Good Morning,

81 days from now you will make a decision. That decision will be the deciding factor on our government’s role in this country. Will your decision side with ‘fairness’ or will it side with ‘hard work and personal responsibility’? Will it be for the job creators or the ‘level playing field’ pushers? Will it coincide with getting government out of the way to allow for the American Dream to Lead or will it jive with the ‘you can’t go it alone you need bigger government’? Will it side with Agenda 21? Abortion on Demand? ObamaCare? Cutting military spending? Amnesty for illegals? Dream Funds? Bailouts? Medicare as we know it?

The decision we each make, locally, state wide and nationally, will ultimately be the deciding factor of how our country moves forward, moves backwards or moves towards something unfamiliar to Americans. So, let’s look at what those decisions hinge on.

The Hill reports that Medicare is more important to voters than OCare this morning. According to a survey from Kaiser and The Washington Post, a strong majority of voters (58 percent) want Medicare to remain the way it is rather than see it partially privatized. Read that line again. Apparently NO ONE has told the majority that Medicare is going broke and will be insolvent in just a few years. That tells me people are not paying attention. Let’s face facts here – both the Romney/Ryan and Obama plans end Medicare “as we know it.” The program is running out of money as fewer people pay in than receive benefits. In just 12 years, Medicare’s hospital trust fund is predicted to become insolvent. And for the next 17½ years, 10,000 baby boomers will reach age 65 every day. So, it’s really just a question of when the end comes—for Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security—and what happens next.

It’s also true that the president has cut more than $700 billion from Medicare and credits it toward the cost of Obamacare. While some of those cuts are admirable—everyone wants to see fraud reduced—other cuts are in payments to providers. And it’s a bit disingenuous of Team Obama to claim these cuts won’t affect benefits. In Texas, one of the few states to track doctor drop-outs, the number of physicians accepting Medicare patients fell from 78 percent in 2000 to 58 percent in 2012—because of cuts in payments, with more cuts to come. Punishing doctors with lower, sometimes below-cost fees for treating Medicare patients means fewer doctors, decreased care, and even—yes—the potential for rationing of care.

Ryan’s original plan also cut Medicare spending at a similar level, but through consumer choice, competition, and market forces, not punitive cost controls. And he planned to return those dollars to the Medicare trust fund.

But at some point, folks will stop listening to all those confusing details about baselines and budgets, and all of the charges and countercharges.

The decision will come down to a matter of trust. Who has earned it? Who has shown leadership? It’s that simple!

As the American Thinker points out Obama at one time agreed with Paul Ryan on Medicare reform.

I really, really wish we had paid attention to this. He TOLD US the debates would be framed as ‘throw granny off the bus’. He said he didn’t want to position himself politically – did you hear that? Let’s have that ‘serious debate’ .. Obama vs. Paul! OH what fun that would be but we shouldn’t hold our collective breath!

The decision will come down to a matter of trust. Who has earned it? Who has shown leadership? It’s that simple!

Instead of working together where we agree, the President has opted for divisive rhetoric and the broken politics of the past. He is going from town to town, impugning the motives of Republicans, setting up straw men and scapegoats, and engaging in intellectually lazy arguments, as he tries to build support for punitive tax hikes on job creators. – Rep. Paul Ryan

Leadership…..

Fox News reports that the Lundberg Survey finds the national average for a gallon of gas at $3.69, an increase of 36 cents since July 1. With the political conventions now less than two weeks away, voters are asking what the candidates are pledging to do to keep gas prices from spiking again and slowing down the economic recovery.

“Let’s produce more oil and gas,” President Obama said, “but let’s also produce more bio fuels. Let’s produce more efficient cars.”

“We need to keep our eye on the prize, the big energy picture,” Bob Deans of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Action Fund said. “We are just not going to be able to power a 21st century economy with a 20th century energy system.”

The push to develop alternative energies has led to some spectacular flops and failures – all with tax dollars on the line. The administration touted a $535 million loan to the solar company Solyndra, which promptly went bankrupt, and it offered generous tax breaks to consumers to buy the battery-powered Chevy Volt, which has yet to catch on.

