The leader we need: Mitt Romney

Possibly the “powers that were” knew in 2008 that George Soros has so contaminated the political landscape with his hatred of George Bush and all things conservative — Jesus Christ carrying a cross could not have won the Presidency. 

Here, however, is a man who CAN defeat Barack Obama — head to head, with or without a teleprompter, in an open debate on issues relevant to real-time USA …..

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HopeyChange #3: Mitt for Health Czar?

UPDATE: (see spending plan)

Update II: (HopeyChange takes a break)

okokokok — it’s far fetched, but when it comes to what’s currently transpired in the predicted melt-down of  the HopeyChange Revival on Pennsylvania Avenue — why not Mitt Romney for Health Czar?

He probably wouldn’t accept a salary and he’s already set up (not that his successor maintained it) a model program in Massachusetts. 

Oh well.  At least I spelled Massachusetts correctly.

Meanwhile — rather than showing leadership, HopeyChange appears to be hoping that the Senate will change his hodge-podge political-payback-palooza Pelosi-pork-packed spending bill.    It’s time to do more than send the minions to ride herd on Congress — you gotta cowboy-up yourself, Hopey!!  (See more below.)

Only when some group (such as 70% of voters or the EU or Canada or Russian or a few South American countries) complain about part(s) of the bill does HopeyChange “agree” …. So where is the leadership, Hopey?

This is YOUR save-the-US-and-later-the-world spending bill, Hopey!!

Geeeeze, Hopey!  Do something besides spewing informal rhetoric with an adoring Matt L, hosting fancy meals and cocktail parties, inviting a few buds in for a Super Bowl party or letting your staff tell us how you like the thermostat high while folks in the midwest are huddled in shelters or dying in a snow storm.   Do something, Hopey.   Take a stand — don’t just send your minions to do your work. 

Are we watching on-the job-training in action?  Are we already seeing signs of ole wimpy Jimmy the implausible peace-placater?  

Other nations are  already rolling their collective eye over the use of (**a MUST read**) Clinton’s ineffective 80’s scheme team to address  twenty-first century issues.   

The prospects are beginning to look as gloomy as you’re always portraying them, Hopey …. 

And folks around the world are lining up to watch HopeyChange melt-down.

Here.  Read it all for yourselves.

** Remember when HopeyChange told voters in the midwest he would stop the “export” of US jobs — then secretly sent a minion to Canada to tell them NOT to believe what Hopey was saying?  Well it’s backfiring on ole Hopey  and he’s changing his tune. 

Canada (already in trade negotiations with the EU and the U. S.’s favorite trade partner), Russia, China and the EU have expressed serious concerns about the “buy American clause in the Spending bill — with the EU warning of potential trade wars if Hopey doesn’t drop the “buy American” clause ….  

Obama’s “buy American” campaign slogan will continue to haunt him.

**  India has warned US President Barack Obama that he risks “barking up the wrong tree” if he seeks to broker a settlement between Pakistan and India over the disputed territory of Kashmir.

MK Narayanan, India’s national security advisor, said that the new US administration was in danger of dredging up out of date Clinton administration-era strategies in a bid to bring about improved ties between the two nuclear armed neighbours.

**  Russia is announcing that the US will lose an Asian air base that is critical to supplying troops in Afghanistan …. hmmmm …. Reckon Russia still remembers how we supported the Taliban when they fought (and defeated) Russia?  

And this scenario is not without prior predictions ….

Careful, Hopey:  Russia may force your hand on arms reduction and defense systems in Eastern Europe.  Plus they know where the bodies are buried and they own the gas lines that heat those EU homes …

**  A question of ethics, subtitled: How to Affirm the Chicago Way is the route to the White House and to other Democrat groups.  While the world is watching.  

**  Is this why the Obama’s send their kids to private school?

“First lady Michelle Obama set out Monday on a listening tour through the federal bureaucracy, stopping first at the Department of Education to thank employees for their service and rally them for the tough work ahead,” the Associated Press. While at the Education Department, Mrs. Obama committed this howler:

In thanking the workers, she told them: “I am a product of your work.”

“I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for the public schools that nurtured me and helped me along,” said Mrs. Obama, a Chicago native who attended its public schools as a child.

Michelle Obama was born in January 1964. The Department of Education began operation in May 1980, when Mrs. Obama was a 16-year-old high school junior. Apparently she is unaware that there were public schools before there was a federal Department of Education–though we suppose that’s evidence that the department does not bear all the blame for the schools’ going downhill.

**  About that “urgent” spending bill ….

$2 million for Las Vegas neon signs???

More Pelosi-pork-pie-in-the-sky  (This woman needs to be removed.  fast.  God-forbid anything should ever happen to Obama.  Or Biden.)

“Shovel ready” spending???  Only if the Senate is “scissor ready” ….

