrats can do little to derail Trump’s nominees, Bovard said, but they can use various procedural maneuvers to delay the process. Among them: failing to show up to a committee meeting so that a quorum is not present, and, on the Senate floor, prolonging debate for up to 30 additional hours.

‘Confident in the Nominees’

Conservatives in Congress appear eager to work with the department heads and other executive branch officials Trump has assembled, Bovard said.

“I think for the most part conservatives feel confident in the nominees that have been put forward. I think they are trying to give Trump’s Cabinet a chance,” she said. “They have not come out swinging in any direction except forward.”

This positive attitude is largely due to the stalwart conservative convictions of Trump’s picks, Bovard said, citing three:

Betsy DeVos is really well-known to conservatives for her work on school choice, Jeff Sessions has been a titan of the conservative movement for decades, even Ben Carson [Trump’s pick for secretary of housing and urban development] has been a longtime proponent of reforming HUD. So these people aren’t unknown to conservatives.

Questioning his honesty, the Democratic National Committee demanded on New Year’s Eve that Sessions recuse himself from the Senate vote to confirm him as attorney general. A hearing for Sessions before the Judiciary Committee is scheduled for Jan. 10, which is 10 days before Trump is sworn in as president.

The Democratic National Committee accused the Alabama senator of withholding information in filling out the screening questionnaire issued by the Senate Judiciary Committee. In a statement, Adam Hodge, DNC communications director, said:

Jeff Sessions has fiercely argued in the past that omitting information isn’t just wrong, that it may also be illegal. So what does he do once he’s nominated to be the attorney general? He omits information from his dark past, particularly when he was deemed too racist to be a federal judge.

Based on his own reasoning, and in keeping with Senate tradition, Sessions must recuse himself from voting on his own nomination.

Sarah Isgur Flores, a spokeswoman for Sessions in the confirmation process, says such attacks are unfounded.

“Sen. Sessions’ four-decade career in public service includes bipartisan victories on criminal justice issues with folks like Sens. [Edward] Kennedy and [Dick] Durbin,” Flores said, citing two Democrats in a written statement provided Tuesday to The Daily Signal. She added of Sessions:

He has bipartisan endorsements that include law enforcement, victim rights organizations, and African-American leaders because they understand he will refocus the Department of Justice on upholding the rule of law and ensuring public safety. The time for playing politics should have ended on Election Day.

A Question of ‘Previous Political Activity’

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, earlier said Sessions’ questionnaire was incomplete and asked Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, to postpone the Jan. 10 hearing to allow for more time to review the materials he submitted.

Grassley, in response, said Sessions has been upfront about his past, including old accusations, and that he submitted more material to supplement his answers. The committee chairman added that hearings would not be postponed.

Among her concerns, Feinstein said, is that Sessions, an early supporter of Trump for president, was not clear enough in explaining his involvement in “any political campaign.”

Grassley replied in a letter to Feinstein: “The question regarding previous political activity is of course designed to ascertain whether and how a nominee has been politically active. There can be no surprise that a sitting United States senator is politically active.”

Feinstein said another concern is that Sessions has not submitted the text of some speeches.

“Regarding the claim that several speeches were not included, of course you also know that we and our colleagues are frequently called upon to speak at a variety of constituent and other events,” Grassley replied. “Senator Sessions explained that he made his best effort to identify and locate copies of such remarks where available.”

The committee chairman added that Sessions produced all items requested in the questionnaire.

Grassley noted that past Cabinet nominees have not been able to provide transcripts for every speech they ever gave. And, he said, Obama’s first attorney general, Eric Holder, “supplemented his questionnaire materials several times.”

“In December 2008 alone, Attorney General Holder supplemented his questionnaire responses with more than 200 items of information,” Grassley said. (For more from the author of “Democrats Take Aim at Trump Nominees, Unlike Republicans’ Speedy OK of Obama Cabinet” please click HERE)

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The Numbers Don’t Lie: Trump Needs to Do Better by 2020

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The year 2017 and the inauguration of a new president are upon us. And though the historic, stunning election of November 8, 2016 is behind us, it looks like the final data on what happened that day are very close to being at last finalized.

I’ve watched that data carefully on pretty much a daily basis since November 8, courtesy of the running tabulation collected by Dave Wasserman of the Cook Political Report, who has been the superb go-to source for people tracking this data. In the first two weeks after the election, Hillary Clinton’s popular vote lead over Donald Trump expanded somewhere in the range of 100,000-plus votes per day, which was shocking to behold. We have truly never seen anything like it.

Thus, while most pundits have moved beyond post-election analysis, I think it’s crucial to pause to revisit the numbers now that we have nearly finalized hard data. We can draw some fairly definitive conclusions.

So, looking at this from the winner’s perspective — that is, Donald Trump’s — let’s call this the good, the bad, and the ugly.

First, the good

Trump’s amazing win was an Electoral College triumph — the only victory that counts in winning a presidential election. It is striking just how narrowly Trump defeated Hillary in the crucial swing states that secured his win.

