Obama Owns the Debt-Ceiling Fiasco By Karl Rove

It doesn't help that he's declared high-speed rail and even unspent stimulus funds as untouchable..

Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304911104576443863077227784.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

JULY 14, 2011

President Barack Obama and Congress face a mess if the federal government hits the debt ceiling Aug. 2. The Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington think tank, projects that the government will receive $172 billion in revenues between Aug. 3 and Aug. 31, but it is on the hook to spend $306 billion, leaving a shortfall of $134 billion.

On Tuesday, Mr. Obama told Scott Pelley of CBS News that "there may simply not be the money in the coffers" to issue Social Security, veterans and disability checks after Aug. 3.

Not so. The $172 billion in revenues collected over the rest of the month can pay the $29 billion interest charges on the national debt, Social Security benefits ($49 billion), Medicaid and Medicare ($50 billion), active duty military pay ($2.9 billion), Department of Defense vendors ($31.7 billion), IRS refunds ($3.9 billion), and about a quarter of the $12.8 billion in unemployment checks due that month.

There will, however, be no cash for highway construction, no checks for federal workers or retirees, no agriculture payments, no open national parks. Interest rates are also likely to rise if U.S. debt is downgraded, adding massively to the deficit and further damaging the economy. This would be a disaster with no political winners.

The president wants a $2.4 trillion debt-ceiling increase to get him past next year's election—and the deal he's proposing is based on promised future cuts paired with substantial tax increases on households earning more than $250,000 a year.

House Speaker John Boehner proposed matching a debt-ceiling hike with substantial spending cuts. The Congressional Budget Office estimates federal spending at $46.1 trillion over the next 10 years, a dramatic escalation from projections before Mr. Obama took office. Mr. Boehner's modest proposal was to trim that back 5.2% over the decade, but the president balked.

Yet the $4 trillion in deficit reduction that Mr. Obama talks about is shy on details. No one who's attended his frequent negotiating sessions knows what his proposal really is.

The president has made a bipartisan agreement even more difficult by declaring certain spending off-limits to cuts. Mr. Obama's "untouchable" list includes his $1 trillion health-care reform, $128 billion in unspent stimulus funds, education and training outlays, his $53 billion high-speed rail proposal, spending on "green" jobs and student loans, and virtually any structural changes to entitlements except further squeezing payments to doctors, hospitals and health-care professionals.

Mr. Obama has offered no evidence since becoming president that he wants to restrain the upward trajectory of government spending. He does want higher taxes to pay for significantly higher federal spending. But he wants Republicans to deliver the tax increases, since Democrats couldn't pass them last year despite controlling both chambers of Congress.

Republicans have wisely declined. Demanding the GOP vote for immediate tax increases that would be offset by vague, future tax cuts conjures up images of Charlie Brown, Lucy and the football. The tax increases would be real—the future tax rate cuts would be imaginary. And Mr. Obama has opposed any serious spending enforcement mechanisms, such as a balanced budget amendment or hard caps on spending.

Karl Rove served as Senior Advisor to President George W. Bush from 2000–2007 and Deputy Chief of Staff from 2004–2007. At the White House he oversaw the Offices of Strategic Initiatives, Political Affairs, Public Liaison, and Intergovernmental Affairs and was Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy, coordinating the White House policy-making process.

Smith sworn-in as Superior Court judge By Danielle Camilli

Janet Z. Smith of Cinnaminson is sworn in as a New Jersey Superior Court judge Wednesday at the Burlington County Courthouse in Mount Holly in a private ceremony. Burlington County Assignment Judge Ronald E. Bookbinder swore her in as her husband, Brad Smith (left), held the bible. Photo/Donna Mazzanti

Source: http://www.phillyburbs.com/news/local/burlington_county_times_news/smith-sworn-in-as-superior-court-judge/article_776f5345-74f6-5791-b41e-6c7b349020e4.html

July 14, 2011

MOUNT HOLLY — New Superior Court Judge Janet Z. Smith was sworn in Tuesday during a private ceremony at the Burlington County Courthouse.

Burlington County Assignment Judge Ronald E. Bookbinder administered the oath of office to Smith as her husband, Brad, held the Bible. The Cinnaminson resident was welcomed to the county bench by other judges and court staff.

Smith, who was confirmed by the state Senate on June 29, will serve in the family division of the county courts, joining five other judges there. Gov. Chris Christie nominated the fellow Republican for the post in March.

Smith, who was admitted to the bar in 1976, had been in private practice since 1992 with her husband, and has served as a municipal prosecutor and solicitor. Brad Smith is a former township mayor and former state senator, and served as a county freeholder from 1985 to 1992.

The new judge also is a former deputy assistant public defender. She spent 12 years with the New Jersey Public Defender’s Office, serving in Burlington County courts.

Bookbinder said Smith brings to the bench integrity, honesty and a desire to serve and help the public. Her appointment also helps ease a shortage of judges on the county bench, and particularly the family division, he said.

