American Elephants

The average price of gas according to AAA is $3.86, nearly $1 more than it  was a year ago.  The president, in don’t-blame-me mode, laid out his own plan on Saturday.  He said “You see people trying to grab headlines or score a few points. The truth is, there’s no silver bullet that can bring down gas prices right away.”

The president laid out his own plan for controlling prices:  ending price gouging, and calling for an end to the $4 billion in federal subsidies for oil and gas firms.  How ending subsidies would bring down prices is a complete mystery, but in line with the Obama genius for advocating the wrong remedy.  I’m not sure who he thinks is “price gouging” but “speculators” — also unidentified— are the latest straw man.

“This is what politicians do when they want to do nothing, yet look like they are doing something, they appoint a blue ribbon committee , or go to the U.N., or assign some cabinet member to look into the problem and report back to the President —hoping that the issue will be forgotten by the time he reports back,” observed Tom Sowell.

Obama suggested last Thursday that his lagging poll numbers are due to the high gas prices nationwide. Budget? What budget?

He did imply in his budget speech that he would cut spending by $750 billion over the next twelve years.  That’s sounds like more than it is— a little less that $63 billion a year. or about what the federal government borrows every eight days. The president does not want to cut spending. He wants more. More spending, a bigger government, and higher taxes.

In a speech to the Chamber of Commerce in February, President Obama said that “the role of government is to support the economic foundation by spending public money to improve transportation, education and communication systems.”

The public (53%) believe that the primary purpose of government is to protect individual liberties and freedom.  Only 10% believe that managing the economy is the government’s primary role, and only 24% see the government’s role as insuring social justice. That’s a pretty big gap in understanding the nature and business of government.

Americans consistently believe in lower taxes and lower government spending. Yet Democrats are really pushing for more taxes for the rich. All the Democrat yammering about “tax cuts for the rich” during the Bush years seems to have convinced, at least the Democrats, that the Bush tax cuts involved an unfair tax cut for the wealthy. Everybody got a tax cut, and “the rich” got the smallest percentage cut of all.

If Congress imposed a 100% tax, taking all of the earnings above $250,000 a year,  every last cent, it would yield the massive sum of $1.4 trillion.  Sounds like a lot, but tit would keep the government running for 141 days.  And who pays for the remaining 224 days? Corporate profits?  Another 40 days.  Well, lets just take all the net worth of America’s 400 billionaires —  that gets us to the middle of August.  And now that the billionaires are on the dole — you just took everything they had, you’ll have to chip in to provide for them.

The government has no money of its own.  Revenue comes from taxation.  And guess where the big pot of money is.  The Middle Class!  You didn’t believe Obama when he promised not to raise taxes on the middle class, did you? Maybe you should think hard about the desirability of cutting back on spending after all.