I like Scrooge McTrump

Trump's Budget is Awesome

Will Republicans agree?

Powerline: How would you like Big Bird served?

Don Surber: Shuttering 80 Agencies: Is Reaganism Dead?

Wombat: Da Tech Guy: JD Rucker – Nancy Pelosi Says Trump’s Budget Is “A Slap In The Face”. Good. and Hogewash: Are You Pondering What I’m Pondering?

My how times change...

The U.S. Government paid out over two trillion dollars in benefits (alone) last year.

Total revenue in 2013 was 2.8 trillion, but the U.S. government had a deficit of $ 680 billion last year.

The deficits have gone down some, but not enough. These type of deficits are not sustainable. If interest rates go up, the debt service will end up eating a giant bite out of this and will throw everything into chaos.

Washington Budget Deal: Why does this not give me hope?

I do not mind the short term budget deal (that part is fine, we do not need a fight over that)...

I fear this is just an opportunity for Democrats to change the topic from Obamacare...

I have not had a chance to really look at what they are proposing.  The sequester cuts have been actually pretty good and anything increasing spending is not a gd idea.  Proposed future cuts are not a viable reality.

Wombat: Yes they had some pressure but the advantage is to the GOP (use it)
Wombat had this: Obama's base crumbling due to Obamacare
TOM: Harry Reid's Game
Smitty: Ryan almost blows the reform trumpet on the budget...
TOM:  Breitbart was right--Democrats lied, Obamacare survived, your insurance died...
Smitty: Shorter Ryan, I am going to kick tomorrow...
Wombat: Budget Deal

.@rsmccain I thought it was rather sweet how that Oompa Loompa serenaded Paul.
— Joe Matthew (@KoenigJojo) December 11, 2013

 HMM: Budget Deal Is Sealed. “Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) announced a budget deal Tuesday evening that would call for about $1 trillion in federal spending in 2014 while replacing some sequestration cuts. The deal replaces $63 billion in sequester cuts over two years and trims an additional $23 billion in long-term deficits. The agreement falls far short of the grand budget bargain Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and President Obama once envisioned. But if passed, it will bring a measure of fiscal peace to the capital for the first time since Republicans took control of the House in 2010.”

I dunno. It may be more politically advantageous than another shutdown, but I think the sequester was doing a better job of restraining spending.

73

Posted at 8:45 pm by Glenn Reynolds   

John Boehner: You conservatives are crazy, this is a great deal...  Bwrack!
McConnell will vote no...but it is easy to be a con when the dems control the Senate
Hey wait, maybe Ryan's screw up is the reason McConnell is voting no (AoSHQ finds a rotten easter egg)
Wombat: Boehner passes deal in House and bashes Tea Party/conservatives? Don't say we didn't tell you John.  

Is it time for South Korea to stop the codependency dance with North Korea...

Before something serious happens, it may be time to put some pressure on South Korea to deal with the  North Korea. Paying off the North maybe the cheapest and safest outcome until that failed state ultimately implodes.  But until then, the South Koreans need to step up in paying for their own defense.

Update:
This game is tiresome, let NoKo test its missile...

h/t: Hot Air

Disability and Chronic Unemployment: Are they the new welfare?

Disability in the United States has been growing faster than it supposedly should.  I say supposedly because things government did were supposed to curtail disability (such as the Americans with Disabilities Act, advances in medicine, less physically demanding jobs, etc.).  But this entitlement program is expanding, and it has been doing so for decades, mostly to accommodate older workers who can't readily find good paying jobs (or any jobs) any more.  Jonah Goldberg asked earlier this week if disability is the new welfare?  Right now disability payments and costs dwarf the food stamp program and welfare combined.

And if you think this is just the right wing talking, NPR's This American Life noted the trends in its story, Unfit for Work, about the new trends in disability.  And Ira Glass and This American Life caught a lot of flack from the left over it.  Ira Glass and This American Life are standing by the story.

While the on going recession/lack luster growth over the past eight years is certainly not helping, disability has been growing steadily over the past 30 years (basically since Gingrich and Clinton reformed welfare).  And while I agree with Jonah a bit more scrutiny on actual disability factors is warranted, this letter from a disability lawyer to Jonah suggests disability is hiding (and mitigating) more endemic problems on where our economy and work force are going?  As that lawyer's letter to Goldberg notes, disability is essentially early retirement for the poor.  This is not a situation that is easily fixed politically.  There are a lot of voters getting these benefits, both from the left and the right of the political spectrum.  And since states pay for the bulk of welfare, but the federal government pays for disabilities, the emphasis by local government is to support disabilities expending.

We keep hearing how workers are dropping out of unemployment.  But dependency is not something that should be encouraged.  Disability helps encourage that.  And it is not as simple as calling it a scam or fraud: For a lot of these workers they lose their jobs, they are older and their health is naturally deteriorating (and often their past jobs are a contributing factor to the health conditions they have), they lose health care, their health gets worse, and before you know it even if they were marginally disabled before, they are actually disabled over time.  It is a vicious cycle that is encouraged by perverse incentives in the current system.

