Category Archives: budget
Bipartisan Farm Bill
Congress got something done last week. It passed a bipartisan, 10 year, trillion dollar farm bill.
The farm bill includes insurance against “adverse price movements”. Isn’t that what the credit default swaps were supposed to do for subprime loans before the great recession?
Bipartisanship on Farm Bill
It’s all too much for the editors of National Review who note that:
Many crop prices are near all-time highs, and if they drop as expected, new loss-protection programs could — likely will — cost billions more than the CBO calculates.
In an even rarer case of bipartisanship the Washington Post editorial board agrees:
Supposedly necessary to secure the nation’s food supply at a time of record farm income and epidemic obesity, this federal largess flows almost regardless of how much money its recipients already have.
The Post then calls on President Obama to use his pen to veto the bill.
More Bipartisan Farm Bill Update:
Bloomberg reports the Senate threw out a requirement that members of Congress would have to publicly report if they receive federally subsidized crop insurance.
Unemployment Benefits
President Obama wants to increase unemployment benefits. Not just to help the unemployed, but to grow the economy.
Unemployment insurance is one of the most effective ways there is to boost our economy.
Unemployment Benefit
The science tells him that every dollar spent on unemployment creates $1.80 in growth. The WSJ calls this:
…the theory that you can increase employment by paying more people not to work…If that theory worked, the government should pay everyone not to work.
This is the same theory that told him in his first term that a trillion dollar stimulus would be the most effective tool there is to boost our economy.
Here’s a short piece from Commentary that ties together government’s self-interest in the belief in Keynesian economics and global warming.
Orwellian Train Wreck
It turns out ObamaCare really is a train wreck.
Republicans tried to delay it and were denied. Then they tried to defund it and the result was a government shutdown.
Even though it was far from their goal, had the Republicans succeeded, they would have saved the president’s signature program a lot of embarrassment.
Orwellian White House
Instead, the White House called the Tea Party’s efforts to stop the train wreck “terrorism“.
The same administration, four years ago, labeled the killing of 13 troops at Fort Hood in the name of Islam, “workplace violence“.
Bernanke’s Economy
Bad news for the economy is good news for Wall Street these days.
Yesterday Bernanke announced it was too early to taper off on his greenback spinning wheel. He’ll continue to pump $85 billion per month into the sluggish economy through quantitative easing. The magic money is conjured up when the Fed buys Treasuries and mortgage backed securities.
The sorcerers on Wall Street were pleased and stocks hit record highs.
Sequester Scare
The White House is gamely sticking with its policy of Sequester Scare. The president has given himself a 5% pay cut as a show of solidarity with the tots without tours who are denied spring break access to the White House.
In February Janet Napolitano said the Border Patrol would be cut by 5,000 agents. This week it was announced those cuts would be delayed. Here’s Fox News’ Ed Henry asking Jay Carney if Napolitano had been deliberately misleading.
