The budget situation is worse than we thought

A recent article in The Wall Street Journal gave me a start. I know the federal government budget situation is a mess, but I had no idea how huge the problem is. Check these numbers out.

First, we aren’t given the true statistics on our debt problem. For years, the government has gotten by without having to produce the kind of financial statements that are required of most significant for-profit and nonprofit enterprises. The U.S. Treasury "balance sheet" does list liabilities such as Treasury debt issued to the public, federal employee pensions, and post-retirement health benefits. But it does not include the unfunded liabilities of Medicare, Social Security and other outsized and very real obligations.

Because of this, we get to hear fiscal policy discussions that focus on current-year budget deficits, the accumulated national debt, and the relationships between these two items and gross domestic product. We most often hear about the alarming $15.96 trillion national debt (more than 100% of GDP), and the 2012 budget deficit of $1.1 trillion (6.97% of GDP). As dangerous as those numbers are, they do not begin to tell the story of the federal government's true liabilities.

OK, here goes—get ready for some disturbing statistics. The actual liabilities of the federal government—including Social Security, Medicare, and federal employees' future retirement benefits—already exceed $86.8 trillion, or 550% of GDP. For the year ending Dec. 31, 2011, the annual accrued expense of Medicare and Social Security was $7 trillion. Nothing like that figure is used in calculating the deficit. In reality, the reported budget deficit is less than one-fifth of the more accurate figure.

We are told we can solve this problem if we tax the rich and tighten a few loopholes in our tax code. When the accrued expenses of the government's entitlement programs are counted, it becomes clear that to collect enough tax revenue just to avoid going deeper into debt would require over $8 trillion in tax collections annually. That is the total of the average annual accrued liabilities of just the two largest entitlement programs, plus the annual cash deficit.

Can we do this by a tax on the rich and closing loopholes? Nope. If the government confiscated the entire adjusted gross income of American taxpayers earning $66,000 or more per year, plus all of the corporate taxable income in the year before the recession, it wouldn't be nearly enough to fund the over $8 trillion per year in the growth of U.S. liabilities.

So, what’s the answer? Only by addressing these unsustainable spending commitments can the nation's debt and deficit problems be solved.

Free speech under attack

As a college professor, I’m really embarassed by some of the things going on in higher education. A recent piece in The Wall Street Journal illustrates one key reason for my discomfort.

“How Free Speech Died on Campus” tells of Greg Lukianoff, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, and his attempts to fight for free speech on college campuses.   It’s amazing and discouraging to realize that universities have become the most authoritarian institutions in America.

By the way, Lukianoff, a 38-year-old Stanford Law grad, is not some conservative neanderthal. He votes Democrat, supports abortion,and is in favor of gay marriage.

The author of the piece, Sohrab Ahmari, starts by giving a recent example of a college attempting to limit free speech. President Joseph McShane scolded College Republicans for the sin of inviting Ann Coulter to speak.

"To say that I am disappointed with the judgment and maturity of the College Republicans . . . would be a tremendous understatement," McShane said in a Nov. 9 statement condemning the club's invitation to the caustic conservative pundit. He vowed to "hold out great contempt for anyone who would intentionally inflict pain on another human being because of their race, gender, sexual orientation, or creed."

It’s true that McShane didn't block Ms. Coulter's speech, but he said that her presence would serve as a "test" for Fordham. A day later, cowed by this threat, the students disinvited Ms. Coulter. McShane then praised them for having taken "responsibility for their decisions" and expressing "their regrets sincerely and eloquently." How's that for thought police and indoctrination therapy?

Lukianoff is disgusted by what took place. He says that the Fordham-Coulter affair took campus censorship to a new level: "This was the longest, strongest condemnation of a speaker that I've ever seen in which a university president also tried to claim that he was defending freedom of speech."

There’s plenty more I want to share about Lukianoff and his organization, but I’ll save it for my next blog.

Post-election ramblings

I waited for a few days to pass after the recent election. Now that the dust has settled, here are some comments of mine, in no particular order.

1. People aren’t interested and have little knowledge of the original intent of our Founding Fathers—limited government, individual responsibility, more freedom.
2. People respond more to emotions than to hard facts.
3. Many get confused about statements dealing with illegal immigration—they see it as an attack on all immigrants.
4. There’s an unfortunate tendency to ignore evil, both at home (abortion) and overseas (Benghazi).
5. We have been deluded by our educational system’s emphasis on multiculturalism—we don’t want to criticize anything as wrong or immoral.
6. People want total freedom without responsibility.
7. Negative advertising works, especially when you have no defense for your own shortcomings.
8. Evangelical Christians are a sad lot if my stats are correct. I heard  only 50% are registered and only half of those really vote.
9. Appearance wins out over reality. I read that some admitted they voted for Obama because he looked Presidential during the hurricane.
10. Certain racial groups who complain of racism actually vote in such a block that it’s hard not thinking that the real racism is in their own ranks.
11. Hope and pipe dreams can defeat the hard truth. Too many want to be told there are easy solutions to tough times.
12. Not so many believe in American exceptionalism any more.
13. Cynically appealing to class warfare can work.