Barack Obama and Joe Biden discuss the White House's new brain study plan...

Barack Obama's $100 million dollar brain study proposal...

Obama Announces 0 Million Plan To Find A Brain For Joe Biden… shar.es/dYK05 via @sharethis
— ★♥ Harriet Baldwin(@HarrietBaldwin) April 2, 2013

I have no problem with brain studies, in theory.  I am pretty sure there is a lot of brain studies going on in the private sector.  I just wish there was more focus on basic economics and accounting study in the White House and with the Democrat Party. And not that Keynesian nonsense.

Update:
Obama is calling himself Scientist-In-Chief  (you can't make this stuff up).
The Macho Response posted the same video!

Joe Biden: Putting on the Ritz and Queening it up! An American Veep in Paris!

Putting On The Ritz  Intercontinental Paris Le Grand
One night: $585,000.50

Joe Biden is Queening It Up!

h/t: Drudge Report

Update:
New York, London, Paris, Munich...everyone is talking about, mmmm, Plugs Biden!
Joe Biden: Last of the Big Time Spenders (of your money)
Joey does Paris

Barack Obama is not worried about balancing budgets...

Barack Obama does not get it.

Barack Obama conveniently forgets that the brief balanced budget of the late 1990s, were not due to Bill Clinton. It was because Newt Gingrich and the GOP House at the time held the line on spending and demographically social security payments exceeded what was being paid out.  Bill Clinton did not balance the budget, he just happened to be in office when it happened.  Obama's current allies conveniently forget that too.

The economy would really grow (not a false Wall Street surge) if there were an effort to control spending.  Trillion dollar deficits are not sustainable.  The United States is no different than any economy or business, if it keeps spending in an unsustainable manner it will eventually collapse.  You cannot tax your way out of it either, because raising taxes (with current and increased spending) kills growth.  That is why the Paul Ryan plan makes sense.  A growing economy would eliminate unemployment and would be a huge benefit for the most vulnerable.

Update:  Barack Obama--you should be thanking me!  Frugality is for the little people!

As Mark Twain said: "History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme."

Zero Hedge points out the obvious...

Mad King Bloomberg: The USA has an infinite amount of money...

Bloomberg has become a drooling idiot...

Now I agree we should not panic about the sequester.  A 2-3% cut to discretionary spending by the US government is, even if ham-fistedly done, better than just blithely spending the money as we have been doing over the last several years.  But suggesting we have an infinite supply of money is moronic from most politicians, but especially unacceptable from a supposed financial leader.  This is what happens with partisan politics blinds you from objective economic reality.

Update:
Protein Wisdom and Weasel Zippers on the subject of Mad King Bloomy.
Bloomberg booed in Rockaways

Sequester: Start Crying Now

They are imposing a 2% cut on government spending!  Civilization will end! 

But Chuck Todd is stil a Democrat Party B*tch!
Media turns on Bob Woodward

If a #Sequester falls in the forest and there is no one there to hear it does the WH threaten Bob Woodward?
— Tracy Lee (@RememberComeNov) March 1, 2013

That's it. I'm moving to Woodbury. #Sequester
— AG (@AG_Conservative) March 1, 2013

Breaking: The dead have arisen from their graves and are eating the brains of the living... Biden unthreatened... #SequesterApocalypse
— El SOOPer!! (@SooperMexican) March 1, 2013

The Media Turns On Bob Woodward For Observing Emperor Obama Is Wearing No Clothes

The Bob Woodward story isn't important. That's why liberals and the media (PTR) are losing their minds over it.
— Jim Treacher (@jtLOL) February 28, 2013

Hey. 

Remember: They're not attacking Bob Woodward because they think he's lying. They're attacking him because they think he's telling the truth.
— Jim Treacher (@jtLOL) February 28, 2013

The sequester is something Barack Obama proposed.  He is now lying about it to gain political advantage.   The White House is upset Woodward called them on it.

Woodward’s greatest sin was practicing real journalism in the age of Obama nblo.gs/INeHJ
— Legal Insurrection (@LegInsurrection) February 28, 2013

Update:
TOM: Woodward gets a warning...
AoSHQ: Lanny Davis also?
Woodward Not Alone:  Davis threatened too...

Rush Limbaugh is absolutely right...

It is a bunch of lies...

Let the sequester happen!

Separated at Birth: J. Wellington Wimpy and...?

I will gladly pay you on Tuesday
for a hamburger today...

I wlll gladly agree to budget restrictions on a Tuesday
sometime in 2017 for a budget ceiling raising today...

“The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. government can’t pay its own bills. ... I therefore intend to oppose the effort to increase America’s debt limit.”
— Then-Sen. Barack Obama, floor speech in the Senate, March 16, 2006

So President Barack Obama is not just a "Wimpy" but a flip flopper too!

Gabriel Malor notes that Congress to vote on the Hurricane Sandy Relief bill tomorrow...