“With the number of filings, the family division really needs seven judges and now we have six,” Bookbinder said. “At one point, we were as low as four judges within the last year.”

The county’s top judge hopes two more attorneys will be nominated to the judiciary and be assigned to Burlington County to bring the bench to its full complement of 18.

“We are happy to be back at 16. We need to be at 17. We are hoping that we get 18 that our workload requires,” Bookbinder said.

Since taking office in 2010, Christie has nominated two judges to the county bench — Smith and Superior Court Judge Philip Haines, who was sworn in last October.

However, Christie also left the county courts with one less experienced judge when he choose not to renominate now-retired Judge James Morley, a registered Democrat, last summer. At the time, Morley was the county’s presiding judge of its criminal division and decisions and comments he made from the bench in two-high profile cases appeared to be a factor, but the governor never explained his reasoning.

White House fumbles towards debt disaster By Charles Krauthammer

Source: http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/07/08/charles-krauthammer-white-house-fumbles-towards-debt-disaster/

Jul 8, 2011

WASHINGTON — Here we go again. An approaching crisis. A looming deadline. Nervous markets. And then, from the miasma of gridlock, rises the president, calling upon those unruly congressional children to quit squabbling, stop kicking the can down the road and get serious about debt.

This from the man who:

• Ignored the debt problem for two years by kicking the can to a commission.

• Promptly ignored the commission’s December 2010 report.

• Delivered a State of the Union address in January that didn’t even mention the word “debt” until 35 minutes in.

• Delivered in February a budget so embarrassing — it actually increased the deficit — that the Democratic-controlled Senate rejected it 97-0.

• Took a budget mulligan with his April 13 debt-plan speech. Asked in Congress how this new “budget framework” would affect the actual federal budget, Congressional Budget Office Director Doug Elmendorf replied with a devastating “We don’t estimate speeches.” You can’t assign numbers to air.

President Obama assailed the lesser mortals who inhabit Congress for not having seriously dealt with a problem he had not dealt with at all, then scolded Congress for being even less responsible than his own children. They apparently get their homework done on time.

My compliments. But the Republican House did do its homework. It’s called a budget. It passed the House on April 15. The Democratic Senate has produced no budget. Not just this year, but for two years running. As for the schoolmaster-in-chief, he produced two 2012 budget facsimiles: The first (February) was a farce and the second (April) was empty, dismissed by the CBO as nothing but words untethered to real numbers.

Obama has run disastrous annual deficits of around $1.5 trillion while insisting for months on a “clean” debt-ceiling increase, i.e., with no budget cuts at all. Yet suddenly he now rises to champion major long-term debt reduction, scorning any suggestions of a short-term debt-limit deal as can-kicking.

The flip-flop is transparently political. A short-term deal means another debt-ceiling fight before Election Day, a debate that would put Obama on the defensive and distract from the Mediscare campaign to which the Democrats are clinging to save them in 2012.

A clever strategy it is: Do nothing (see above); invite the Republicans to propose real debt reduction first; and when they do — voting for the Ryan budget and its now infamous and courageous Medicare reform — demagogue them to death.

And then up the ante by demanding Republican agreement to tax increases. So: First you get the GOP to seize the left’s third rail by daring to lay a finger on entitlements. Then you demand the GOP seize the right’s third rail by violating its no-tax pledge. A full-spectrum electrocution. Brilliant.

And what have been Obama’s own debt-reduction ideas? In last week’s news conference, he railed against the tax break for corporate jet owners — six times.

I did the math. If you collect that tax for the next 5,000 years — that is not a typo — it would equal the new debt Obama racked up last year alone. To put it another way, if we had levied this tax at the time of John the Baptist and collected it every year since — first in shekels, then in dollars — we would have 500 years to go before we could offset half of the debt added by Obama last year alone.

Obama’s other favorite debt-reduction refrain is canceling an oil-company tax break. Well, if you collect that oil tax and the corporate jet tax for the next 50 years — you will not yet have offset Obama’s deficit spending for February 2011.

After his Thursday meeting with bipartisan Congressional leadership, Obama adopted yet another persona: Cynic-in-chief became compromiser-in-chief. Highly placed leaks are portraying him as heroically prepared to offer Social Security and Medicare cuts.

We shall see. It’s no mystery what is needed. First, entitlement reform that changes the inflation measure, introduces means testing, then syncs the (lower) Medicare eligibility age with Social Security’s and indexes them both to longevity. And second, real tax reform, both corporate and individual, that eliminates myriad loopholes in return for lower tax rates for everyone.

That’s real debt reduction. Yet even now, we don’t know where the president stands on any of this. Until we do, I’ll follow the Elmendorf Rule: We don’t estimate leaks. Let’s see if Obama can suspend his 2012 electioneering long enough to keep the economy from going over the debt cliff.

Charles Krauthammer’s email address is letters@charleskrauthammer.com.