Bush Tax Cuts: What to do?

There is starting to be some talk about whether the Bush Tax Cuts are going to expire, be re-enacted, or somehow modified. I think before we fall into our de facto camps of " tax the rich" and " no new taxes" it makes sense to see how each will actually effect us. The Tax Foundation has crunched the numbers. Here's a graph with S = single, M = married, *E indicates the number of earners in the household, and *C indicates the number of children:

The basic pattern is as follows. Letting them expire hurts everyone. Enacting Obama's modifications places the highest burden on the well off and benefits the lowest earners. Keeping the Bush tax cuts helps everyone but the lowest earners. This of course is using a very broad brush to explain a complicated tax code. But it seems in general that the Obama modifications would be a progressive redistribution of wealth, and letting them expire will kill what little growth the economy is experiencing.

Want to know how you would personally do under each of these three scenarios? Go to MyTaxBurden.org, At least then you can know for certain what you need to argue for and against. I did this myself and found that I would benefit most from the Obama modification- just barely.However, in my mind the damage to the overall economy would still end up adversely effecting me. As a teacher and a small business owner the better off those around me are, the better I do. I personally am not willing to gamble on a short term small tax benefit.

Palin & New England Republicans Don't Mix

We really didn't need a poll to tell us this but, according to a new one released by Public Policy Polling   shows that the GOP in NH is not a big fan of Sarah Palin. Kelly Ayotte's (R) appeal to moderate voters fell after being endorsed by Palin. While still ahead, her lead over Paul Hodes (D) in the U.S. Senate race has shrunk to its lowest level yet, 45% to 42%.

 "Most of the movement both in feelings about Ayotte and in the horse race has come with moderate voters. Moderates make up the largest bloc of the New Hampshire electorate at 47%, and Hodes' lead with them has expanded from just 8 points at 47% to 39% in April to now 21 points at 51% to 30%. Ayotte's favorability with them has gone from +5 at 32% to 27% to -19 at 27% to 46%."

RNC: Norm Coleman or Michael Steele?

If you are going to be taken seriously you have to admit when you are wrong; so here is my mea culpa. I supported Michael Steele for chairman of the RNC. I was wrong. As evidenced by over a year of gaffs and missteps it is clear that Steele is more of a distraction than anything else. I had thought he would be a moderating influence and I thought he would help to erase some of the stereotypes about the GOP. None of that happened. Now there is word that Norm Coleman may be interested in the job. From Politico:

Former Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman is considering a run for chairmanship of the RNC, POLITICO has learned, and has begun talking to associates about taking on Michael Steele, should the embattled current chairman seek another term in January.

After losing his Senate reelection by just 312 votes to Al Franken, Coleman became CEO of the American Action Network (AAN), a center-right group that supports conservative ideas and helps conservative candidates. The group has spent considerable cash to air ads meant to help Republican Senate candidates. I hesitate to endorse him, considering my recent track record, but I do like Coleman.

Bush III?

 Back in 2000 when George W Bush announced he was running for president a lot of people made the comment that his younger brother should have beat him to the punch. And truth be told Jeb Bush, former gov. of FLA probably would have done a much better job. Recently one of the commenters on this site mentioned him for 2012. And today in The Boston Globe - yes that is twice in one week I have been able to use this paper positively!- there isan article claiming that Jeb could win. I personally would love to see an honest debate between Romney and Jeb. At this point I think I could go either way. Read the article and let me know what you think?

Who Owns The Deficit?

Here is an interesting look at recent deficits.

In the run up to to 2010 elections the left is sure to bring up the meme that they inherited these huge deficits because of Bush. However, this is not exactly accurate. While Bush was no fiscal conservative, the facts do not necessarily gibe. Budgets do not come from the White House. They come from Congress, and the party that controlled Congress since January 2007 is the Democrat Party. They controlled the budget process for FY 2008 and FY 2009, as well as FY 2010 and FY 2011.   If the Democrats inherited any deficit, it was the FY 2007 deficit, the last of the Republican budgets.  That deficit was the lowest in five years, and the fourth straight decline in deficit spending. After that, Democrats in Congress took control of spending, and that includes Barack Obama, who voted for the budgets. If Obama inherited anything, he inherited it from himself.

