The 2016 GOP Presidential Nominee on Immigration

Am I to understand that likely 2016 republican presidential nominee Marco Rubio wants amnesty for illegal immigrants?

If so:

1. Don't care.

If not:

1. Still don't care.

I once thought that China was my preferred idle threat to leave to, now I'm thinking Brazil.

Bobby Jindal 2016

His Thursday speech transcript can be found here.

excerpt:

We as Republicans have to accept that government number crunching – even conservative number crunching – is not the answer to our nation’s problems.

We also must face one more cold hard fact – Washington is so dysfunctional that any budget proposal based on fiscal sanity will be deemed ‘not-serious’ by the media, it will fail in the Senate, and it won’t even make it to the President’s desk where it would be vetoed anyway.

In fact, any serious proposal to restrain government growth is immediately deemed ‘not-serious’ in Washington. The Balanced Budget is deemed ‘not-serious’ in Washington.

Term Limits are deemed ‘not-serious’ in Washington. Capping federal growth by tying it to private sector economic growth is deemed ‘not-serious’ in Washington.
The truth is nothing serious is deemed serious in Washington.

When then-Senator Obama voted against raising the debt ceiling, he said he was doing so because the national debt was at an outrageous 8 trillion dollars…and he clarified for effect, saying that is “trillion with a T.”

Now President Obama has our national debt over 16 trillion dollars and climbing…larger than our entire economy. And he’s not worried about it in the least.

He calls it progress. You remember his campaign slogan, he says it is “Forward.”
I have news for the President – If Washington’s debt is going forward, America’s economy is going backward.

Instead of worrying about managing government, it’s time for us to address how we can lead America… to a place where she can once again become the land of opportunity, where she can once again become a place of growth and opportunity.
We should put all of our eggs in that basket.

Yes, we certainly do need folks in Washington who will devote themselves to the task of stopping this President from taking America so far off the ledge that we cannot get back.
We must do all we can to stop what is rapidly becoming the bankrupting of our federal government.

Cutting Spending Works

I pointed out yesterday that California raised taxes on the left, then watched the rich leave and their tax revenues decrease.

Here in Wisconsin we elected a governor in 2010 that wanted to balance the budget by cutting spending.

note:

Wisconsin budget deficit when Scott Walker took office: $3 billion
Projected budget surplus: $484 million

source, h/t: Althouse

Thanks to the new numbers our politicians are discussing how much we can cut taxes, and how much more can go to schools.

The surplus this time makes it easier for Walker and Republicans to follow through on their promises to cut income taxes while also increasing spending on K-12 schools.

Walker said Tuesday that he thought state income taxes could be cut by about $340 million, and that it would amount to a roughly $200 savings per household over the next two fiscal years. Details were still being worked out, he said.

Walker said in a statement Thursday that the larger surplus "will allow hardworking Wisconsin taxpayers to keep more of the money they earn because I plan to move forward with an income tax cut targeting the middle class."

Democrats have been generally supportive of an income tax cut, as long as it's targeted at the middle class. Democratic state Rep. Jon Richards, a member of the Legislature's budget committee, said the higher surplus provides an opportunity not only for the tax cut but also to bolster funding in a number of areas slashed in Walker's previous budget, including job training and education.

If any of you who read this are liberals/leftists/communists/socialists/democrats/ whatever.., could you tell me how many similar examples of raising taxes doing bad, and cutting spending being good you would need to see before you reconsider your economic beliefs?

***

Note also that I would like to see either Bobby Jindal, governor of Louisiana, or Scott Walker governor of Wisconsin, be the 2016 republican presidential nominee.

Both have been in the news this week for planning on cutting income taxes, and it sounds like both have a good shot at their plan.

I'd vote for either of them, if they are the presidential, not vice-presidential nominee, but I realize that anything that they could do nationally would be too little, too late.

Its still good news in two states.

Long Term Plans

I read the following sentence in an article titles Deficit Dreams, and then quit reading it.

"America’s massive deficits and debt are terribly inconvenient for the Left."

If this is the case, then were are the liberal solutions to the debt and deficit?  Can you find one article that outlines what liberals' plan is, or what a liberal things the plan should be?

Liberal websites, where such an article might be found (if it exists):

• Huffington Post
• Slate
• Think Progress 
• Politico

Find me an article that outlines a democratic plan to balance the budget, or stop repeatedly claiming that the debt and deficit is something that the democrats are concerned about.  

(There are articles on those websites that criticize republican ideas about the deficit, but zero about democratic ideas.)

Liberals and democrats don't care about the debt and deficit.  Some, like Paul Krugman and Barack Obama, advocate making it bigger with more stimulus spending.  They are not in the least concerned with the debt and deficit.

I think that I understand why democratic politicians and some big businesses, who get rich while in Washington and lobbying in Washington, support no action to reduce the debt or deficit.   But to those of you average democratic voters, what do you think is going to happen in the long term with trillion dollar deficits and a debt that is over $16 trillion?  Can you explain how anything good is going to happen?  Do you think that trillion dollar deficits can continue forever?  You must support annual trillion dollar budget deficits (and no budget at all) because Obama was re-elected and the deficit has not been less than $1 trillion in any year that he has been president (highest budget deficit was around $400 billion under W). table 1

Would one of you explain your long term economic plan to me?  Because I don't understand how spending one and a half times federal revenue each year will turn out well.