Coburn:  Plan is “morally reprehensible” ….

A Frisbee golf course????

UPDATE:  Sen. DeMint points out that the spending bill excludes monies for schools, facilities or organizations associated with faith-based or religious programs:

“Grants awarded under this section shall be for the purpose of modernizing, renovating, and repairing institution of higher education facilities that are primarily used for instruction and research”

“Funds may not be used for the “modernization, renovation, or repair of facilities–(i) used for sectarian instruction, religious worship, or a school or department of divinity; or (ii) in which a substantial portion of the functions of the facilities are subsumed in a religious mission.”

**  And on the China front:   predictions and contradictions

**  From another Obama think-tank:  How to get around Congress to write treaties …. Another Clinton maneuver, now less ….

**  More on what the MSM won’t be reporting about those Fannie Mae files and the immigrant worker who tried to destroy them …. 

**  …. just watched Tim Geithner speak (with THE ONE at his elbow) about some policy for bail out recipients …. couldn’t concentrate on what he was saying because all I could “see” on the screen was a man who wrote off camp fees for his kids as business deductions.  The man has to go.   He was knee-deep in the original bail out debacle — why’s he still here???

** HopeyChange take a break:  And  Tammy Bruce pens a perfect tag line:

[A tough day? The guy has been the president for 14 whole days and he needs a break? What happened to that “flinty Chicago toughness” he was requiring of DC schoolchildren a week ago?]

On the rockiest day of his young administration, President Barack Obama did what surely made him happy for a while.

He left.

With little notice, the president and first lady Michelle Obama bolted the gated compound of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. in their tank of a limousine on Tuesday. They ended up at a Washington public school, greeted by children who could not care less about the collapse of a Cabinet secretary nomination.

“We were just tired of being in the White House,” the president candidly told the gleeful second-graders at Capital City Public Charter School.

Tired of being in the White House after two weeks. Priceless. According to the Barkey-Be-Gone Meter, he still has 1446 whole days to go before we kick him out. I suppose this is the presidential version of voting ‘Present”? So let’s see: Iran has launched a satellite, Russia is having riots, France is having riots, people in Kentucky are still freezing to death, the Sri Lankan war is escalating, he’s threatened with a trade war by the EU because of crap in his Crap Sandwich, the Taliban is still attacking in Afghanistan, Islamic “pirates” are still hijacking ships and kidnapping people, our economy is still tanking mostly because of Barkey talking it down for a year, and he decides to go to a school to read to 2nd graders?

The kids did learn something, however, from his presence: what an arrogant and weak a**hole looks like.

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Romney on Economic Stimulus

Leader Boehner, Congressman Cantor and members of the working group, I want to thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss options for a stimulus package.

I also appreciate the President-elect’s willingness to solicit input from our party. We are committed to working together to strengthen the economy.
These are not ordinary times. Yes, we have had bubbles before. And we have experienced recessions. But this was no ordinary bubble and this is no ordinary recession.  This bubble encompassed the largest investment sector of our economy—housing. And when it deflated, it evaporated not billions, but trillions of dollars.
The first impact was to our nation’s pool of investment capital—capital that sustains businesses, capital that finances new enterprises, capital that promotes education and discovery. This pool of investment capital was held by banks, by investment banks, by institutions and even by individual investors. And it has shrunk by trillions of dollars.

It didn’t take long for America’s families to feel the impact either. The net worth of American families has shrunk by approximately $11 trillion. This translates into about $400 billion less annual spending by consumers. And that $400 billion drop in consumption would lead to a deepening downward spiral of business failures and unemployment.

Exports won’t make up the shortfall: most of the world is in a recession and the dollar has strengthened as fear has struck the currency markets.

Investment won’t make it up either given the hit taken by the pool of investment capital. What’s left is the government sector.

There are two ways Washington can put money into the economy—one is by sending it back to the taxpayers and the other is by spending it. Of the two, it’s the former that has the bigger bang for the buck. Research by Christina Romer, the President-elect’s Chairwoman for the Council of Economic Advisors, shows that tax cuts have a substantially greater multiplier effect than does spending on infrastructure projects.

Tax cuts should be the centerpiece of any stimulus plan. The President-elect has proposed refund checks for taxpayers. Experience shows, however, that a one-time check has very little positive impact.

The 2008 stimulus led to checks being sent out in May, June and July of last year. Sure enough, disposable income rose in those months, but as Hoover
Institution economist John Taylor has shown, consumption did not (Fig. 1).
And further, even if consumption were to bump up, it would not lead businesses to expand and to add jobs. Business people are smart enough to recognize a one-time, short-lived bump for what it is.

The best medicine for a sick economy is permanent tax relief.

