This Country is Governable

I look forward to Fridays.  Gateway to the weekends ? No. 

But on Friday morning each week, I get to sit down with a cup of hot tea and read Charles Krauthammer’s weekly column.  Charles writes for the Washington Post and is syndicated to more than 200 media outlets each week.  I get him on Townhall.com.

There is a tendency for liberals to dismiss Charles as a conservative commentator but I think that is an unfair oversimplification.  Remember that in 1980 he was a speech writer for Democrat Vice-President Walter Mondale.  I prefer to think that Charles is driven by events of the day – not ideology. 

In this week’s column, after a review of some useful history, Charles tackles the performance of the President’s first year – and the media coverage of it.  I will quote the history – but direct you to the full column for the rest.  <link here>  It is beyond me how the liberal media can feel that the overwhelming majorities in both the House and Senate are not enough to pass the President’s programs.  As Charles states in his column, the problem is not one of structure but leadership.  Ah ! Now we are getting to it…

 “In the latter days of the Carter presidency, it became fashionable to say that the office had become unmanageable and was simply too big for one man. Some suggested a single, six-year presidential term. The president's own White House counsel suggested abolishing the separation of powers and going to a more parliamentary system of unitary executive control. America had become ungovernable.

Then came Ronald Reagan, and all that chatter disappeared.

The tyranny of entitlements? Reagan collaborated with Tip O'Neill, the legendary Democratic House speaker, to establish the Alan Greenspan commission that kept Social Security solvent for a quarter-century.

A corrupted system of taxation? Reagan worked with liberal Democrat Bill Bradley to craft a legislative miracle: tax reform that eliminated dozens of loopholes and slashed rates across the board -- and fueled two decades of economic growth.

Later, a highly skilled Democratic president, Bill Clinton, successfully tackled another supposedly intractable problem: the culture of intergenerational dependency. He collaborated with another House speaker, Newt Gingrich, to produce the single most successful social reform of our time, the abolition of welfare as an entitlement.

It turned out that the country's problems were not problems of structure but of leadership. Reagan and Clinton had it. Carter didn't. Under a president with extensive executive experience, good political skills and an ideological compass in tune with the public, the country was indeed governable…”

My source: http://townhall.com/columnists/CharlesKrauthammer/2010/02/19/ungovernable__nonsense?page=full

Unsustainable Government

There is a simple graphic prepared by the White House Office of Management and Budget which speaks volumes about our problems. (click to enlarge) (thanks to tywkiwdbi.com)

I have three problems with ObamaBucks and his effort to “fundamentally transform America”

• WE CAN”T AFFORD IT. Even if I agreed with the President’s vision of America, and there are elements of some of his programs which may be laudable, we cannot afford the cost at this time and we are awash in debt that we cannot pay. Interest payments alone on the debt exceed 250 billion dollars (almost matching all funding for Medicaid) – and is sensitive to the potential changes in interest rates.
• UNPREDICTABILITY. The President’s policies for transformation have made the performance of the economy unpredictable. Business will not make the necessary investments in the economy needed to reverse the recession when nobody knows what the government will do next. The President has ignored laws and rules and his actions are seen as leading to inevitable undefined increases in taxes, inflation and interest rates . Business needs to plan – to know the costs and foresee the benefits of their decisions. Discussed in more detail <here>
• OPPORTUNITY COST. The function of government (in addition to lying, cheating and stealing) is allocation of resources according to some set of shared values. The President’s “transformation” will suck all the money out of the system. Just as our government debt instruments crowd out private business efforts to find money to borrow, the government programs for social engineering take dollars out of the budget needed for real government obligations.

The collapse of the I-35 river bridge in Minneapolis in 2007 is an indication of the catastrophe that is coming soon to an economy near you in the negligent lack of infrastructure maintenance that is endemic at all levels of government because of budget constraints. Our highways, bridges, dams, railroads, sewer lines, water systems and other essential examples of government services are past the point of collapse – all systems exceeding their designed 50 year life. In 1990 the government inspectors tagged the I-35 bridge as “structurally deficient” along with 75,000 other US bridges by the time of the collapse in 2007. Business and government always pay a price for deferred maintenance – and this bill is coming due soon.

In my view, the tyranny of the Administration and the Congressional Leadership violates the limited government mandates of the Constitution and upsets the delicate system of checks and balances built into our system of government by the Founders.

Wake up America.

Orlando Sentinel Commentary on the Governor

The Florida primary elections are still seven months away (August 24, 2010) but Mike Thomas, writer for the Orlando Sentinel, has the long knives out for Governor Crist and his election chances in the Republican primary for US Senate against former Speaker of the Florida House, Marco Rubio.  While Rubio has become the poster child in the national media for the Republican Revolution of 2010, the Governor is being consigned to the dust bin by the Florida media.  It should be noted that recent polls have Rubio 12 points ahead of Crist. 

You may see this state as a fiscal wreck, a place where jobs and people are vanishing at a record clip.
But in an alternate universe, on the planet Pandora, our happy Chieftain Charlie Crist promises happy days ahead and millions of dollars all around.
He has $500million for schools, $100million for universities and $67million for community colleges.
He has $100million in tax cuts for corporations, and $24million in back-to-school tax cuts for mom and dad.
He even has $50million to save the Everglades.
Meanwhile, back on planet Florida, dour and scowling men are convening in Tallahassee. They say they don't see the millions Charlie sees. They've looked and looked and it just isn't there.
They are about to drag Charlie out of his idyllic Pandora and into their harsh reality.
But that's the least of his problems.
Senate challenger Marco Rubio is taking aim at Charlie's Tree of Souls, his once towering approval rating that is his source of strength and power. And that great rumbling in the Republican neuro-net is an awakening Jeb Bush. His disdain for Charlie is growing. His endorsement of Rubio is pending.
When that happens, it will be the end of Charlie.

There is much more to Mike’s article – check it out a the Orlando Sentinel.

The Rubio/Crist Senate race was really only a minor player in the Sentinel piece.  The point of the article was the fiscal irresponsibility of the Governor at a critical time in Florida history. The Governor’s budget proposal is right out of Fantasyland and is an insult to the intelligence of the legislature and the people of Florida.  Despite current economic hard facts, the Governor plans to reduce taxes and increase services.  According to Mike’s article, the Governor has gone from lame duck to Daffy Duck.  We can only hope that the media will start to see the President in the same way.

Another hard reality that is not touched on in Mike’s article is the Governor’s enthusiasm to receive 1.25 billion ObamaBucks for high speed rail service.  The problem is that nobody has shown who would use the service, what problem the plan would answer and the fact that the ObamaBucks grant would not pay for the system and there is no additional state or local funding available to build the project. 

Mike provides a perfect summary to Governor Crist’s career:

Charlie's political career is based on churning out a constant stream of positive first impressions. Keep them coming so nobody tracks the follow-up. That is why, more than three years after entering office, he has accomplished nothing other than being liked.

I hope the parallels to President Obama are evident to the reader here too. 

Wake up America. Take our Country back in 2010.