There is a lot of thoughtful analysis going on in Washington about whether we should expect some form of bipartisanship in the next two years.
I find these discussions very irritating because they assume that good results will automatically be achieved when both Republicans and Democrats agree on policy. My reaction, to put it mildly, is “these people are f*cking crazy!!!”
Was it progress when Republicans and Democrats colluded to… to save their Wall Street colleagues from TARP?
Was there progress when Republicans and Democrats joined forces to pass Bush left no bureaucrat behind educational program?
Was there progress when the first President Bush he broke his promise to read my lips and sided with the Democrats in calling for higher taxes and more spending in 1990?
So you can see why instinctively like a corkTo put it simply, it is it’s better to do nothing if the alternative is to pass more bad laws that raise the burden on government.
But maybe I’m being too cynical. After all, sometimes bipartisanship accidentally produces good policies. Like when we passed the Budget Control Act in 2011 as part of the debt-ceiling fight, which then led to sequestration.
Although I’m not holding my breath expecting similarly good results over the next two years.
Why? Because, as I said in my opening comments on John Stossel’s show last week, the president is simply too far left to expect any progress.
In the interview, I said that I appreciated Obama’s ideological coherence, but his agenda of more government and greater dependence does not allow me to think that we will be able to implement any good policies in the near future.
Here are some additional points from the interview worth highlighting.
*This is still a faint recovery, the most convincing example of which iscomparing what happened under Reagan with what is happening under the Obama administration.
*However, the situation has improved over the past few years, partly becausethere has been progress in reducing the burden of government spending.
*Ironically, the president boasted that America creates more jobs than Europe, even thoughwants to copy European policy.
*It is also irritating that the president says he wants to make America more competitive, even though He is pushing taxation of class struggle.
*Republicans also deserve criticism because some of them are advocating for higher gasoline taxes instead of a federalist approach of decentralization.
*When it comes to tax reform, if you give politicians a fresh tax, it is very likely that utilize the money to fund bigger government instead of abolishing the existing tax.
*My final comment from the interview brings us back to the central point of today’s post. Simply put, bipartisanship is not good if it means more government.
PS Me I made a blunder last week when I wrote that median household income fell every year under Obama, and I repeated that mistake in the Stossel interview, which was before I discovered that there had been a very petite raise in 2013. Well, I made another mistake in the interview. I said that Kate Upton was the daughter of Congressman Fred Upton. That’s not true. She actually his niece. Unfortunately, another sign that I have no idea about popular culture. I guess this means Kate won’t date me after RouteL finds another boyfriend.
PPS As we continue to discuss the issues that Obama raised in his speech, I can once again highlight my contribution to US News and World Report online debate on whether State of the Union is forceful. I’m doing well in the overall readership rankings, but (as of this writing) I have the third highest number of “downvotes,” so I gather that some of our leftist friends must not like what I’ve written. So go ahead go to article and click on the up arrow if you want to lend a hand me.
PPPS Moving on to a less narcissistic topic, I wrote in 2013 that the governor of Ohio should be known as John “Barack” Kasich because he decided to extend Obamacare in his state. Now, as explained by Philip Klein from Washington Examinerwe have Mike “Barack” Pence from Indiana.
…on Tuesday betrayed taxpayers when it passed Medicaid expansion through President Obama’s health care law. …Pence bowed to pressure from hospital lobbyists eager to get more federal money…Shortsighted Republican governors think they can fool conservatives by extracting token concessions on what remains a government health care program and calling it “free market reform.” But the Obama administration is playing for the long haul, realizing that if it keeps adding beneficiaries to the books, big-government liberalism will win.
How disappointing. Yes, GOP governors are being pressured by state lobbyists for the lure of “free” federal money, but that is no excuse to adopt policies that will hurt federal taxpayers in the compact term and state taxpayers in the long term.
This is another reason why we need to replace federal Medicaid entitlement with a lump sum subsidy.
PPPPS I don’t want to end on a somber note, so let’s move on to sequestration, which was one of the topics of Stossel’s interview. It wasn’t just a clear victory over substantial governmentbut it also resulted in some great political humor. You can see some of my favorite cartoons on the subject by clickingHere, Here, Here, Here, HereAND Here.