Kris Kristiekreme will not be denied his pork!  

My post: The GOP Is Ready To Cave On Sandy Pork . . . And The Debt Ceiling. goo.gl/W6C33
— Gabriel Malor (@gabrielmalor) January 15, 2013

The left pundit class can go *#$% themselves over these trillion dollar coins.

Paul Krugman, Needs some dinner budge control...
  Update:  Introducing: ‘The Krugmanerrand’

Jonathan Chait, Love New Deal--Hates Bush

I joked that the appropriate design for these trillion dollar coins was Alfred E. Newman's mug with his slogan:  "What Me Worry?"  Well Paul Krugman at the New York Times and Jonathan Chait at New York Magazine stole my suggestion.  No biggie there (it is not like I thought up Alfred E. Newman, I just grew up reading Mad as a kid).  But those SOBs and liars are now suggesting John Boehner or George W. Bush's face should grace these coins...

WTF!  How about blaming the current President, Barack Obama, who is promoting this Weimar-esque scheme?  Krugman and Chait chide GWB over spending (fair enough, my biggest criticism of Dubya's domestic policy was over spending) but how about acknowledging Barack Obama and the Democrats over spending is even worse?  Do you think world wide confidence in the dollar might slip a bit if the Treasury and U.S. Government adopts such a scheme?

Althouse and Instapundit have a modest proposal to stimulate the economy!
Ace of Spades and Instapundit and the Enron example...

Why did Matthew Yglesias decide to completely beclown himself by pushing this crazy $1 trillion platinum coin nonsense?
— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) January 11, 2013

Update (via Hot Air):

The origins of the trillion dollar coin...

Chris "Kris Kristiekreme" Christie: Hurricanes make me hungry! And what is the deal with Al Gore and oil...

There is not enough pork in the world to feed my appetite!

If it is not massage oils it is oil profits...

About time people told both Al Gore and Kris Kristiekreme to shut their pie holes.

Al is full of it...

Separated at Birth: Tina Brown and...?

 Inspired by The Other McCain:  That Tina, she is such a piker!

Tina Brown
Profligate spender of scores
of millions of other people's money...

U.S. Congress (with a lot of Obama help)
Profligate spender of a score
of trillions of other people's money...

H. L. Mencken: "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public."

Well except for the country and the American public!

Update:
Tina Brown mourns the loss of Hillary Clinton before her actual passing... (Tina is just ripping off an idea from Mark Twain...)
Tina Brown clean up of Newsweak/Daily Beast not yet complete...

John Boehner is annoying, useless, and really needs to go...

Apparently there are enough votes to get rid of Boehner.  And there are big battles left to fight.  But with Paul Ryan's disappointing vote, Ryan is no longer a candidate to replace him.

Update:
Protein Wisdom:  Why even have a GOP?
EBL: The New GOP Mascot
Blogmocracy:  Screwed!
Ace/Krauthammer:  GOP = Surrender Monkeys
Red State:  Silver Linings?  Not too much...
Right Scoop:  Erik Erickson makes pitch that Boehner is better than Cantor (I am not sure about that, but Cantor is not to be trusted either)
Shark Tank:  Weepy Boehner capitulates.
Weasel Zippers:  Boehner either resigns or is forced out tomorrow?  

Are you a "half full" or "half empty" sort of person?

Ross Douthat:  The fundamental problem with Obama's war on the rich...

Is a Democratic Party that shies away from raising taxes on the $250,000-a-year earner (or the $399,999-a-year earner, for that matter) in 2013 — when those increases are happeningly automatically! — really going to find it easier to raise taxes on families making $110,000 in 2017 or 2021? Color me skeptical: The lesson of these negotiations seems to be that Democrats are still skittish about anything that ever-so-remotely resembles a middle class tax increase, let alone the much larger tax increases (which would eventually have to hit people making well below $100,000 as well) that their philosophy of government ultimately demands. 

Agreeing that the New Year’s bargain bodes ill for the liberal vision of government doesn’t require believing that Paul Ryan’s vision of government is poised to triumph instead. Here I agree with Scheiber: Because Social Security and Medicare are so popular, the right-wing path to fiscal sustainability does sometimes have an air of fantasy about it. It’s just that on the evidence of what the Obama White House and Senate Democrats have been willing to concede this week, the left-wing path to solvency looks pretty implausible right now as well.

Can you choose both?   Here is Instapundit's proposal:

That’s the problem with that whole war on the rich. Obama’s enemies are the small-business Kulaks, who vote Republican, but he can’t go after them without hurting the nobles who support Democrats financially.
I’d push 5% per year cuts in federal spending across the board — no “flexible freeze” BS — and do it each year until the deficit was under control. I think this would sell fairly well politically, too. Nobody believes that any federal department couldn’t cut costs 5% without impacting performance.

Then again Legal Insurrection is definitely leaning half empty...  I liked the comment that Hookers put up more resistance than the GOP did.   Well of course, hookers demand payment first.

Update:
John Boehner is annoying and needs to go.