Downsizing the Federal Government - It Can Be Done.

The Cato Institute has a blog called Downsizing the Federal Government which I just found via John Hood at National Review Online's The Corner blog. It has a department by department guide of federal agencies, what they spend and how they can be cut.

I think a lot of us look at the scale of federal spending and think, how can we ever get this under control? The answer is that you solve it the way you do any other problem. Break the task down into manageable pieces, as Cato has done here. The individual pieces may not look significant when you are comparing them to the overall problem, but they add up.

Also at the site, a comprehensive plan to balance the federal budget by 2020 without raising tax rates by reducing federal spending from its current (abnormally high) level of 25% of GDP to 18.5% of GDP, which is in much closer alignment with the historical average of tax revenues as a percent of GDP, as shown by economist Kurt Hauser.

Go and check the site out. I think you will see the task of getting the deficit under control a lot less daunting if you do.

Obama Inherited a Mess Alright - One of His Own Making

I've posted a couple of times on why it isn't quite accurate to blame presidents for deficits. The simple fact of the matter is all spending bills orignate in the House of Representatives. This time though, President Obama rightly gets his share of the blame. Congress.org has an open letter to Harry Reid with the subject line "I'm Sick of Inherited", that makes exactly this same point. It rightly points out that the Democrat Party controlled House started the recent climb in deficits and as a Senator, President Obama voted in favor of the budget busting spending of the 110th Congress and as President signed the 111th Congress' spending into law.  Here is the letter in it's entirety, along with my favorite graphic illustration of the deficit timeline since 2000.

To:  Sen. Harry Reid

February 23, 2010

The Washington Post babbled again recently about Obama inheriting a huge deficit from Bush, blah blah blah. Amazingly enough, a lot of people swallow this nonsense.

So once more, I'll try a short civics lesson.

Budgets do not get approved by the White House. They are passed only by CONGRESS and the party that controlled Congress since January 2007 is the Democratic Party. They controlled the budget process for FY 2008 and FY 2009, as well as FY 2010 and FY 2011. In that first year, they had to contend with George Bush, which caused them to compromise on spending, when Bush somewhat belatedly got tough on spending increases. For FY 2009, though, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid bypassed George Bush entirely, passing continuing resolutions to keep government running until Barack Obama could take office. At that time, they passed a massive omnibus spending bill to complete the FY 2009 budgets.

And where was Barack Obama during this time? He was a member of that very Congress that passed all of these massive spending bills, and he signed the omnibus bill as President to complete FY 2009.

Let's remember what the deficits looked like during that period:

If the Democrats inherited any deficit, it was the FY 2007 deficit, the last of the Republican budgets. That deficit was the lowest in five years, and the fourth straight decline in deficit spending. After that, Democrats in Congress took control of spending, and that includes Barack Obama, who voted for those budgets. If Obama inherited anything, he inherited it from himself.

In a nutshell, what Obama is saying is I inherited a deficit that I voted for and then I voted to expand that deficit four-fold since January 20th.

O's "O" Gets Turned Around On Him

Glenn Reyolds occasionally likes to post the following chart showing the deficits under GW Bush and those projected under Obama:

(I'll point out one more time that as bad as the Bush era deficits were, they were on the way down until 2007. That's when the Democrats took over both houses of Congress and all spending bills must originate in the House of Representatives.)

Bill Whittle posted a video at PJTV the other day on Iconography, and how symbols can be turned around. It's definitely worth the 8 minutes you will take to watch it, but here is a great example of what he's talking about, the same chart as above but using Obama's famous "O" icon against him:




Brilliant.

Created and published by Gunzip.

Member of the European Parliament Daniel Hannan Gives PM Gordon Brown What For

MEP Daniel Hannan, representative of Southeastern England in the European Parliament had British PM Gordon Brown as a captive audience for 3 minutes yesterday, March 24. He took full and glorius advantage of his time. Watch.




He could just as easily be addressing President Obama.

Another Mark Steyn Must Read

Mark Steyn writing about the "stimulus" package and TARP nails it again:

This is the biggest generational transfer of wealth in the history of the world. If you're an 18-year-old middle-class hopeychanger, look at the way your parents and grandparents live: It's not going to be like that for you. You're going to have a smaller house, and a smaller car – if not a basement flat and a bus ticket. You didn't get us into this catastrophe. But you're going to be stuck with the tab, just like the Germans got stuck with paying reparations for the catastrophe of the First World War. True, the Germans were actually in the war, whereas in the current crisis you guys were just goofing around at school, dozing through Diversity Studies and hoping to ace Anger Management class. But tough. That's the way it goes.

Read it all.

The Debt Star - This Is Not the Hope You Are Looking For

(via Instapundit)

An Inconvenient Debt

Watch this video to see a hockey stick graph you should be alarmed at......




(h/t Bob)

Compare and Contrast

If you aren't convinced by now that The New York Times is completely in the tank for the Bolsheviks Democrats, read "That Was Then, This Is Now", over at Powerline for an interesting and revealing juxtaposition of how they editorialized on the early Bush administration Republican deficit spending and how they are treating the early Obama administration Democrat deficit spending now.

Ed Driscoll Warns Us of Our Impending "Rendezvous with Scarcity"

(via Instapundit)

Obama's Broken Promises Were Entirely Predictable

Nicholas Guariglia at Pajamas Media catalogues the many missteps of Barack Obama's not even four week old presidency . He begins thusly:

"Barack Obama swept into office with the limelight at his back. For nearly two years of campaigning, Obama led a nationwide movement for change and became a phenomenon, breaking all sorts of political barriers along the way. People of all demographics used Obama as a vessel in which to invest their hopes and dreams. But today, just three weeks into his presidency, Mr. Obama is on the verge of losing the country’s confidence and the large reservoir of national goodwill afforded to all incoming presidents."

Read the whole thing. As Guariglia says, it's going to be a long 4 years.

(via Instapundit)