I’d recommend eliminating the tax on savings for middle income Americans—no tax on interest, dividends or capital gains. This accomplishes three things: it puts money into the consumer’s pocket, it helps replenish the pool of investment capital, and it encourages more Americans to become owners of American business.

The same principles apply to business tax relief. A rebate check would be a welcome sight to every businessperson. But a rebate check isn’t going to incentivize businesses to expand, to invest for greater productivity, or to hire more people. It’s lower future tax rates that do that. And there sure is room to cut corporate tax rates—we are at the top of the heap, along with Japan, the nation that has suffered through a decade-long downturn.

In my view, sending out one-time refund checks to consumers and to businesses is not the best course—it adds to a monstrous budget deficit without significantly boosting the economy.

The right course is permanent tax relief, designed to spur growth, investment and jobs. It should go without saying that raising taxes should be out of the question. It is a positive development that the President-elect has chosen not to seek an immediate repeal of the Bush tax cuts. We should go further to seek a permanent or even a temporary extension.

President-elect Obama has also proposed a short term business incentive tied to hiring new workers. That’s not a terrible idea, but it would be less effective than allowing businesses to expense capital equipment purchased this year and next. That would lead them and their suppliers to add employees, and it would boost productivity, raising wages and improving our competitiveness abroad.

The spending portion of the stimulus should be limited to those things which are urgentlyneeded and which we had already planned to buy in the future. Infrastructure projects will be included, but because they invariably face delays for engineering, environmental reviews and contracting, they can take a long time to actually boost the economy. They should be part of the picture, but not the whole canvas.

I would like to see a significant portion of new spending to be devoted to the
maintenance, repair, replacement and modernization of our military equipment and armament. Since the 1990’s dismantling of our military, we have tended to live off the assets that had been purchased in the past. These have been extensively employed in two Gulf wars and in Afghanistan. Bringing forward needed replacement and repair will boost the economy, enhance our national security, and importantly aid our men and women in uniform.

I would also add spending for energy research and energy infrastructure. Energy independence is an economic and strategic imperative.

With new spending on the agenda, Republicans should make sure that there is no parade of pork. All spending projects should be selected by the responsible federal agency according to explicit and public criteria.

Republicans should commit to vote “no” on any stimulus bill with earmarks that have not been voted upon by the entire body.

I know that cities and states have various financial challenges of their own. Some have built rainy day funds for times like these. Others have not. As a governor who welcomed the help you provided to us in the last recession, I won’t prescribe zero help for the states.   But I do believe that it is critical for cities and states to use this time to finally align spending with revenues.

Today, we are rightly focused on a stimulus to stop the economic decline and end the recession. But if we are not careful, it could add to the risk of something even worse than a recession. If we continue to leverage the public sector, to pile on more and more debt, and to ignore the looming entitlement liabilities, we could precipitate a worldwide collapse of confidence in America—in our currency, in our credit-worthiness, in our
competitiveness, in our future. We cannot write bailout checks to every petitioner, spend hundreds of billions on a laundry list of infrastructure goodies, nor reduce taxes without also reducing government obligations.

The ballooning deficits must be balanced with budget restraint and responsibility when the economy recovers. 

This stimulus package should include a commitment to reform entitlements—Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare.  Senator Gregg is right to have proposed a bi-partisan commission to do just that. He is right, and now is the right time.

A stimulus bill, combined with a projected deficit of $1.2 trillion, could send us down the road to ruin if we do not muster the courage to reform entitlements and to rein in future government spending.

Let me add a thought about regulation. Smart regulation is good; dumb regulation is bad.

Housing finance is one of the most highly regulated sectors of our economy. And no one will claim that that regulation was very smart.

Yes, we need to improve regulation, in housing and in financial services. But the right course is to make regulation that is effective. Smart regulation will make these sectors more productive and more competitive. Simply layering on burdensome regulatory schemes will depress these industries, kill more jobs, and slow economic recovery. 

And there is one very bad idea that is being promoted by a special interest group. It is an idea that would have devastating impact on the economy—short term and long term. It would lead investors to send their funds elsewhere, businesses to expand elsewhere and jobs to relocate elsewhere.

It is the plan to virtually impose unions on all small, medium and large businesses by removing the right of workers to vote by secret ballot. Card
check is a very bad idea under any circumstances. In these circumstances, it would be
calamitous.

In sum, we are presented with economic peril unlike anything we have faced during our lifetimes. I do indeed believe that careful, skillfully crafted stimulus can improve the prospects for recovery. But excessive and sloppy spending and one-time refund checks could have the exact opposite effect than that which the stimulus seeks. And in the final analysis, we must remember that it is the private sector—the home of entrepreneurs,
workers, managers, and visionaries—the private sector, not government, that creates jobs, boosts wages, and provides for our future.

What gives me my confidence is this: I believe in the American people.

Thank you

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