The last word on Obama

Well, the election is tomorrow. There was so much more I didn't have a chance to discuss about President Obama's failures over the past four years. But maybe the following words can act as a summary:

Peggy Noonan on Obama:

He had the confidence without the full capability. And he gathered around him friends and associates who adored him, who were themselves talented but maybe not quite big enough for the game they were in. They understood the Democratic Party, its facts and assumptions. But they weren't America-sized. They didn't get the country so well.

It is a mystery why the president didn't second-guess himself more, doubt himself. Instead he kept going forward as if it were working.

He doesn't do chastened. He didn't do what Bill Clinton learned to do, after he took a drubbing in 1994: Change course and prosper.

The Wall Street Journal on Obama:

. . . after Republicans gained 63 seats in 2010, Mr. Obama might have imitated Bill Clinton after 1994 and made real bows toward centrist governing.

But that is not who he is. After a two-year extension of the Bush tax rates after 2010, he made no budget concessions and assailed the Paul Ryan budget as literally anti-American. He personally blew up a grand bargain with Speaker John Boehner in the debt-limit fracas after spurning his own deficit commission.

All of these were deliberate political choices, part of his progressive gamble that it will all be worth it if he can win re-election. Higher taxes are already locked into place, ObamaCare's subsidies are ready to roll out, and the regulatory wave he has delayed past Election Day can recommence. He'll have put the government in such a dominant position that its new powers will take decades to roll back or reform.

. . . In his more candid moments, Mr. Obama has said he wants to be the progressive version of Reagan, that his goal is "fundamentally transforming" America. If he's re-elected, that is what he will continue to try to do.

Obama and American exceptionalism

Just one more reason we need to vote Obama out of office: his remarks about American exceptionalism. He was asked if America was exceptional, and he said all nations believed they were exceptional. Notice that answer is a "no" without having to say so. But we are exceptional. Here are three ways, taken from Imprimis .

First, unlike all other nations past or present, we accepted as a self-evident truth that all men are created equal. For the first time in history, a country was established where a person's fate would be determined not by who the parents were, but by the individual's own freely chosen pursuit of happiness.

Secondly, in all other countries citizenship was a matter of birth. lineage, or blood. Foreigners never fully participated in society. But in the United States things were radically different. All it took to be a full-fledged American was to pledge allegiance to the new Republic.

Finally, in all other nations the rights enjoyed by the citizens were conferred by human agencies (kings, parliaments, princes). These rights could be revoked at will by these same agencies. But in America, the citizen's rights were declared to have come from God and to be "inalienable"--immune to revocation.

So, do we want another four years of someone who sees nothing special about our country? His wife, remember, said she had never been proud of her country until Obama's campaign in 2008. I don't think these two represent the best of our country. Let's hope we turn them out on Tuesday.

Headlines today--more bad news for Obama and the U.S.

As a reminder of why we need to elect Romney, here are some headlines for today:

OCTOBER UNEMPLOYMENT UP: 7.9%..., RATE HIGHER THAN WHEN OBAMA TOOK OFFICE...,
Incomes Continue to Decline..., Long-Term Unemployment Rate Rises to 40.6%..., Blacks to 14.3%..., Food Stamp Growth 75X Greater than Job Creation...

A reminder of why we need to get rid of Obama

Here's part of a new article by George Will that makes sense to me:

Energetic in body but indolent in mind, Barack Obama in his frenetic campaigning for a second term is promising to replicate his first term, although simply apologizing would be appropriate. His long campaign’s bilious tone — scurrilities about Mitt Romney as a monster of, at best, callous indifference; adolescent japes about “Romnesia” — is discordant coming from someone who has favorably compared his achievements to those of “any president” since Lincoln, with the “possible” exceptions of Lincoln, LBJ and FDR. Obama’s oceanic self-esteem — no deficit there — may explain why he seems to smolder with resentment that he must actually ask for a second term . . .

Much of the Democratic Party’s vast reservoir of condescension is currently focused on women, who are urged not to trouble their pretty little heads about actual problems but instead to worry that, 52 years after birth control pills went on the market and 47 years after access to contraception became a constitutional right, reproductive freedom is at risk. This insult may explain the shift of women toward Romney.