If the total percentage of victory in states like Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin were flipped by a mere one percent — or in some cases 0.2 percent — Hillary Clinton would have won them all, and thereby taken the overall election handily. Of course, they weren’t reversed. Trump flipped those states in ways that recent Republicans presidential nominees were unable to do. I wrote a piece on the eve of the 2012 election predicting that Mitt Romney would win Pennsylvania. Close, but no cigar. Trump, however, pulled it off — and it was a great accomplishment.

More good news from Trump on the swing states: As I looked closer at the 13 swing states, I see that Hillary did not reach 50 percent or more in a single swing state. That’s pretty significant. Trump did so in two of them, Iowa and Ohio, where he crushed her in both by margins of, respectively 9.4 percent and 8.1 percent. He got 51 percent in each, which was a major feat. Other swing states, like Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin were very tiny margins for him but major victories nonetheless. He also blew the Clinton campaign out in Indiana, a state that Barack Obama won in 2008.

And still more good news from Trump on the state data: It’s interesting how low Hillary’s percentages were in some states. She got under 40 percent in 18 states. She actually got less than 30 percent in six states (Idaho, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming). Trump earned less than 40 percent in 10 states and the District of Columbia. He didn’t get less than 30 percent in any states but almost did so in California, the most-populous state, where he was annihilated by Hillary, securing a mere 31.6 percent of the vote. And forget all that bunkum from Trump pom-pom boys about how their guy could compete in New York. He got his butt handed to him in New York with a mere 36.5 percent of the vote there.

Moreover, don’t make the mistake of over-inflating Trump’s seemingly sizable Electoral College vote over Hillary. The final tally was 306 to 232, which was good, but far from great. As Nate Silver pointed out in an enlightening historical analysis of Electoral College victories, Trump’s Electoral College margin was nice but well below average. Out of 54 presidential elections, his Electoral College margin ranks 44th.

Now, for the bad and the ugly for Donald Trump

The sheer depth of Trump’s popular-vote loss to Hillary is literally unprecedented in how bad it is. It is a terrible defeat for a winning president, and Trump enthusiasts should not delude themselves otherwise. They ignore or dismiss it at their and his future political peril.

Looking again at the latest cumulative popular-vote tabulation, Hillary’s lead over Trump as I write is 2.865 million. Her popular-vote lead still might hit three million, but will probably come in just under that. Still, those who (going forward) write about it or casually remark on it will probably tend to round it up to three million.

How dreadful is this for Donald Trump? The previous record popular-vote loss for a winning president was George W. Bush losing by only 543,000 votes to Gore in 2000. Trump’s loss dwarfs that by over five-fold.

Even more alarming, Trump’s percentage loss is 46.1 percent vs. 48.2 percent for Hillary. It has continued to fall and still may slip under 46.0 percent.

The 46.1 percent figure gives Trump a lower percentage than not only Hillary, but also Obama in 2012 (51.1 percent) and 2008 (52.9 percent), Romney in 2012 (47.2 percent), Bush in 2004 (51.0 percent) and 2000 (47.9 percent), Kerry in 2004 (48.5 percent), and Gore in 2000 (48.4 percent).

For a while, I thought that Trump might get lower than who was 45.7 percent, but that probably will not happen. Of course, here as well, historians and pundits and others will round down Trump to 46 percent, just as they tend to round up McCain to 46 percent. It will then look like basically the same vote percentage for both.

(By the way, Michael Dukakis in 1988 got 45.6 percent of the vote, which likewise is usually rounded up to 46 percent by historians. And amazingly, with that Trump-like popular-vote percentage, Dukakis was obliterated in the Electoral College, 426 to 111.)

Some Trump enthusiasts will likely dismiss all of this shocking data by arguing that if we simply removed California, New York, and Illinois from Hillary’s vote totals, Trump would have won the popular vote. That’s just downright absurd. The same could have been said for Romney, for Bush in 2000, and maybe even for McCain, R-Ariz. (F, 32 percent) (I would need to do the math). It wouldn’t be fair to do that to Hillary’s vote total any more than it would be to remove Texas and the South from Trump’s vote total.

Trump also countered that he would have campaigned in places like California had the presidency depended not on the Electoral College but on the popular vote. Sure. But so would have Hillary. In fact, Hillary thus would have campaigned in Texas and the South as well.

This is an asinine argument. If a student of mine made this argument on an exam, I’d give him an “F.”

Look, Trump admirers, your guy got crushed in the popular vote in historically unprecedented fashion for a winning president. So be it. Accept that and move on. You’re far better off conceding your liabilities, so you can work to improve them next time around. Making false assumptions and excuses will be your political downfall. You were extremely fortunate you didn’t get burned by them in November 2016.

So, for Trump supporters who have been emailing me gloating about how brilliantly right they were, in defiance of the literal 90 percent-plus of polls that had him losing to Hillary (i.e., getting less votes), cut the nonsense. The polls were actually right. You were wrong. Be humble and be thankful, because you and your guy are extremely fortunate, even as (yes) his Electoral College triumph was a great achievement.

And here’s where your gloating can come back to bite you: If Trump gets 46.1 percent of the vote in 2020, he’ll be the first one-term president in a while, after three consecutive two-term presidents, and four of the last five.

