The Democratic Wrecking Machine

After 2 ¾ years in office, President Obama’s policies have failed to revive the U.S. economy, and have actually made things worse.  Reckless actual deficit spending for the first 2 ¾ fiscal years plus estimated spending for the final year of 2011 will aggregate to $4.864 trillion.

Note that the immediate prospects for recovery are not good:

The owners of many small businesses say economic uncertainty and inflationary pressures have led them to delay hiring and capital expenditures. Seventy percent have no plans to expand their staffs over the next 12 months, according to a recent U.S. Bancorp survey of 1,004 U.S. companies with annual revenue of $10 million or less.

If you are a loyal blue collar Democrat, you will not be happy that two of the largest declines in jobs are in two sectors with a lot of the best paying jobs.  Manufacturing has lost 2,034,000 jobs, or a -14.8% decline.  And, construction has lost 1,934,000 jobs, a -26% loss.

And, if like many people, the largest part of you stock of savings in the value of your home, you are not in a very good place:

…home prices fell another 4.2% in the first quarter. Prices have fallen for eight straight months, after the false dawn of 2009-2010, and average home prices are down to levels last seen in 2002….

So, your lifetime of trying to build your savings by paying off your mortgage has been subjected to a big setback.

And no matter how hard they try to obfuscate it, the Democratic Party is at war with America’s desire to use its own energy supplies through penalties, increased costs and less domestic production.

At least 13,000 jobs have been lost since last summer’s moratorium on offshore oil production . . . .

…the national job losses to have increased from 12,000 to 19,000; regional wage losses to be $800 million, up from $500 million; national wage losses to be $1.1 billion, up from $700 million; lost tax revenues on the state and local level to be $155 million, up from $100 million; and lost tax revenues on the national level to be $350 million, up from $200 million.

Canada, our ally and neighbor, has one of the world’s largest volumes of proven oil reserves at 175.2 billion barrels of oil.  But, unbelievably:

…Almost all the oil produced ends up in the U.S., where environmentalists and some powerful Democrats have lined up against importing any more of the stuff.

Washington remains ambivalent about a proposed expansion of a pipeline that could nearly double exports from Alberta to the U.S….

Does economic freedom mean anything when regulators in the Executive Branch want to starve our economy of energy?  All successful economies are propelled by energy and hindering our use of energy puts a pervasive burden on the whole economy.

And this attack is not just against oil:

The EPA is currently conducting a campaign against coal-fired power….  The 946-page rule mandates that utilities install “maximum achievable control technology” under the Clean Air Act—and even by the EPA’s lowball estimates, it is the most expensive rule in the agency’s history….

According to the EPA’s own numbers, every dollar in direct benefits costs $1,847….

The real goal of the EPA’s rule is to shut down fossil fuel electric power in the name of climate change.  The consensus estimate in the private sector is that the utility rule and eight others on the EPA docket will force the retirement of 60 out of the country’s current 340 gigawatts of coal-fired capacity….

…The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, normally a White House union ally, says the rule will destroy 50,000 jobs and another 200,000 down the supply chain….

Hopefully, most people, except Al Gore and liberal Democrats, have learned that the global warming fiasco has been totally discredited.  This is all the more reason that the attack on coal-generated electricity is especially destructive to our economic progress.  We produce more of our electric power from coal.  And, yet they have even more ways to attack it.  With the almost dictatorial powers of regulation going out of their way to promulgate:

The cross-state air pollution rule will affect about 1,000 power plants in more than two dozen states. It will require them to cut emissions of sulfur dioxide by 73% and nitrogen oxide by 54% from 2005 levels by 2014….

The hell of regulation is that it is controlled by the Executive Branch of government.  So, regulators can become antithetical to democracy in the extreme.  The voters cannot reach them directly.  And, the Obama Administration is employing regulation with a vengeance.

To make sure we have less money to spend on the much more expensive energy, the Democrats also want to just take more of our money away from us:

…Mr. Obama has already signed the largest tax increase since 1993. While everyone focuses on the Bush tax rates that expire after 2012, other tax increases are already set to hit the economy thanks to the 2010 Affordable Care Act….

• Starting in 2013, the bill adds an additional 0.9% to the 2.9% Medicare tax for singles who earn more than $200,000 and couples making more than $250,000.

• For first time, the bill also applies Medicare’s 2.9% payroll tax rate to investment income, including dividends, interest income and capital gains.  Added to the 0.9% payroll surcharge, that means a 3.8-percentage point tax hike on “the rich….”

Taxpayer cost over 10 years: $210 billion….

• Another $15.2 billion will come from raising the floor on allowable medical deductions to 10% of adjusted gross income from 7.5%.

• Starting in 2018, the bill imposes a whopping 40% “excise tax” on high-cost health insurance plans….

There are numerous other new taxes in the bill, all adding up to some $438 billion in new revenue over 10 years….

There is no way to disguise the truth of what Obama and the Democrats are doing:

The results of the first 2 ¾ years of the Obama Administration are unprecedented in their bad outcomes.  And the radical acceleration of the public debt, now at 72% of GDP, could causeirrevocable damage, especially if interest rates rise:

…Taken together many economists agree on how this recovery stacks up: “It is the worst, no question about it,” says Robert Gordon, aNorthwestern University professor and a member of the National Bureau of Economic Research’s business cycle dating committee, which is widely considered the official arbiter of the beginning and end of recessions.

His colleague, Stanford professor Robert Hall, who runs the committee, says it’s “absolutely right” that this is the worst recovery yet.

Current updates on quarterly GDP, in fact, worsen the overall outlook for 2011 and 2012:

GDP just missed expectations at 1.3%.

Analysts were looking for 1.8%.

Even worse, perhaps: Q1 GDP was revised from 1.9% all the way down to 0.4%, which is stunning.

Personal consumption, which was expected to grow by 0.8%, only grew by 0.1%.

Obama and the Democrats have launched a direct attack against the American economy, while killing jobs in every sector.  Reckless spending and an explosion in the Public Debt are a permanent burden on the future, especially when interest rates increase.  And all this will undermine and cripple 250 years of economic achievement and civic progress.