Health Care Sampling Continued

Yesterday I wrote about how both The Boston Globe and The New York Times were starting to report critically on Obamacare. I concluded with the rhetorical question, "With friends like these...if the liberal Northeast newspapers are saying this I wonder what a more GOP friendly news source is reporting." As I read this morning's The Hill.com I have my answer. 

The author of the article is David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, and his analysis is shows many of Obamacare's detractors worst fears are materializing. 

When critics of the legislation alleged during the debate that the enforcement of its many provisions would vastly increase the power of the IRS and empower tax collectors to go where they had never gone before, administration spokesmen reacted in outrage. The president’s critics, they charged, were not just wrong, but lying to scare people.
It turns out that the critics were dead right and that if there was any lying going on, they weren’t the guilty ones. In the days since passage, we have learned that the IRS will have to hire literally thousands of new agents, auditors and analysts to make sure everyone required to buy into the program does so and to catch those who violate its many provisions as well as to collect the data that will be required of small businesses to help the government collect new taxes to pay for the scheme.

 How ridiculous is the new IRS oversight about to become for small businesses? They will needto file forms reporting on aggregate annual payments of only $600 to “vendors” like Office Max. In fact it seems as though small business, the engine of the economy, is about to become one of the prime targets of those thousands of new IRS agents. But wait there's more. Remember Obama's promise that illegals would under no circumstance be covered, thus keeping the cost of reform just under a trillion dollars?

Recent news reports that Democratic leaders promised Hispanic Caucus members that provisions inserted in the healthcare to win the votes of others would be removed later suggest that South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson’s (R) charge that President Obama’s denial that the healthcare bill would cover illegal aliens was a lie was dead on.

The healthcare bill as passed and signed into law prohibits illegals from buying into the so-called healthcare exchanges that will be established under the law and denies even temporary legal immigrants access to Medicaid unless they’ve been here for five years. Hispanic Caucus leaders are now charging that the administration specifically promised to eliminate these and other restrictions and are vowing to hold the president and congressional Democratic leaders to that promise.

 I just recently posted how I was trying to keep this blog about a conversation between center left and center right. I honestly believe that dialogue is beneficial.  However, with more and more negative press coming out about a plan I never liked anyway, I am starting to think that those Republicans campaigning on the Repeal The Bill slogan may be on to something. So my question for the left....can someone defend this bill?

Health Care Sampling

Here is just some of what I stumbled across today:

The relentlessly rising cost of health insurance is prompting some small Massachusetts companies to drop coverage for their workers and encourage them to sign up for state-subsidized care instead, a trend that, some analysts say, could eventually weigh heavily on the state’s already-stressed budget.

Since April 1, the date many insurance contracts are renewed for small businesses, the owners of about 90 small companies terminated their insurance plans with Braintree-based broker Jeff Rich and indicated in a follow-up survey that they were relying on publicly-funded insurance for their employees.

In Sandwich, business consultant Bill Fields said he has been hired by small businesses to enroll about 400 workers in state-subsidized care since April, because the company owners said they could no longer afford to provide coverage. Fields said that is by far the largest number he has handled in such a short time. - Boston Globe

 So, The Boston Globe, the most liberal major paper in Massachusetts is reporting exactly what conservative opponents of Obamacare warned about, interesting. Lets see what the nations other liberal paper has to say. This from The New York Times :

As the Obama administration begins to enact the new national health care law, the country’s biggest insurers are promoting affordable plans with reduced premiums that require participants to use a narrower selection of doctors or hospitals.
The plans, being tested in places like San Diego, New York and Chicago, are likely to appeal especially to small businesses that already provide insurance to their employees, but are concerned about the ever-spiraling cost of coverage.
But large employers, as well, are starting to show some interest, and insurers and consultants expect that, over time, businesses of all sizes will gravitate toward these plans in an effort to cut costs.
The tradeoff, they say, is that more Americans will be asked to pay higher prices for the privilege of choosing or keeping their own doctors if they are outside the new networks. That could come as a surprise to many who remember the repeated assurances from President Obama and other officials that consumers would retain a variety of health-care choices.

 OK, lets give this some perspective. The Boston Globe is telling us that small businesses are dropping coverage pushing employees into the state pool. This will in the long run cost the tax payers more and more to subsidize inexpensive government plans. then The New York Times tells us that those companies that are still providing coverage are opting for in essence, discount plans, that severely limit employees choice of health providers. With friends like these...if the liberal Northeast newspapers are saying this I wonder what a more GOP friendly news source is reporting.

Has Obama Fundamentally Changed America?

"In this world the task remains: to come closer and closer to each other in an ever-widening perimeter of communication."- Karl Jaspers,Basic Philosophical Writings

Jaspers was a German professor, lecturer and author who experienced both WWI and WWII and who was married to a Jewish wife. Because of this his central philosophy was that ongoing, honest communication was vital to the survival of mankind. With this ideal in mind I offer the following question: have the changes brought about by the Obama administration inherently changed the American landscape, much the same as Regan did nearly 30 years ago?  I ask this after reading the most recent article by Charles Krauthamer, Obama's Next Act. Below is the most pertinent quote:

The net effect of 18 months of Obamaism will be to undo much of Reaganism. Both presidencies were highly ideological, grandly ambitious and often underappreciated by their own side. In his early years, Reagan was bitterly attacked from his right. (Typical Washington Post headline: "For Reagan and the New Right, the Honeymoon Is Over" -- and that was six months into his presidency!) Obama is attacked from his left for insufficient zeal on gay rights, immigration reform, closing Guantanamo -- the list is long. The critics don't understand the big picture. Obama's transformational agenda is a play in two acts.

Act One is over. The stimulus, Obamacare, financial reform have exhausted his first-term mandate. It will bear no more heavy lifting. And the Democrats will pay the price for ideological overreaching by losing one or both houses, whether de facto or de jure. The rest of the first term will be spent consolidating these gains (writing the regulations, for example) and preparing for Act Two.

 Krauthammer is obviously a strong voice for the right and this colors his analysis. However, regardless of whether or not you feel any changes are good, bad or irrelevant, is the above quote factually true? Has the nation gone through a fundamental shift?  Until we can agree on the fundamental direction of our country we cannot have a true conversation about its merits or faults. As a conservative I tend to agree with the above- what about you?

Center-Right Castle Ahead in DE

Rasmussen  has moderate Rep. Mike Castle (R) leading Chris Coons (D) in the Delaware U.S. Senate race by double digits, 47% to 36%. Here is hoping Biden's old seat can be a GOP pick up,especially if it is another Northeast moderate.

Obama & 2012 Contenders

A recently released  Public Policy Polling survey shows some striking results for the Obama camp. Here are ht early numbers for potential 2012 match ups:

• Mitt Romney leads 46% to 43% 
• Mike Huckabee is ahead 47% to 45%
• Newt Gingrich is in front 46% to 45%

The biggest kicker....

Sarah Palin and Obama are tied.

Reaching Out

When I started this blog, almost two years ago, I did with the intention of not preaching to the choir as it were, but with the goal of reaching out to people in the middle or even the left who could be convinced that conservative values are what our country most needs. Because I have always written with this in mind the Moderate Republican has not offered as much red meat as other conservative blogs, however, I hope it has offered intelligent conversation.

Now an opportunity has arisen to further the aim of this site - to reach out to those willing to listen. Posted below is an email I received a few days ago:

Steve,
First off, I'm a Democrat, but I've been checking in on your site from time to time because more important than just being a liberal, I'm one who believes that in order for things to advance, folks like you and folks like me need to talk to each other.  For the last few months, I've been working on a project trying to get conservatives, liberals, libertarians, apolitical folks, whatever, to post their thoughts in the hopes of getting a dialogue going without relying on talking heads to do our communicating for us. 