John Felmy of the American Petroleum Institute, an industry group, says the administration shouldn’t be picking winners and losers with taxpayer money.

The decision will come down to a matter of trust. Who has earned it? Who has shown leadership? 

It’s that simple.

Governor Beverly Perdue, D-NC, and Governor Mike Beebe, D-Ark., officially petitioned the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to grant a waiver from the ethanol quotas mandated by the federal Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS). Their requests follow similar pleas from Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley and Delaware Governor Jack Markell made last week.

Governors Perdue and Beebe join a growing list of recent requests to waive the RFS, including calls from 156 U.S. House members, and 26 U.S Senators.

Due to the drought, USDA forecasts record high corn prices of $7.50 to $8.90 per bushel at the farm level, which could be more than 40 percent higher than the 2011-12 crop year.  Further, USDA reduced its feed usage forecast from its report last month by over 15 percent; much of this short corn crop’s burden will fall heavily on livestock and poultry producers.

“It is now beyond dispute that our nation is undergoing a severe, prolonged drought that is of historic proportions and is causing widespread damage to many of the most productive agricultural regions in the country,” Governor Perdue noted in her petition.   The direct harm, she added, was “caused by the RFS requirement to utilize ever-increasing amounts of corn and soybeans for transportation fuel.  Whatever the final damage done by the severe lack of rainfall, it is clear that this harm is reflected in accelerated prices for corn and soybeans, which have a severe economic impact on the state of North Carolina, various regions within the state, and important economic sectors within the state.”

“While the drought may have triggered the price spike in corn, an underlying cause is the federal policy mandating ever-increasing amounts of corn for fuel,” Governor Beebe said in his petition.  “The higher feed costs following the passage of RFS1 in 2005 and RFS2 in 2007 have resulted in a long-term shortage of grain in our nation, especially corn, and are clearly taking a terrible toll on Arkansas’ poultry and animal agriculture, potentially forcing reduced production and job losses and increasing food prices for consumers worldwide… I urge you to begin a formal process for considering a waiver of the renewable fuel mandate,” Beebe concluded.

The decision will come down to a matter of trust. Who has earned it? Who has shown leadership?

More ‘green’ regulation equals higher costs to you. As an example: The average price of ground beef hit a record high in the United States in July, according to data released Wednesday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The BLS has been tracking the average price of a pound of 100% ground beef since 1984. In July, it cost $3.085, up from $3.007 in June. Prior to June, the average cost of 100% ground beef in the United States had never topped $3.00.

 

The decision will come down to a matter of trust. Who has earned it? Who has shown leadership? 

It’s that simple.

 

Bryan P left this comment yesterday… “You do realize no matter what you do, Obama is getting the NY electoral votes, right? Romney doesn’t have said snowball’s chance in the People’s Republic of NYC, which has enough population to make the entire rest of the state utterly pointless as far as the Presidential campaign goes.” Question… Why does NYC TRUST this administration??

 

The decision will come down to a matter of trust. Who has earned it? Who has shown leadership? 

It’s that simple.

A divider of this country or a unifier: President Obama’s answer on Wednesday to a question about his running mate claiming Republicans are going to put “y’all back in chains” was a classic bit of soothing presidential palaver. “I don’t think you or anybody who’s been watching the campaign would say that in any way we have tried to divide the country,” he said about a moment in which Joe Biden had done precisely that.

The president’s answer has the quality of the adulterer caught in bed with another woman who says to his wife, “Who you gonna believe? Me or your lying eyes?” Biden was suggesting, off the cuff or not, that Republicans want to restart slavery (apparently through deregulation of the banking system).
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/america_lying_eyes_ux4KlHWKi6cIPcdyQIxWJJ

 

The decision will come down to a matter of trust. Who has earned it? Who has shown leadership? 

It’s that simple.

Daniel J. Mitchell goes back to basics this morning explaining the Ryan budget.

America will become Greece in the absence of reform. Well, that’s basically the Obama fiscal plan, as illustrated by his amusing cartoon:

What makes the Ryan budget so impressive is that it includes the reforms that are needed to avoid this fate.

