United Liberty

We are often told about the size of the national debt, currently over $15 trillion. The problem is that many cannot fathom the numbers. However, the latest video from Learn Liberty, narrated by Antony Davies, frames the issue of the national debt in a way that most Americans can understand…by using it in terms of a family budget:

While Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum are poking at Mitt Romney over his advisors “Etch-A-Sketch” remarks, Ron Paul is running a new ad that notes how this gimmick is taking away from the real issues facing the country:

With ObamaCare coming to the Supreme Court this week, Nick Gillespie and Reason TV offer three reasons that the law needs to be ended, permanently. The reasons aren’t new, but they are important since the law only grows government and spends far more than originally estimated.

This isn’t exactly a surprise, but the Club for Growth has purchased air-time in Indiana as they hope to derail Sen. Dick Lugar’s bid for re-election. The ad the Club is running ties Lugar to the $15 trillion national debt and slams him for backing the Wall Street bailout, gas and payroll tax hikes, and opposing spending cuts.

Lugar has faced some problems recently. As we’ve noted, the Marion County Board of Elections determined that Lugar was not eligible to vote in the county, presumably nowhere else in the state, finding that his primary residence is in Virginia. Richard Mourdock has also been creeping up on Lugar in the polls. And he secured an endorsement from former Sen. Arlen Specter, who left the GOP in 2010 for the Democratic Party when it became clear that he would not beat Pat Toomney.

Here’s the ad from the Club for Growth:

The 2012 presidential campaign seems to have started the day after the last election ended in 2008. This is nowhere more true than with our Perpetual-Campaigner-in-Chief, Barack Obama, the man who has attended an impressive 191 fundraisers since taking office. That number is all the more impressive when you consider he’s had to work hard to wedge them into his extremely busy schedule; you know, what with the hundred or so rounds of golf he’s played and the nearly dozen and a half vacations taken since taking the Oath of Office. It is so inspiring to see him working so hard on behalf of the American people, showing he understands and appreciates the suffering so many Americans are enduring.

Obama has a long laundry list of reasons why he says you should vote to give him a second term. He says he deserves another four years because his policies are bringing unemployment down (though it is still higher than when he took office, and the numbers today are artificially inflated due to the fact that so many workers have simply given up hope and stopped looking for work). He claims that he has restored respect for America on the world stage, yet America is now perceived as weak and our enemies openly mock us and challenge our mettle.

During George W. Bush’s presidency, Democrats often complained that deficits were too high and that the national debt was growing out of control. Even Barack Obama, then a Senator from Illinois complained of the growing deficit. During a debate over raising the debt ceiling in 2008, Obama slammed Bush, calling the deficits under Bush “unpatriotic”:

The problem is, is that the way Bush has done it over the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up our national debt from $5 trillion for the first 42 presidents - #43 added $4 trillion by his lonesome, so that we now have over $9 trillion of debt that we are going to have to pay back — $30,000 for every man, woman and child. That’s irresponsible. It’s unpatriotic.

There is no denying that Bush was a big spender, not just on defense, but also domestic programs. However, Obama’s preaching hasn’t translated into any action. And now, just in his first term, the national debt has increased more than under Obama the full eight years of Bush, as CBS News notes:

The National Debt has now increased more during President Obama’s three years and two months in office than it did during 8 years of the George W. Bush presidency.

The Debt rose $4.899 trillion during the two terms of the Bush presidency. It has now gone up $4.939 trillion since President Obama took office.

Over the weekend, some friends asked my opinion possibilities of an alliance between Mitt Romney and Ron Paul, so I thought I’d take the time to detail my thoughts on that idea.

First, it’s not Paul’s goal to help Mitt Romney. His plan is to win the nomination at a brokered convention in Tampa by having the most delegates on the floor of the convention. Any rumored alliance of Paul to Romney assumes Paul doesn’t win the nomination at convention or that Romney wins the nomination outright before convention. Maybe this won’t matter in the end, but it’s worth mentioning that Paul’s goal is not to be Romney’s sidekick.

The next thought I have about this possible alliance is that Paul would have to concede too much, and he’s not much for compromises. Paul’s message, save his stance on foreign policy, resonates well with most Republican voters. Lower taxes, reduce spending, balance the budget…these are all items that will be on Romney’s checklist anyway, so Romney shouldn’t have to concede too much on those points. He would have to get very specific about his plan; vague promises won’t sit well with Dr. Paul.

My bet is that Paul would have to give in on foreign policy – or, at the very least, agree to keep quiet about it. Maybe he can do that as long as the movement to war comes from the legislature instead of the executive branch (like it’s supposed to). That might be enough for Romney, but, like I said, Paul isn’t known for his willingness to compromise.

(The interesting piece to that thought is that if we have a sound fiscal policy, continuing our current foreign policy would be all but impossible. How many people do you know that would support a huge tax hike to fund ongoing war efforts?)

Why would Paul, who is nothing if he’s not consistent, agree to some sort of alliance with Romney if Romney wins the nomination? Here are a few possibilities:

As expected, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), chairman of the House Budget Committee, unveiled his budget for FY 2013 yesterday. The proposal obviously carries over some familiar themes, but it shows that House Republicans aren’t backing down from their goal to get spending down to sustainable levels and deal with entitlements.

You can find the details here, but here is the video that Ryan released with his budget that outlines many of the policy items found therein:

We’re seeing a mixed to positive reaction on the right. Some Republican strategists are apparently nervous about the GOP putting forward a significant proposal. They think it’s bad politics. But Ryan is committed to leading the way, offering a stark contrast to what President Barack Obama and Democrats are putting forward.

We’ve been constantly told by Barack Obama and his apologists in Congress that government spending is good to get the economy growing again. It’s not. In fact, as Ramesh Ponnuru notes, that the 2009 stimulus bill really only grew the national debt, not the economy.

But in a new video from Economic Freedom, Professor Antony Davies of Duquesne University explains the reason why so-called “stimulus” spending only contracts the economy by taking dollars away, either by borrowing or taxing, from the private sector and individuals:

It looks like we’re headed toward another budget battle, and it may include some more intra-party squabbling as Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) may have some push back from Senate conservatives.

Rep. Ryan, who chairs the House Budget Committee, previewed his soon to be released budget in a trailer(!) last week. In the video, which you can watch below, Ryan says:

Let me ask you a question: what if your President, your Senator and your Congressman knew it was coming? What if they knew when it was going to happen, why it was going to happen and more importantly, what if they knew what they needed to do to stop it from happening and they had the time to stop it? But they chose to do nothing about it, because it wasn’t good politics?

What would you think of that person? It would be immoral.

This coming debt crisis is the most predictable crisis we’ve ever had in this country. And look what’s happening.

This is why we’re acting. This is why we’re leading. This is why we’re proposing - and passing out of the House - a budget to fix this problem: so we can save our country for ourselves and our children’s future.

Part of the proposal will include reforming the “fee-for-service” model in Medicare, but other aspects of the budget haven’t been released. Here is the video, what the Weekly Standard calls the “best presidential campaign ad of 2012,” while lamenting the candidacy “could have been”: