Economy & Budget

Tonight, we will hear President Obama give a defense of big-government liberalism and make an argument that growing government is good for America. He couldn’t be more wrong.

Almost 1 in 6 Americans depends upon the government for food assistance. To put the enormity of this dependency into perspective, the number of people on food stamps is more than the combined populations of Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan. Or in political terms, the astonishing number of food stamp recipients equates to 74 electoral votes.

I was intrigued with Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at John Hopkins University Dr. Ben Carson's perspective on tithing and our tax system during his recent address at the National Prayer Breakfast.

The reason that tithing is such a fair way to tax people is because it's proportional.  As soon as you move away from proportional taxing, ideology takes over.  As a result, ideology is, quite frankly, arbitrary and depends upon the flavor of the month.

A nuclear Iran and an America $136 trillion in debt makes anything else into pointless makework.

If you turned on your television, you might think that the biggest issue facing our country is 20-year-olds stealing their mothers’ guns, or illegal immigration, as if we have never had these problems ever before and as if they are destroying our country.

The economists and media are expressing surprise that the economy has shrunk. Anyone with a modicum of common-sense economy knowledge knew the numbers never felt or looked right from the beginning. 

Jack Welch, a true businessman, made it clear that the media and economists were delusional and selling we the people a bill of goods.

ObamaCare is supposedly the panacea to cure rapidly rising healthcare costs and lack of access for millions of uninsured Americans. It's continuing to prove just the opposite, with healthcare costs rising, in many cases quite dramatically. This has forced several businesses to reconsider whether they will offer healthcare coverage or accept the penalty, which in many cases is less expensive than offering the healthcare coverage. The other solution that many businesses are adopting is cutting workers to under 30 hours per week, which is the trigger for requiring healthcare coverage. In the long run, this means that people will have less access, and for those who do, the cost will be increased. Yet millions of people will listen to the mainstream media and the administration and continue to conclude that they have hit the healthcare lottery. This is a prime example of what happens when partisan politics and biased media are allowed to run rampant.

I was speaking to a group of college students recently and raised the question of what worries them about their future. I followed up by asking whether they were optimistic or pessimistic. A student answered that her hopes were to secure a job upon graduation and that she was neither optimistic nor pessimistic. I wasn't surprised in hearing that answer, because it seems that many in the younger generation do not think deeply about the implications of out-of-control spending. Obviously, many don't think about nor do they understand the impact of out-of-control debt on their future. They simply hope that everything is going to be OK.

Republican leaders should — and I’m confident that they will — take a principled position to save our nation from further bankruptcy, which is what a rational populace would call our situation. The president knows only the blame game; he doesn’t know about accepting responsibility. Someone has to step up and take on the role of grown-up; don’t count on it being Obama. In his four total years in the Senate, he (along with Harry Reid, Dick Durbin, Charles Schumer, Patty Murray and, oh yeah, Joe Biden) opposed raising the debt ceiling, and now as president viciously demagogues those who do the same thing he did in 2007. He is shameless.

In late February 2012, with the Republican presidential primaries in full swing, I told a reporter from The Hill newspaper that eventual nominee Mitt Romney should be more mindful of his words on the campaign trail, particularly as they related to immigration and unions. His divisive rhetoric, I said, could come back to haunt him in a general-election match-up with President Obama.
 
I went on about my day, confident I’d given an honest and accurate assessment. I had campaigned for John McCain in 2008 and saw then how the Obama campaign would dig up statements and use them at the most critical moments. And it’s not just the Obama campaign. In this age of YouTube and handheld cameras, candidates will be held responsible for every public utterance.

The Hill's A.B. Stoddard takes your questions on the debt-ceiling deadline and gun control. 

If America is faced with a national default because of Republican obstruction against raising the debt ceiling, in my opinion President Obama has authority under Article 4 of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to act unilaterally if necessary to avoid a debt ceiling-induced default. If default is the only other option, the president should exercise this authority.

Unilateral presidential action to avoid a debt-ceiling default is the second worst option, and should be avoided if at all possible. Unilateral action sends an awful message to financial markets. While I believe such action would be reluctantly approved by a narrow Supreme Court majority after an inevitable challenge, judicial approval is not certain. Bipartisan and comprehensive budget, spending and revenue negotiations on all outstanding issues is a far more desirable outcome.