I LIKE PIE!

I like pie, and it's a problem.

I eat a lot of pie... at least one whole pie a day, 365 pies a year.

My problem is I am obese, some people even say "bloated".

Lately people have become dissatisfied with the amount of pie I eat, they say I eat too much, not only of my pie, but of their pie too.

I've decided to make major changes in my diet... I, am going to eat less pie.

For the next three years I am only going to eat 361 and a half pies a year.

Some people trumpet this as a "major change"

Other's ridicule me and say I should only eat a little pie, and less of theirs.

I like Pie!

The Congressional Budget Office reports that the 2010 deficit is only going to be 1.3 trillion dollars, down from 1.4 trillion last year.

The Obama administration is expected to announce a three year freeze in spending on certain government agencies and programs that congress specifically funds, and exempt security related budgets and entitlements.

The government is going to eat less pie, roughly 3 and a half less pies a year, just like me.

Sure I'm fat, bloated, and eating every pie in sight... but the problem isn't that we are eating too much pie, the problem is that we are eating more pie than we could ever bake ourselves. I'm eating Chinese pie, Saudi Arabian pie, pies from every corner of the world. Sooner or later people are gonna stop giving us pies...

But Hell, I like pork too....and I eat tons of that.

Real Hope

Liberal bureaucracies are crumbling worldwide, their promises as empty as the people who defend them
 
Obama's magic spell is broken, the hopium smoke is dissipating...  Presidential approval has cracked 50%, going down.

Support for Obama and the Pelosicrats' Soviet Style Health Care Monstrosity is sinking fast.  Only 35% support this monument to lying and irresponsibility.

Economic suicide upon the altar of Gaia looks less and less likely.  Only 35% of Americans support Senator Boxer's Cap and Trade lunacy.

Millionaire mushy middler Mort Zuckermann elucidates the national mood:

In a recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News Poll, Americans were asked which economic issue facing the country concerns them the most. Deficit reduction ruled over health care. Half were prepared to defer spending or to spend less, even if it meant extending the recession.

CAN THE GOP CAPITALIZE?

Europeans are making painful decisions and slashing spending. 
Lefties in America love pointing to some European program and asking why we aren't doing it.  Now it's the GOP's turn.  Republicans should ask, "Why aren't we reducing government budgets like our European friends? 

'Kill Bill' and start from scratch on Health Reform

Charles Krauthammer provides clarity, as usual:

The fundamental problem with the 2,074-page Senate health-care bill (as with its 2,014-page House counterpart) is that it wildly compounds the complexity by adding hundreds of new provisions, regulations, mandates, committees and other arbitrary bureaucratic inventions.

The better choice is targeted measures that attack the inefficiencies of the current system one by one -- tort reform, interstate purchasing and taxing employee benefits. It would take 20 pages to write such a bill, not 2,000 -- and provide the funds to cover the uninsured without wrecking both U.S. health care and the U.S. Treasury.

Keep asking, "How are you going to pay for it?"

The GOP needs candidates who are not afraid to crap in the DC punchbowl.  McCain should have done it it 2008; at the time, he was the only one crusty enough to credibly pull it off.

Now, one year and trillions of dollars later, every Republican politicians should be focusing on fiscal sanity like a laser beam.   

Stand with the heroes, Fight the Zeros!

Supersize My Government

For only $99,000,000,000,000.99 we'll supersize that for you!

Robert Samuelson, economic journalist extraordinaire, writes:

WASHINGTON -- The question that President Obama ought to be asking -- that we all should be asking -- is this: How big a government do we want?

Without anyone much noticing, our national government is on the verge of a permanent expansion that would endure long after the present economic crisis has (presumably) passed and that would exceed anything ever experienced in peacetime. This expansion may not be good for us, but we are not contemplating the adverse consequences or how we might minimize them.

How to Fight Back Against Obscene Spending
The case conservatives should be making is a non-partisan one: We are on a fiscally unsustainable path. We don't want either party spending more money. In order to fight this fight, first we've got to acknowledge a few skeletons in the GOP closet:

* Yes, Reagan grew the deficit, but it was in the cause of breaking the back of global communism. He got it done, and then military spending went back down.

* Yes, Rush Limbaugh and other conservative standard-bearers used to not care about deficits, even going so far as to poo poo the notion that they were a threat. That was then (when deficits grew no faster than GDP), this is now (projected deficits will overtake GDP projections and keep skyrocketing from there.)

* Yes, George Bush spend too much money. But if he was irresponsible in pursuit of security, then President Obama is four times as irresponsible in pursuit of windmills and government bureaucracy.

* Republicans used to scorn the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). They now tout the CBO's damning projections as an effective rebuttal to the Social Democrats' agenda. It is true, when the GOP wanted to pass their agenda, the CBO played the same role: Using actual facts and figures to puncture the fantasy bubbles that politicians of both parties are so fond of. It's all sunshine and lollipops until an adult steps in with a dose of reality.

Cutting earmarks and pork won't get the job done
Our government is systemically overleveraged: There is no way it can pay for everything it has promised everybody. Even higher taxes won't do it. Dismantling this structurally untenable debt will involve breaking promises and slaughtering sacred cows. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and government pensions (including military pensions) account for over half of the annual federal budget.

Restoring Fiscal Sanity Won't Be Easy
If the GOP were to gain enough power to restore fiscal sanity, it still would not be easy, since there are no easy answers, just unsatisfying trade-offs. They would face a hellstorm of invective from the left, with the press megaphone propagandizing all the way: The children, the elderly, the indigent, cold-hearted, cruel, Hitler...

The news would be an endless parade of heart-tugging misery, with The Ballad of Tom Joad playing full-blast in the background. Hard-working, abused Okies will be played by our brothers and sisters from south of the border. Inner city ghettos will simmer and seethe with rage, threatening to boil over at any time. An avalanche of stories about hardworking people fallen victim to GOP cruelty will assault our senses daily.

You get my drift. These are the emotional arguments we must deal with if we really want to get our fiscal house in order. Given that Republicans and Democrats alike profit nicely from the current system, I don't think any of this will ever happen until China moves in to repossess the collateral.

RCP - Robert Samuelson