First, thought you'd be interested in giving it a look if you haven't happened upon it already:

www.conversation101.squarespace.com 

Second, you're a bit better connected to folks with your particular paradigm than I am, so I wanted to let you know that we're constantly looking for folks with an interest in this type of thing to join us as contributors.  If you know of anyone who may be interested in coming on board our project, or if you wanted to post something here yourself, the invitation is open.


Keep up the good work,
Yeggo

 I have posted and commented on Conversation 101 a few times now and found fellow participants from all walks, but respectful and open. So if you have been looking for a place to discuss issues with an eye towards evangelizing for the conservative cause, I encourage you to give this site a shot.

Obama's poll Number 4 Months From Midterms...Updated

A new Public Policy Polling survey has Obama's approval rating at just 45% while 52% disapprove.

"The two most troublesome things for Obama in his numbers at this point are his standing among white voters and independents. Whites now disapprove of Obama by nearly a 2:1 margin, with 62% giving him bad marks and only 35% saying he's doing a good job. With independents his approval is just 40% and 56% disapprove of his performance."

****Update****
According to a new Bloomberg National Poll.

"A majority or plurality disapproves of Obama's management of the economy, health care, the budget deficit, the overhaul of financial market regulations and the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. In addition, almost 6 in 10 respondents say the war in Afghanistan is a lost cause."

McCain "Trouncing" Hayworth

This from a new Rocky Mountain poll:

Phoenix, Arizona. July 15, 2010. The GOP primary for U.S. Senate between incumbent John
McCain and challengers J.D. Hayworth and Jim Deakin appears to be all over but the actual voting. Senator McCain now has 64 percent of the test vote compared to only 19 percent for J.D. Hayworth, five percent for Jim Deakin and just 12 percent undecided. Since April, Hayworth’s appeal to Republicans, which appears never to have been widespread, shrank from 28 percent to only 19 percent today. Independents who plan to vote in the GOP primary (roughly 28 percent of their numbers) favor McCain by an even greater percent (71%) than do registered Republicans (62%).

Why We Need Another Teddy Roosevelt

 T.R. is often looked at in both admiration and disdain by many modern Republicans. This is of course understandable when one recalls that , while a hugely popular leader, T.R. did famously usher in the progressive era in America. I have blogged at length why I think the early 20th century's forays into Progressivism were wrong, though to be fair , The United States did not go nearly as wrong as our European friends did. But rehashing the history of the progressive movement is not the point of this post. At the core of the issue T.R. saw a wrong and sought to set it right. He saw unbridled capitalism creating dictatorial monopolies that were abusing their power. He felt the way to set this right was to set the government up as a watchdog- and hence the era of regulation was born.

One needs to remember though that Roosevelt was very much a man of his time, and in the early 20th century most educated people felt that the state could be the arbiter of righteousness at least to some degree. I recently listened to a talk by Joshua David Hawley, author of Theodore Roosevelt Preacher of Righteousness, and I came away with the feeling that more than ever we need a person of this caliber to reinvigorate the GOP for the new century. The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars sponsered the talk and their intorduction goes a long way to making my point:

From his birth in 1858 to his death in 1919 the United States was engaged in an accelerated process of maturation. Settling its vast interior, welcoming hordes of new immigrants and rapidly urbanizing; the country was preparing for a 20th century role as a world power. Theodore Roosevelt’s own maturation paralleled his country’s. He raised his commitment to a muscular Christianity and belief in righteousness to the level of a political philosophy. Eventually, his vision of the state as moral arbiter for the people became the theme of his progressivism.

 With some minor alterations that paragraph could be talking about our current place in history; we too stand on the precipice of a new age with new problems to face. T.R.'s response to a vastly changing landscape was government as benevolent ruler. Government which could raise men to a higher and more virtuous standard. With the benefit of history we can see that this in fact did not work. We now have a class of bureaucrats, answerable to no one controlling vast amounts of capital and resources. But that does mean T.R. failed.