Keep this recent but crucial historical fact in mind: Barack Obama in 2012 actually got fewer votes than he did in 2008. He got fewer popular votes, fewer Electoral College votes, fewer states, fewer counties, and a lower overall percentage vote. He still won, yes, but his margin of victory over McCain in 2008 had been very significant. He had room for error his second time around. Donald Trump does not.

Don’t gloat. Trump almost achieved the impossible: becoming the only Republican who could’ve lost to Hillary Clinton.

But let’s wrap up on a positive note, circling back to the good from November 2016: Donald Trump deserves tremendous kudos for squeaking out Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Florida, and for sizable margins in places like North Carolina, Ohio, Iowa, and all-around for a solid Electoral College win. Those are the numbers that really count. And that is why we will watch Donald Trump rather than Hillary Clinton taking the oath of office in about three weeks. (For more from the author of “The Numbers Don’t Lie: Trump Needs to Do Better by 2020” please click HERE)

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2016: A Year of Ups and Downs … and Trump

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Well, we made it to the end of 2016. Boy, was that exhausting, and frustrating, and depressing, and exhilarating — often at the same time. And it was unbelievable. Unbelievable, as in, “OMG, I can’t believe the guy from The Apprentice is going to be president!” Folks can quibble about the President-elect’s net worth, complain about his financial and real estate holdings, but one thing is inescapable: Donald J. Trump owned 2016.

On New Year’s Eve, it’s fitting to note he also owns a winery. However, you don’t need to travel to Charlottesville for vintage Trump. He seemed to offer a sip, glass or barrel full every day. Yes, for of it was bitter left a bad taste in the mouth. Some critics refuse to taste anything other than their own sour grapes. Others love every drop of Trump vintage 2016.

What is hard to argue is that in 2016 Donald Trump captured the mood of many every day Americans. All the moods. Captured them in his face. Let’s face it, the guy does “expressive” the way New York City does New Year’s Eve. So it seems that if we want to remember what we’ve gone through in 2016, as a nation and as individuals, politically and personally, we really don’t need a lot of words. We just need the mug of the man who we used to call “The Donald,” but who in mere weeks we will be calling “Mr. President.” (For more from the author of “2016: A Year of Ups and Downs … and Trump” please click HERE)

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The Enormous Opportunity of Trump’s Presidency

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In 2016, the American people voted to change the direction of our country. They elected a new president and vice president. They returned Republican majorities to Congress with a two-year probation period to show we can deliver results.

This election cycle and its outcome were a loud message to the Washington establishment. In 2017, it’s my resolution to continue working to ensure that message translates into real results.

That means keeping our promises and making tough decisions.

For the last seven years, Georgians and Americans across the country struggled to cope with the worst economic recovery since the Great Depression. It’s time for bold changes that will get our economy growing again, and get Americans working again. The policy prescriptions of the Obama years failed.

President-elect Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office are an enormous moment of opportunity to begin turning the page.

We need to put patients in charge of their health care choices with a free-market solution that increases access and lowers the overall spiraling costs of health care, which Obamacare did nothing to address.

We need to undo the regulatory regime and scale back the power of unelected bureaucrats. Let’s start with the Environmental Protection Agency’s onerous Waters of the U.S. Act and Clean Power Plan, things we know are crushing farmers, land owners, and small businesses right here in Georgia.

We need to begin dramatically reforming and simplifying our tax code. We can start by doing away with the repatriation tax, which has locked trillions of dollars in overseas profits out of our economy.

We also finally need to unleash our full domestic energy potential, starting with simply approving the Keystone XL pipeline, something both Trump and the Republican majorities in Congress support.

Both political parties are to blame for both the crisis we face today and Washington’s lack of results. The lessons of 2016, and the failures of the last seven years, must not be forgotten in 2017.

In 2017, politicians in Washington must be ready to say, “we cannot afford it.” The national debt surpassed $19 trillion earlier this year. Unless we change course, it will rise to nearly $30 trillion over the next decade. The debt crisis is here, and we must not wait any longer to acknowledge and deal with that economic reality.

In 2017, we have to restore America’s role as a global leader. President Barack Obama’s failed foreign policy created a void of American leadership. Largely as a result, the world is more dangerous than it has ever been in my lifetime. We have to develop a real strategy to defeat ISIS and deal with the multitude of threats we face from all corners of the globe.

In 2017, we need to advance conservative ideas and principles. We will nominate and confirm a judge to the Supreme Court. Whomever he or she will be, they must stand steadfast in support of the United States Constitution and our founding principles of economic opportunity, fiscal responsibility, limited government, and individual liberty.

This is not about securing the legacy of another career politician. The American people demanded real change in the way Washington does business. Come January, an outsider businessman who is listening to the people will be in the White House.

That’s just the first step. Trump is surrounding himself with a dream team of policy experts, many of whom have spent their careers outside of the Washington bubble.

The people of Georgia elected me to do all I can to change the direction of our country. Working with Trump and his capable team, we now have an enormous moment of opportunity to really begin doing so. I’m excited to get to work. (For more from the author of “The Enormous Opportunity of Trump’s Presidency” please click HERE)

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