Obama Spending Binge Never Happened

Market Watch, The Wall Street Journal

By Rex Nutting, MarketWatch

May 22, 2012, 12:01 a.m. EDT

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Of all the falsehoods told about President Barack Obama, the biggest whopper is the one about his reckless spending spree.

As would-be president Mitt Romney tells it: “I will lead us out of this debt and spending inferno.”

Almost everyone believes that Obama has presided over a massive increase in federal spending, an “inferno” of spending that threatens our jobs, our businesses and our children’s future. Even Democrats seem to think it’s true.

But it didn’t happen. Although there was a big stimulus bill under Obama, federal spending is rising at the slowest pace since Dwight Eisenhower brought the Korean War to an end in the 1950s.

Even hapless Herbert Hoover managed to increase spending more than Obama has.

Here are the facts, according to the official government statistics:

• In the 2009 fiscal year — the last of George W. Bush’s presidency — federal spending rose by 17.9% from $2.98 trillion to $3.52 trillion. Check the official numbers at the Office of Management and Budget.

• In fiscal 2010 — the first budget under Obama — spending fell 1.8% to $3.46 trillion.

• In fiscal 2011, spending rose 4.3% to $3.60 trillion.

• In fiscal 2012, spending is set to rise 0.7% to $3.63 trillion, according to the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate of the budget that was agreed to last August.

• Finally in fiscal 2013 — the final budget of Obama’s term — spending is scheduled to fall 1.3% to $3.58 trillion. Read the CBO’s latest budget outlook.

MORE HERE

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Romney’s Adversarial View of Russia Stirs Debate

The New York Times
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
Published: May 11, 2012

WASHINGTON —Mitt Romney’s recent declaration that Russia is America’s top geopolitical adversary drew raised eyebrows and worse from many Democrats, some Republicans and the Russians themselves, all of whom suggested that Mr. Romney was misguidedly stuck in a cold war mind-set.

But his statement was not off the cuff — and it was not the first time Mr. Romney had stirred debate over his hawkish views on Russia. Interviews with Republican foreign policy experts close to his campaign and his writings on the subject show that his stance toward Russia reflects a broader foreign policy view that gives great weight to economic power and control of natural resources. It also exhibits Mr. Romney’s confidence that his private-sector experience would make him a better negotiator on national security issues than President Obama has been.

Mr. Romney’s views on Russia have set off disagreements among some of his foreign policy advisers. They put him in sync with the more conservative members of his party in Congress, who have similarly criticized Mr. Obama as being too accommodating to Russia, and generally reflect the posture of some neoconservatives.

But they have frequently put him at odds with members of the Republican foreign policy establishment, like Senator Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, who was defeated in a primary this week, and the party’s shrinking band of foreign policy “realists” — those who advocate a less ideological and more pragmatic view of relations with rival powers.

The Romney campaign has been critical of Mr. Obama’s record and positions on a variety of national security issues, including containing Iran’s nuclear ambitions and confronting China’s rise. But many of the positions taken by Mr. Romney, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, have either been vague or not fundamentally different from those of the administration.

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What Does Romney Have To Hide?

The American Prospect

Patrick Caldwell

April 9, 2012

Senator Dick Durbin goes after the potential presidential candidate’s Swiss bank account while Obama campaign manager demands further tax return disclosures.

The Democrats are putting all their emphasis on touting the Buffett Rule ahead of a Senate vote for next week to coincide with Tax Day. The push is ostensibly an effort to twist the arm of a few of the more moderate Republicans—say the two Maine Senators or running for reelection in Democratic territory Scott Brown—under the hope that they’ll fear public backlash if they vote down the measure, a policy favored by over half of the country. However even if they peel off a few Republicans there is little hope that the bill would make any progress in the GOP-controlled House. Instead, as a conference call hosted by the Obama campaign Monday afternoon made clear, the push is an effort to focus attention on Mitt Romney’s wealth as a viability as the Republican nomination contest begins to come to a conclusion.

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin and Wisconsin Representative Tammy Baldwin joined Obama campaign manager Jim Messina on the call. Messina used most of his time talking with the reporters to attack Romney’s refusal to release his tax returns beyond the past two years. “Why is it ok to give John McCain 23 years and the American public only two? It doesn’t make sense, he can’t justify it, and he should release it,” Messina said, referring to the records Romney provided to McCain in 2008 while he was being vetted as a possible VP candidate.

“Romney is the beneficiary of a broken tax system and he wants to keep it that way,” Messina said, hinting at Romney’s 13.9 percent rate for his 2010 taxes. “He wants a system in which firefighters, cops, teachers and middle class Americans all pay a higher tax rate than he does. We think that’s wrong.”