Civilization, society, self governance are all vast experiments in trial and error. The only real failure is standing still while the world moves on. We need a character of T.R.'s strength, energy and commitment to battle big government much they way T.R. battled big business. Modern Republicans should not run away from Teddy Roosevelt, they should look at him as a hero of his age, who tried with the best tools and ideas at his disposal to right a wrong. Now it is our turn. Who will lead?

Can Demagoguery Govern?

Sarah Palin and the Near Future of the Republican Party
On the one hand, I am fully aware of the fact that the enthusiasm on the right is largely being fueled by the strong rhetoric coming from the likes of Sarah Palin and various TV and radio personalities, on the other hand, some of what they say scares me in terms of building a long term majority. I am not alone in feeling this. Many Republican leaders are giving in to a poisonous "demagoguery" that threatens the GOP's long-term strength, according to  veteran GOP House member, Rep. Bob Inglis, who was defeated in South Carolina's primary last month.

"It's a real concern, because I think what we're doing is dividing the country into partisan camps that really look a lot like Shia and Sunni," he said, referring to the two predominant Islamic denominations that have feuded for centuries. "It's very difficult to come together to find solutions."

While I wouldn't have used the Shia/Sunni imagery to describe American politics, I see his point. I am glad our side is riled up, and look forward to winning a lot of seats come November, however, I hope the anger can be tempered by common sense when it comes to governing. Both Republicans and Democrats are going to need to work together. Maybe groups like the Tuesday Group and the Blue Dogs can bridge the gap.

Independents Moving Back to the Center-Right

A new Gallup tracking poll has President Obama's approval rate at 38% among independents. It is now18 points lower than it was on year ago. In addition, almost 20% of Democrats now disapprove. Of course the reasons for the dip are many, from a still-struggling economy, to the poor response to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and the recent struggles in the war in Afghanistan.

A Centrist Movement?

Just as a new poll shows Charlie Crist solidly leading the field in the Florida Senate race, USA Today has an article about the growing movement of the middle:

"If the Tea Party movement represents an uprising against the political status quo by the right, the independent campaigns and plausible prospects for gubernatorial candidates in Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Maine reflect a rebellion from the middle."

In addition, there "are more signs of centrists stirring as national politics remain sharply polarized, a factor some candidates cite for leaving or being pushed from their old allegiances. Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, who became an independent candidate for the Senate when the GOP seemed certain to nominate Tea Party favorite Marco Rubio, now leads the three-way field. In California last month, voters approved a constitutional amendment to make primaries open and non-partisan, a measure intended to boost moderate contenders."

Less Debt = More Jobs

Squandering Promise

In January of 2009 about a week before President Obama's historic inauguration I wrote the following:

After the election I was challenged by a center-left friend to read Obama's book, The Audacity of Hope. The literary hubris of the title aside, the President-Elect is clearly as good a writer as he is a speaker. However, my feelings have largely been reinforced, not really changed. I will deal with three realities which I believe to be true about Obama. First that he is an intellectual without enough realism to come up with common sense policies, second that he is more of a talker than a doer, and third, that while he possess a good heart and wants to help, he is philosophically wrong as to how this should be done.

I was extremely concerned that someone with so little practical experience was going to be in charge of the world's only super power at a time of economic and military crisis. It has been 2 1/2 years since I wrote those words and today I came across an article in Commentary Magazine that eerily echos my sentiments.

No candidate in our lifetime rode the wave of hope and change quite like Barack Obama did. His campaign was, at its core, less about ideas than about aesthetics, about a narrative, about capturing an American moment. “This is our moment. This is our time,” he would say again and again. He entered office with an enormous reservoir of good will — and with huge majorities in the House and Senate. So much seemed possible to his supporters. But bad policies, arrogance, and events have caused him to come crashing down to earth. The president’s popularity is sinking, the mood of the country is souring, and his party is heading for an epic mid-term election defeat. Obama looks inept and, at times, overwhelmed — at the mercy of events rather than in control of them. He doesn’t seem up to the challenge. He looks, in fact, very much like a community organizer who was thrust into the job of the presidency.