There was plenty of quality material in the Wall Street Journal the past couple of days. Here are links and excerpts from three articles that are well worth the read:
OBAMA IS PLAYING A NEW GAME
How's the president's game going? What's new is that almost everyone does seem to understand he's playing games. He used to get more credit. His threats of coming mayhem and his lack of interest in easing it have dimmed his luster.
Certainly in the past few weeks he's become more aggressive and gameful. A crisis is coming—a series of crises actually, with more ceilings and the threat of a government shutdown—and he is not engaging or taking ownership. The "We're not speaking" thing with Congress is more amazing and historic than we appreciate. Only a president can stop that kind of thing, and he doesn't. He doesn't even seem to think he owes the speaker of the House—the highest elected official of a party representing roughly half the country—even the appearance of laying down his arms for a moment and holding serious talks. He journeys into America making speeches, he goes on TV but only for interviews the White House is confident will be soft.
He doesn't have time for Congress, but he has time to go on Al Sharpton's radio show and say Republicans care only about protecting the rich from taxes. Which is the kind of thing that embitters, that makes foes dig in more deeply.
But here's what seems really new. Past presidents, certainly since Ronald Reagan, went over the heads of the media to win over the people, to get them to contact Congress and push Congress to deal. Fine, and fair enough. But Mr. Obama goes to the people to get them to enhance his position by hating Republicans. He's playing only to the polls, not to Congress, not to get the other side to the bargaining table. He doesn't even like the bargaining table. He doesn't like bargaining.
Where does that get us? We are in new territory. There is a strange kind of nihilism in the president's approach. It's a closed, self-referential loop. And it's guaranteed to keep agreement from happening.
WORLD DOESN'T END, OBAMA HARDEST HIT
Normal Americans awoke Friday to find that the veneer of civilization had not fallen away. If the federal government does end up spending $44.8 trillion over the next decade instead of $46 trillion, they may not notice at all. This may explain Mr. Obama's morning-after concession that "what's important to understand is that not everyone will feel the pain of these cuts right away," and that the gruesome cuts that the President had been invoking are now merely "a slow grind that will intensify with each passing day."
One reason the grind may intensify is that Mr. Obama spurned GOP offers Friday morning to grant him even more executive discretion than he already has to prioritize federal spending. Or as his own Simpson-Bowles commission put it, he could always choose among the "patchwork of thousands of duplicative programs, nearly impossible to track and even harder to evaluate for effective outcomes." This he does not want to do.
What he is trying to do instead is implement the sequester as rudely as possible so that he can extract another tax increase. As the President put it, the problem is that Republicans have adopted "an iron-clad rule that we will not accept an extra dime's worth of revenue."
But not so iron clad that the GOP didn't reluctantly consent to 6.2 trillion dimes in tax increases only this January in return for zero dimes of spending restraint. Mr. Obama wants Republicans to commit political harikiri by doing it again. Asking the other party to commit suicide is not typically a good basis for bipartisan accord.
Mr. Obama pitches his tax increase as "tax reform" and merely cutting "tax loopholes" and "tax breaks for the well off and well connected." He also said he doesn't want to "raise tax rates." But the Senate Democratic bill he endorsed on Thursday included the "Buffett rule" that is effectively a minimum tax of 30%, which means another increase in the tax rate on capital gains and dividends. Real tax reform means reducing rates in return for closing loopholes. Mr. Obama wants to raise rates instead.
THE DEMOCRAT MAJORITY IS DOOMED
But the primary reason today's liberal Democratic coalition will fade is because the very policies it pushes sow the seeds of its own destruction. The coalition can survive over time only by allocating slices of our nation's economic pie in a way that favors and placates its constituent members. But people, being human, will continually want larger slices of our economic resources, so continued success in placating those members, while at the same time adding the necessary new members, requires a continuing and ever-growing economy. A flat or shrinking economy will never generate the resources needed to feed the coalition.
Yet the White House and congressional Democrats are working to stifle economic growth. From their views on taxes and redistribution, to their policies on energy and regulation, liberal Democrats are standing in the way of the strong economy their coalition needs.
Instead of pushing policies that spur innovation and risk-taking, the left advances policies that discourage them. Instead of lower marginal tax rates and less complication in the federal tax code, we see higher rates and more complication. We see new taxes in ObamaCare and the partial expiration of the Bush cuts. California's new tax on millionaires brings the state rate to more than 13%, and the combined federal and state rate to almost 52%. The high rates are discouraging at least some wealthy taxpayers from staying in or moving to the state. As federal rates increase, such economic discouragement will be found across the nation.
Instead of policies that lead to the available and affordable energy supplies required for a growing economy, we see onerous new regulations on coal-fired electricity plants, foot-dragging in the permitting for oil and gas drilling, and a surprising lack of interest in the hydrofracturing process that has revolutionized the extraction of natural gas and worked to lower energy costs.
Instead of thinking of the government's role in the economy as one of providing the minimum rules for fairness, ensuring those rules are enforced, and then getting out of way, we see efforts to push federal bureaucrats—and their ever-expanding government programs, regulations and mandates—into more and more facets of the world in which we live and work.
The toll on the economy is real. According to a report by Sentier Research released last fall, inflation-adjusted median household income has fallen more since the end of the recession in mid-2009 (down by 4.8%) than it did during the actual recession (2.6%).
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