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Obama Invokes His Christian Faith In His Call To Raise Taxes On The Very Wealthy (VIDEO)

Addicting Info- February 3, 2012

By Michael Hayne

A day after Mitt “Moneybags” Romney stated his lack of concern for the economically disadvantaged (an old school Republican touchstone), President Obama shot back by finally using the right-wing’s bullets against them.  Despite constantly being smeared as a secret Muslim, Barack Obama in fact subscribes to Christianity.  Today’s perverse version of Christianity typically refers to super rich, white proselytizers who flagrantly manipulate the pure teachings of Jesus and spew bilious hatred towards gays, women, single moms, blacks, and the poor and middle-class. It also tends to refer to making a bunch of bombs to kill a bunch of Middle Easterners so that some  defense contactor can continue to eat caviar.  So it’s only natural for thinking people to stay within 100 yards of it. But, much like everything else under the sun, the Republicans love co-opting it blatantly injecting it into politics in order to claim higher ground.

Former president Bush, a simple-minded lummox with virtually nothing to offer other than his ability to relate to even dumber people, understood that invoking Jesus’ name would guarantee universal support of his hawkish foreign policy no matter how severely flawed and unreasonable it may have been.  For that reason, I have been constantly saying that President Obama should put on his best decider face, hold a press conference on the white house lawn, and state that his good homeboy JC told him that he should return taxes on the highest earners to the levels during the Clinton era. But that’s not the style of the guy of the president who sings Al Green.

During the National Prayer Breakfast in D.C. that took place yesterday, the president revealed that his Christian (or Christ-like) faith heavily influenced his economic policies– including calling for the wealthy to pay more taxes and overhauling the healthcare system. He explained to the attendees that the nation’s challenges require smart policies coupled with a strong values system, and not of the philandering on your dying wife, or subscribing to anti-gay policies and making anti-gay rhetoric only to have secret gay sex variety.

‘It’s hard for me to ask seniors on a fixed income or young people with student loans or middle-class families who can barely pay the bills to shoulder the burden alone,’President Obama said.

“For me as a Christian, it also coincides with Jesus’s teaching that, for unto whom much is given, much shall be required,’ he added, referencing verse 48 of chapter 12 in the Gospel of Luke. “To answer the responsibility we’re given in Proverbs to speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute,” added Obama.

VIDEO & MORE HERE

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Richard Trumka Threatens To Abandon Democrats In 2012 Unless They Fight Harder For Labor

Richard Trumka Threatens To Abandon Democrats In 2012 Unless They Fight Harder For Labor

Huffington Post- Sam Stein

Posted: 05/20/11 02:22 AM ET

WASHINGTON — AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka plans to issue yet another warning to Democrats on Friday, proclaiming that if lawmakers don’t push hard enough to stem attacks on labor’s interests, workers will abandon the party in the 2012 election.

The union leader, whose perch atop the 11-million-member federation makes him arguably the most powerful labor official in the country, is slated to speak at a National Press Club luncheon. In excerpts from his prepared remarks, obtained in advance by The Huffington Post, Trumka focuses his ire on the widening gulf between U.S. workers and the wealthy — attaching particular blame to politicians who value ideology over morality.

“Budget proposals unveiled in Washington and state capitals across our country revealed a despicable canvas of cruelty,” Trumka will say, according to his prepared remarks. “And not just meanness. Destructiveness. A willful desire to block the road to the future.”

“America’s real deficit is a moral deficit — where political choices come down to forcing foster children to wear hand-me-downs while cutting taxes for profitable corporations,” the remarks continue. “Powerful political forces are seeking to silence working people — to drive us out of the national conversation.”

Trumka also says in the prepared remarks that party affiliation alone won’t determine how the federation allocates its resources in 2012. If Republican lawmakers embrace parts of the AFL-CIO’s agenda, the union federation will respond in kind. If Democrats abandon the union community’s principles — or if they fail to protest as those principles are attacked — they can expect similar treatment.

MORE HERE

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Wisconsin Democrats Win Seat That Was Held By Republicans For Sixteen Years

Wisconsin Democrats Win Seat That Was Held By Republicans For Sixteen Years In Special Election

Think Progress- By Zaid Jilani at 9:50 am

Wisconsin marks the birthplace of a burgeoning Main Street Movement defending the economic livelihood of the middle class. The movement was spawned after Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) and his GOP allies passed new laws stripping public employees of their collective bargaining rights. Last night, Wisconsin Republicans suffered what was perhaps the first electoral defeat resulting from a backlash to their radical anti-labor policies as Democrats won a special election for an assembly seat held by the GOP for the past 16 years:

Democrat Steve Doyle defeated Republican John Lautz for the Wisconsin District 94 Assembly, flipping a seat held by Republicans for 16 years in a race that focused attention on Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s plan to curtail collective bargaining right for most public employees. With 92% of precincts reporting, Doyle won 54% to 46%, based on unofficial results in Tuesday’s special election. The race flips a GOP Assembly seat for the Democrats, who remain in the minority.