One last question: who's going to care about the racial disposition of Obama's cabinet, or gay marriage, or abortion, or healthcare if the government goes bankrupt and nobody has a job?

***

I did find this article about Republican tax and budget ideas.  My favorite line:

"Gov. Bobby Jindal, who is flirting with a 2016 presidential run, recently proposed scrapping Louisiana’s income and corporate taxes."

Eliminating taxes?

Did I, or did I not, recently point out that Bobby Jindal and Scott Walker are my preferred 2016 Republican presidential candidates?

*Feel free to call me a racist because half of my preferred 2016 republican presidential nominees is a white guy.

The 2016 Presidential Nominees

Its fairly easy to narrow the possible 2016 republican presidential nominees down to a few because the republicans usually elect someone who is well known and who has been around for a while.

My guess is that the 2016 republican presidential nominee will be one of the following:

• Paul Ryan
• Chris Christie
• Marco Rubio
• Rand Paul
• Jeb Bush

I'd bet on Marco Rubio being the nominee in 2016.

Note that I'm not endorsing any of these guys.  I'd like to see my governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin or governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana become the republican presidential nominee.  They both have actual accomplishments.  And actual governing experience.  Other than their support of Mitt Romney I haven't heard anything about either of them that I was very opposed to.

The democrats are much harder to guess the presidential nominee for, because they seem to pick the flavor of the moment.  My guess is that we have heard of whoever it will be, and would recognize the name, but we cannot narrow the options down to a few.

Some things about the 2016 presidential race that I am sure of:

• It will be the most importantest election ever
• I won't like either of the two nominees
• Joe Biden is a doufus
• Nothing important will change

Hey, Obama Voters...

...I didn't vote for Romney despite my intense dislike of Obama.

You say you use "facts and stats" to back up the policies that you support.  I suggest that we try a simple experiment.

Pick a number.  Pick a number that you think would be a good rate of unemployment after eight years of Obama as president.

In 2016 Obama will have been president for eight years.  What would be a good unemployment number after eight years?

Pick that number, remember it, then in 2016 let's see if your "facts and stats" line up with reality.

Note that a 6.5% unemployment rate was awful under President Bush.  Every year since Obama was elected has had a higher rate of unemployment that that.

I suggest that you could claim an unemployment rate of 5-6% in 2016 as some sort of accomplishment for Obama.  (Even though that would be eight years of an unemployment rate that you would have called horrendous with a republican as president.)

Pick your number and look at where we are in four years, if we are no better off...then stop voting for democrats.

One last point: Don't complain about republican obstructionism.  For the foreseeable future our politicians will be about half and half democrat and republican, deal with it.  In any case were there not obstructing democrats in congress when George Bush was president?

Frank J for President!

Frank J Flemming, of imao.us, is going to run for president in 2016. I would like to be his Treasury Secretary.

I have several qualifications for the position:

• I can add and subtract
• I know that deficits = bad, surpluses = good
• I know that debt = bad, no debt = good
• I will propose that anyone who suggests an income tax be declared a traitor and executed on the spot
• I have paid my taxes (unlike a current Treasury Secretary that I could mention)
• I have a business degree
• I have same first name as the current TS so we'd save money changing only the last names on the TS's cards and office door (I assume I'll get an office)

2017 Budget Proposal #1

Highlights:

Revenue:

Reduce all income taxes to 10% (with 0 exceptions or credits)

Maintain Social Insurance: $819 billion

Eliminate "other"

Expenditures:

Defense: $500 billion
Interest: $227 billion

Total expenditures so far: $727 billion

Social Insurance less Defense and Interest spending: $92 billion

Then the democrats can spend $92 billion plus all revenue from 10% income tax on anything.  We will remove all "mandatory" spending.  The democrats can spend all of total revenue, less $727 billion, on absolutely anything. (If they want to spend $1 trillion on abortions, or art, or education, or helping the poor, or whatever, then that will be okay.)

The benefits of my plan for the Republicans are: 1. a balanced budget 2. reduced income taxes and income tax complexity.

The benefits of my plan for the Democrats are: they can do whatever they want with the majority of the budget.

2017 Budget Proposal #2 

Highlights:

If we kept all revenue collections in tact, totaling $2.3 trillion in 2011, eliminated all spending except defense and interest on our debt, $927 billion, we could give each of the poorest 100,000,000 Americans a yearly check for $13,730 and still have a balanced budget.

According to the "2012 HHS Poverty Guidelines" the poverty line for one person in the United States is: $11,170.

According to the census bureau in September of 2011 there were 42.1 million Americans living beneath the poverty line.

If we kept all revenue collections in tact, totaling $2.3 trillion in 2011, eliminated all spending except defense and interest on our debt, $927 billion, we could give every American who lives below the poverty line, 42.1 million, a check for $29,783.  That is nearly triple the poverty line.

For 2018 I propose we study ways to eliminate all income tax and find other evenue sources, such as tariffs, which not many people would oppose.

Frank J for President 2016!