The common sense Senator -- Jeff Sessions

Jeff Sessions made the following comments on the floor of the US Senate yesterday:  we would do well to remember them when the dust settles on this disgraceful budget debate charade/fiasco:

First, I would like to address the myth that the president has a $4 trillion deficit-reduction plan. The only plan the White House has ever put on paper is his February budget, which doubles our national debt.

The president has never put a single spending cut plan on paper and he has no proposal to slash the deficit. If he does, it’s a closely guarded secret. And if such a secret plan does exist it should be made public this very afternoon. I’d like to see it. I’m sure millions of Americans feel the same.

We also have no debt plan from Senate Democrats. In fact, they haven’t even passed a budget in 813 days.

As of now, there is only one debt limit plan on paper. Only one plan available for public scrutiny and review. That’s the plan we are debating today: cut, cap, and balance. It cuts spending immediately, it caps it so it doesn’t go up, and it requires the passage of a balanced budget amendment to ensure Washington ends the deficit spending once and for all. The American people do not trust Washington to pass some grand budget deal with tax hikes that never go away and spending cuts that never materialize. …

Another myth I’d like to address is the idea that our current budget crisis is the result of two wars and a tax cut. Let’s consider that claim. The total cost of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, over the entire last decade, is $1.3 trillion. Again, that’s over the last decade. This year alone the deficit is expected to be $1.4 trillion dollars. War costs represent only 4 percent of total outlays over the last ten years. The total amount of money spent since the president took office is $8.5 trillion dollars. By the end of his first three years in office we will have added $5 trillion to our gross federal debt. We are borrowing almost half of what we’re spending every single day. In the last two years, non-defense discretionary spending has soared 24 percent. The stimulus package alone—enacted into law in a single day in 2009—cost more than the entire war in Iraq. Annual spending when President Bush took office was less than $2 trillion. Today, it’s almost $4 trillion. It will be almost $6 trillion by the end of the decade.

There is only one honest answer to the question over why our debt is rising so fast: out-of-control domestic spending.

Another myth that’s circulating which I’d like to address concerns the budget summary from the Gang of Six. The authors of the summary claim that their approach would reduce the deficit by $3.7 trillion. But my staff on the Budget Committee can only find $1.2 trillion in reduced spending, along with a tax increase of $1 trillion. Where does the other $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction come from? Chairman Conrad, one of the members of the Gang of Six, even says the outline has a $1.5 trillion tax cut. But this is compared against a baseline that assumes a $3.5 trillion tax increase. It’s just an accounting gimmick. The real cost of the tax changes could be an increase as large as $2 trillion.

This is why we need more than a handout—we need legislative text.

The last myth that I’d like to address is perhaps the most important of all. This is the myth that we only need about $2 trillion in spending cuts over the next ten years.

Democrats have said—although no plan has ever been made public—that they could get behind a budget deal that reduces the deficit $4 trillion over the next ten years, half of it comprised of spending cuts. I’m skeptical that even this minimal level of spending cuts would occur. But even if it did, it’s not even close to what is needed to ultimately balance our budget. We are projected to spend $46 trillion over the next ten years. A $2 trillion cut is only about a four percent reduction in spending that is set to increase almost sixty percent.

Affirmative action revisited by J.R. Dunn of American Thinker

Helen Sargent, a southerner by birth and upbringing, has commented numerous times after visiting family and friends in Alabama, about how well the blacks are doing economically, and how comfortable race relations were in her old home town of Mobile.  This fact she attributes to the history in the south in which blacks and whites have shared space together for a long time, admittedly much of that time in a repressive, one could say evil relationship, and as such learned about each other and in many ways oddly came to be comfortable with one another.  For several decades now blacks have been returning to the south from the economically depressed mid-west and elsewhere, and seemingly are integrating comfortably in the new/old culture there.  Elsewhere in the country race relations are quite tense and can be said to have worsened under the Obama leadership.  J.R. Dunn here lays much of the blame for this condition on the polarizing effect of Obama playing the race card whenever it could possibly benefit him, and on the highly toxic effects of Affirmative Action and the inherent divisiveness of the policies, e.g. set asides, quotas, etc., of this political construct.  Objectively it is hard to see where Affirmative Action has had any positive effect.  What it seems to do quite effectively is pit race against race causing strained relations all around.  What's more the policy is the antithesis of the American can-do spirit of individualism in which each person is ultimately responsible for making his own way in life.  Liberals may agree with this thought but argue that blacks need a leg up to catch up as a result of the debilitating effects of centuries of slavery.  The downside of this latter argument is the dependency culture effect of Affirmative Action that liberals cultivate and nurture for political purposes.  Many thinking blacks agree that this construct has been counterproductive.

Bias in the media

This may be one of those seminal news series that once and for all helps people understand the hapless thought process of the liberal mind.  Once again Powerline has allowed this story to see the light of day and become a part of the record.  Were it not for the internet and the few conservative news outlets like Fox, we would never have heard a thing about this fascinating story.  The series to date are here, here, here, here, and here.

Istanbul and earthquakes

Claire Berlinski, a free-lance writer who contributes to many media outlets and who lives in Istanbul, writes here about the threat of earthquakes to metropolitan areas, specifically Istanbul.  When one of these monster quakes happens in a vulnerable city that is unprepared, such as Istanbul, Claire predicts there could be millions of casualties.  As she points out, Istanbul is no more prepared for a monster quake than Port-au-prince, Haitti, and there are 30 to 40 times as many people living there.  It is her contention that the corruption of the political parties, all of whom are in cahoots with the construction industry, is the root cause of the lack of preparation.  This could be ugly.