Monday, February 2, 2015
From: Gary L. Bauer
Barack’s Budget
The White House officially released President Obama’s latest budget this morning. It’s historic — the nation’s first $4 trillion budget. As you might expect, it is full of more spending, higher taxes and bigger government. But don’t take my word for it.
Politico previewed Barack’s budget in a report headlined “Obama Veers Left.” Its description was very revealing given the publication’s own left-leaning inclinations. Consider these excerpts:
“As he prepares to deliver his budget on Monday, President Barack Obama is lurching to the left. . . . Remember those budget caps put in place in 2011? Obama wants to blast right through them. It’s a progressive’s dream version of Obama, untethered from earlier centrist leanings. . . The direction Obama is steering the party lines up much more closely with the politics of Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. . .”
Obama is calling for an end to sequestration budget caps and a seven percent increase in discretionary spending over last year’s numbers. That equates to an additional $74 billion dollars in new spending, split equally between the Pentagon and domestic agencies.
Yet many experts worry that an extra $37 billion for the Pentagon (assuming the money is actually going to weapons and not the bureaucracy) is probably insufficient given the growing threats we are facing around the world.
Here are some additional details:
- There is a new, mandatory 14% tax on corporate profits earned overseas, which eventually increases to 19%.
- Obama wants to raise the capital gains tax to 28%.
- There is a new tax on the nation’s largest banks.
- Obama is proposing $480 billion in new spending on infrastructure projects over the next six years.
- Obama’s budget, even with new and higher taxes, still produces an annual deficit of $470 billion.And here’s something else to keep in mind: According to one analysis, non-discretionary, mandatory spending is set to increase by more than $340 billion. If the economy averages about 3% growth, we can expect to add roughly $530 billion to our GDP. As one economics professor put it:”If you think about that as the new income that could go to either the private sector or the government, President Obama is proposing that the government take charge of [two-thirds] of the new money available in the economy. . . . Think of that as if the entire economy is facing a marginal tax rate of 67 percent. ”
Obama’s Delusions On Radical Islam
President Obama was recently asked by CNN’s Fareed Zakaria whether the United States was “in a war with radical Islam.” Here’s how Obama responded:
“You know, I think that the way to understand this is there is an element growing out of Muslim communities in certain parts of the world that have perverted the religion, have embraced a nihilistic, violent, almost medieval interpretation of Islam . . . But it is absolutely true that I reject a notion that somehow that creates a religious war because the overwhelming majority of Muslims reject that interpretation of Islam. . . . I think that for us to be successful in fighting this scourge, it’s very important for us to align ourselves with the 99.9 percent of Muslims who are looking for the same thing we’re looking for — order, peace, prosperity.”
Obama’s refusal to acknowledge reality when it comes to radical Islamic terrorism borders on delusional. If only there was some semblance of truth to Obama’s claim that 99.9% of Muslims reject radical Islam.It is inconceivable that the president is clueless about the deep-seated anti-Semitism that infects the Muslim world.
It is inconceivable that Obama does not understand how many Muslims support violence against civilians and believe that insults against Muhammad should be punishable by death.
It is inconceivable that the president does not understand the correlation between Islamism and Christian persecution, the medieval treatment of women and other minorities in Muslim dominated nations.
Amnesty’s Victims
The media debate over immigration reform is too often a one-sided story. Illegal immigrants are frequently portrayed as victims of greedy businesses, while Americans concerned about border security and the rule of law are bashed as racists and xenophobes. We hear a lot about compassion for “dreamers” and those who break our laws to enter the country, but there is little compassion for overburdened citizens and taxpayers.
Administration allies claim that “prosecutorial discretion” — the euphemism for not enforcing our immigration laws — allows them to focus resources on serious criminals. But the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) own records suggest otherwise.
For example, we know that the administration released 36,000 criminal aliens in 2013. Those 36,000 individuals had committed 88,000 crimes.
Guess what? According to DHS statistics, 1,000 of those freed criminals, released under “prosecutorial discretion,” committed new crimes after their release, including serious offenses such as “assault with a deadly weapon, terrorist threats, failure to register as a sex offender, lewd acts with a child under 14 and spousal rape.”
Nevertheless, the Obama Administration is doubling down on this policy. The Associated Press reported last week that immigration agents have been ordered “to review government files to identify any jailed immigrants they might be able to release” under Obama’s latest executive amnesty order.
The crimes committed by illegal immigrants who should have been deported represent gross negligence on the part of the federal government. It is a failure of the government’s first obligation to the people — to keep them safe. Perhaps a class action lawsuit by victims of criminal aliens might get the government’s attention.
There are real victims of Obama’s amnesty. Where is the compassion for them?
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