The seat was previously held by Mike Huebsch, who Walker picked in January to serve as secretary of administration. Huebsch was first elected in 1994. The district covers rural La Crosse County and parts of Monroe County.

Doyle actually won despite “a barrage of television and radio attacks by third-party groups, along with mailings from the Jobs First Coalition, a Brookfield, Wis.-based group tied to Scott Jensen, the former Republican state Assembly speaker who left office in 2002 amid misconduct allegations.” “I look at it as a rejection of attack ads,” he told the La Crosse Tribune.

SOURCE

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Remembering The George Bush Budget Of 2001

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Why you can’t trust conservative deficit warriors: Remembering the George Bush budget of 2001

Crooks and Liars- By John Amato

April 18, 2011 09:00 AM

As we are witnessing, the Beltway media are pushing the theme of that we need to cut, cut, cut, so that our national debt can be lowered. They call this “shared sacrifice” — though it’s clear that they won’t be sharing in the sacrifice. The rest of us will.

This is a common assumption that news pundits are weaving into their narratives every day. The Democrats and President Obama have also embraced this idea and shifted the goal posts to the right of center. Austerity rules, even though it’s proved to be anything but effective. If we look at what’s happening in the UK now, and remember what happened under FDR when the deficit hawks stepped in to curtail the federal government, it’s clear that this nonsensical approach to budget writing just makes economic recovery regress.

To many of us watching the wealthy thrive in this economy while the working class struggles is very frustrating. I’m starting to finally hear some pundits question the wisdom of why Republicans refuse tax increases and instead push for more tax breaks for the rich at this time when they are already wealthy. Bob Schieffer asked Paul Ryan that yesterday on FTN.

There is one thing certain, though: The Bush budgets, and especially the tax cuts that accompanied them, caused catastrophic harm to our country and to the world. Paul Ryan wants to continue the work that Bush, Cheney and Rove started. Well, here’s a flashback to what George Bush  told America in 2001.

MORE HERE

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Current GOP Leaders Voted 19 Times To Increase Debt Limit By $4 Trillion During Bush Presidency

During Bush Presidency, Current GOP Leaders Voted 19 Times To Increase Debt Limit By $4 Trillion

Think Progress- By Travis Waldron at 11:49 am

After pushing the government to brink of shutdown last week, Republican Congressional leaders are now preparing to push America to the edge of default by refusing to increase the nation’s debt limit without first getting Democrats to concede to large spending cuts.

But while the four Republicans in Congressional leadership positions are attempting to hold the increase hostage now, they combined to vote for a debt limit increase 19 times during the presidency of George W. Bush. In doing so, they increased the debt limit by nearly $4 trillion.

At the beginning of the Bush presidency, the United States debt limit was $5.95 trillion. Despite promises that he would pay off the debt in 10 years, Bush increased the debt to $9.815 trillion by the end of his term, with plenty of help from the four Republicans currently holding Congressional leadership positions: Speaker John Boehner, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl. ThinkProgress compiled a breakdown of the five debt limit increases that took place during the Bush presidency and how the four Republican leaders voted:

June 2002: Congress approves a $450 billion increase, raising the debt limit to $6.4 trillion. McConnell, Boehner, and Cantor vote “yea”, Kyl votes “nay.”

May 2003: Congress approves a $900 billion increase, raising the debt limit to $7.384 trillion. All four approve.

November 2004: Congress approves an $800 billion increase, raising the debt limit to $8.1 trillion. All four approve.

March 2006: Congress approves a $781 billion increase, raising the debt limit to $8.965 trillion. All four approve.

September 2007: Congress approves an $850 billion increase, raising the debt limit to $9.815 trillion. All four approve.

Database searches revealed no demands from the four legislators that debt increases come accompanied by drastic spending cuts, as there are now. In fact, the May 2003 debt limit increase passed the Senate the same day as the $350 billion Bush tax cuts for the wealthy.

When Bush was in office, the current Republican leaders viewed increasing the debt limit as vital to keeping America’s economy running. But with Obama in the White House, it’s nothing more than a political pawn.

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Cuts In The 2011 Federal Budget

A Look at the Cuts in the New, Leaner 2011 Budget

Firedoglake-  By: David Dayen Tuesday April 12, 2011 6:35 am

he House Appropriations Committee released the final 2011 continuing resolution text, which reflects the agreement between Congressional leaders and the President. You can view a summary of the CR and the list of final program cuts. Or, if you’re daring, you can read the full text.

First of all, there’s a 0.2% across-the-board cut to all agencies and accounts. That’s for starters. The Obama Administration did engage in some sleight-of-hand to get to the $38.5 billion in cuts, however.