Even though I’ve already made clear that I am less-than-overwhelmed by the thought of Mitt Romney in the White House, I worry that people will become to think I’m a GOP toady.

That’s because I’ve been spending a lot of time providing favorable analysis and commentary on the relative meritsof the Ryan budget (particularly proposed reforms to Medicare and Medicaid) compared to President Obama’s statist agenda of class warfare and bigger government.

I’ve already done a couple of TV interviews on Ryanomics vs Obamanomics and the Wall Street Journal this morning published my column explaining the key features of the Ryan budget.

Here are some highlights.

In one of my early paragraphs, I give Ryan credit for steering the GOP back in the right direction after the fiscal recklessness of the Bush years.

…the era of bipartisan big government may have come to an end. Largely thanks to Rep. Paul Ryan and the fiscal blueprint he prepared as chairman of the House Budget Committee earlier this year, the GOP has begun climbing back on the wagon of fiscal sobriety and has shown at least some willingness to restrain the growth of government.

I probably should have also credited the Tea Party, but I’ll try to make up for that omission in the future.

These next couple of sentences are the main point of my column.

The most important headline about the Ryan budget is that it limits the growth rate of federal spending, with outlays increasing by an average of 3.1% annually over the next 10 years. …limiting spending so it grows by 3.1% per year, as Mr. Ryan proposes, quickly leads to less red ink. This is because federal tax revenues are projected by the House Budget Committee to increase 6.6% annually over the next 10 years if the House budget is approved (and this assumes the Bush tax cuts are made permanent).

Some conservatives complain that the Ryan budget doesn’t balance the budget in 10 years. I explain how that could happen, but I then emphasize that what really matters is shrinking the burden of government spending.

To balance the budget within 10 years would require that outlays grow by about 2% each year. …There are many who would prefer that the deficit come down more quickly, but from a jobs and growth perspective, it isn’t the deficit that matters. Rather, what matters for prosperity and living standards is thedegree to which labor and capital are used productively. This is why policy makers should focus on reducing the burden of government spending as a share of GDP—leaving more resources in the private economy. The simple way of making this happen is to follow what I’ve been calling the golden rule of good fiscal policy: The private sector should grow faster than the government.

Actually, I’ve been calling it Mitchell’s Golden Rule, but I couldn’t bring myself to be that narcissistic and self-aggrandizing on the nation’s most important and influential editorial page.

One final point from the column that’s worth emphasizing is that Ryan does the right kind of entitlement reform.

One of the best features of the Ryan budget is that he reforms the two big health entitlements instead of simply trying to save money. Medicaid gets block-granted to the states, building on the success of welfare reform in the 1990s. And Medicare is modernized by creating a premium-support option for people retiring in 2022 and beyond. This is much better than the traditional Beltway approach of trying to save money with price controls on health-care providers and means testing on health-care consumers. …But good entitlement policy also is a godsend for taxpayers, particularly in the long run. Without reform, the burden of federal spending will jump to 35% of GDP by 2040, compared to 18.75% of output under the Ryan budget.

The last sentence of the excerpt is critical. If the Golden Rule of fiscal policy is to have the private sector grow faster than government, then the Golden Goal is to reduce government spending as a share of GDP.

I’ve commented before how America will become Greece in the absence of reform. Well, that’s basically the Obama fiscal plan, as illustrated by this amusing cartoon.

What makes the Ryan budget so impressive is that it includes the reforms that are needed to avoid this fate.

No, it doesn’t bring the federal government back down to 3 percent of GDP, so it’s not libertarian Nirvana.

But we manage to stay out of fiscal hell, so that counts for something.

The decision will come down to a matter of trust. Who has earned it? Who has shown leadership? 

It’s that simple.

Oh – before you go – if you have Progressive Insurance – you might want to read this: http://www.wnd.com/2012/08/whats-flo-doing-with-your-insurance-premiums/

AND don’t forget the 2016 the movie!

http://www.2016themovie.com/

Enjoy your weekend!

Lisa