The full details of Friday’s agreement weren’t being released until late Monday when it was officially submitted to the House. But the picture already emerging is of legislation financed with a lot of one-time savings and cuts that officially “score” as savings to pay for spending elsewhere, but that often have little to no actual impact on the deficit.

…the cuts that actually will make it into law are far tamer, including cuts to earmarks, unspent census money, leftover federal construction funding, and $2.5 billion from the most recent renewal of highway programs that can’t be spent because of restrictions set by other legislation. Another $3.5 billion comes from unused spending authority from a program providing health care to children of lower-income families […]

For instance, the spending measure reaps $350 million by cutting a one-year program enacted in 2009 for dairy farmers then suffering from low milk prices. Another $650 million comes by not repeating a one-time infusion into highway programs passed that same year. And just last Friday, Congress approved Obama’s $1 billion request for high-speed rail grants — crediting themselves with $1.5 billion in savings relative to last year.

Republicans also claimed $5 billion in savings by capping payments from a fund awarding compensation to crime victims. Under an arcane bookkeeping rule — used for years by appropriators — placing a cap on spending from the Justice Department crime victims fund allows lawmakers to claim the entire contents of the fund as budget savings. The savings are awarded year after year.

Now this all looks to be true, except for high speed rail, which really is a reduction and a painful one. But because the budget imposes a lot of cuts in a small area, you could also write a story that reads like this:

The spending bill would maintain the maximum Pell grant award for low-income students at $5,550. But it would end a new Pell grant program for summer school students, saving hundreds of millions of dollars.

President Obama successfully resisted Republican efforts to take all federal money from the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. But the spending bill cuts money for the program that finances many family-planning services provided by Planned Parenthood and other organizations, Title X of the Public Health Service Act. The appropriation would be reduced to $300 million, from $317 million, Congressional aides said.

The Environmental Protection Agency, which has been in the cross hairs of the newly empowered House Republicans, took one of the largest hits, according the House appropriations documents.

The agency’s budget under the agreement is reduced by $1.6 billion, or 16 percent from last year’s level. Specifically, funding levels for Land and Water Conservation Fund programs were reduced 33 percent.

MORE HERE

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Wisconsin Recall: First Petition To Be Filed Against Republican Senator Dan Kapanke

First Wisconsin recall petition to be filed against Republican state Senator Dan Kapanke

by Chris Bowers for Daily Kos

Fri Apr 01, 2011 at 09:50 AM EDT

Please, support the recall effort by contributing $5 to the Democratic Party of Wisconsin and the Wisconsin Democratic state Senate Committee.

Recall petition organizers in Wisconsin will file their signatures today against Dan Kapanke, the most vulnerable of all the eight Republican state Senators:

La Crosse area Democrats say they will file petitions today with enough signatures to trigger a recall election of Sen. Dan Kapanke, one of eight Senate Republicans targeted over votes to curtail collective bargaining rights for public workers. If approved, it would be just the fifth recall election of a Wisconsin legislator.Recall organizer Pat Scheller said volunteers have gathered more than the 15,588 signatures needed and that they plan to take them to Madison after a noon rally today at La Crosse City Hall.

Kapanke represents a district that President Obama won with 61% of the vote in 2008. Our Daily Kos / PPP poll shows him trailing a generic Democrat by a whopping 55%-41%. An earlier MoveOn / Survey USA  poll showed Kapanke trailing a generic opponent by an even worse 57%-41% margin.

Kapanke is in a lot of trouble. He is also not alone. Last week, recall petition organizers against Republican state Senator Randy Hopper announced they had enough signatures, too:

Efforts to recall Republican State Senator Randy Hopper from Fon du Lac have reached another milestone, as organizers issue a call for volunteers to turn in any remaining petitions to be counted. Organizer Scott Dillman says he’s sure they have enough signatures to trigger the recall, but he can’t give exact figures yet. He says, processing all the information they’ve collected so far will take a week.

Hopper, a freshman who only  won his seat by 163 votes, trails a generic Democrat 49%-44% in our polling. In the MoveOn / Survey USA polling, he trails 54%-43%. Both polls were taken before the scandal about Hopper’s mistress receiving a state job with a 35% raise exploded. Since Monday morning, our ad highlighting the scandal has over 2,500,000 page views in Randy Hopper’s district, even though his district has only about 175,000 residents.

Even though the deadline is May 2nd, organizers in a few other recall districts either already have, or will soon pass, the number of signatures required to file recall petitions. As such, we will soon be entering the election phase of the recall campaign. Please, support the recall effort by contributing $5 to the Democratic Party of Wisconsin and the Wisconsin Democratic state Senate Committee. The recall elections themselves won’t take place for at least another 10 weeks, and likely longer, but we must be relentless in our pressure against Wisconsin Republicans.

For more discussion, please see the rec list diary by nik.

SOURCE

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