Wisconsin's Options

Facing a $3.6 billion deficit, Wisconsin Governor Scott K. Walker proposed budget cuts that would balance the budget as well as a process to ensure that the people of Wisconsin are empowered to decide if state employees paid by their tax dollars would be able to receive pay hike beyond the consumer price index. As a result, big unions and public employees, focused on their own agenda and not that of the people of Wisconsin, began major protests in the state capitol of Madison. The protests have become national news, with national politicians such as President Barack Obama and Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) chiming in. Pundits all over the cable news networks and columnists at national newspapers have also chimed in on the situation.

When it comes down to it, Governor Walker has three options for fixing Wisconsin's budget woes:

1. Hike Taxes: Governor Walker could propose a tax hike to raise the $3.6 billion needed to balance out the budget. However, the people of Wisconsin sent a clear message last year that they would not accept tax hikes, and Governor Walker was elected on a promise to not raise taxes. In fact, many in Wisconsin elected Governor Walker because of his promises to reduce taxes, enabling the growth of small business and the creation of jobs. 
2. Add Debt: Governor Walker could propose simply borrowing more money to finance unsustainable spending. Unfortunately, such a concept was rejected by Wisconsin voters and would lead the state into an even worse long-term deficit problem, as the debt would need to be paid back. Wisconsin would simply end up in a worse situation, such as what California is in.
3. Curb Spending: Governor Walker could propose a budget that curbs spending, as he promised to do when running for office. In doing this, taxes would remain the same or be cut, and deficit would not grow. 

Obviously, Option #3 makes the most sense, and it is what the Governor is trying to pursue. The people of Wisconsin sent a message that new debt and new taxes were unacceptable, and Governor Walker must carry out the will of the people. Less than 10% of Wisconsin workers are members of unions. The interest of the over 90% Wisconsin workers who are non-union must be prioritized over the loud voices of the big unions.

National Referendum Needed

The ability to elect legislative and executive leadership is one of the most important parts of democracy. Unfortunately, it is not enough. As shown by Obamacare, it is possible for a house of Congress or the President to act in a manner inconsistent with the will of the American people. The American people have little recourse but to wait until the next election and hope that leadership change can bring in politicians who will follow the will of the people rather than the party line. 

To fix this problem, a national referendum process should exist, where every year the American people have the ability to vote directly on an issue or legislation. If a majority of the people vote for something, then it should be enacted with no ability for Congress or the President to override the vote. The judicial branch, of course, could overturn something if it were inconsistent with the United States Constitution. 

Such a simple solution would require an amendment to the United States Constitution. The far-left would likely oppose this amendment, for a number of reasons, including their elitist attitude that the American people are not capable of making their own decisions and need people in government to do it for them. The truth, however, is that a national referendum system would be good for the country. Such a system would enable greater freedom and democracy by empowering the American people. 

Winning The Obama Republicans

Presidential Races can be close. They can also be blowouts. Ronald Reagan's 1984 defeat of Walter Mondale was a blowout: every state except Minnesota went to Reagan. In contrast, the 2000 race between Al Gore and George W. Bush was so close that a single state going the other way could have changed the outcome of the election. In 2012, the Presidential race may be very close. It is likely that independent and moderate voters, which actually make up a majority of the American people, will be the group that decides the race. The far-left won't vote Republican and the far-right won't vote Democrat. The center, however, could go either way.

In 2008, nearly 1 in 10 Republicans voted for President Barack Obama over their party's nominee, John McCain. These so-called "Obama Republicans" or "Obamacans" helped the President secure the win. Likewise, in 1984 Ronald Reagan was able to win 49 of 50 states because of the support of "Reagan Democrats" and other moderate voters. President Reagan, after all, helped curb inflation, reduced taxes, grew the GDP, and helped create jobs in America. Moderate Americans support those principles, and if President Obama can do the same, moderate Americans -- including, yes, some Republicans -- will vote for him again in 2012.

It is clear that the number one priority of the American people is the economy. Financial issues, not social issues, are what Americans care about. For many Americans, it doesn't matter if something is a Republican solution or a Democrat solution, but rather if something is a working solution. If the far-left ideas of greater regulation and higher taxes created more jobs in America, raised the average families income, and improved the GDP, most Americans would be happy. Unfortunately, it has been shown in the past that the best way to bring prosperity to America is by embracing supply-side economics. As Arthur B. Laffer mentions in the Wall Street Journal, supply-side economics created 21 million jobs between 1982 and 1990.

Unfortunately, for President Obama, should he fail to America on the path to economic prosperity, the people will start to demand change. Not the "change" he campaigned on, but change to a different leader, likely a more conservative, Republican leader. The best way for President Obama to win an election in 2012 is not through charismatic campaigning and the support of large unions, but rather by bringing economic prosperity to the American people.

RedState Statement

In an effort to get its content more widely distributed across the Internet, The Report began posting blog posts over at RedState. RedState claims to be "the most widely read right of center blog on Capitol Hill." It's writing is led by Editor-in-Chief Erick Erickson, but RedState promotes that "anyone, however, can write at RedState" and notes that "the best stuff gets voted on by the community and the best of the best gets put on the front page for the world to see."

Yesterday, The Report blogged about H. R. 3 and its failure to create jobs as well as the fact that the bill would prevent a pregnant person on government healthcare from saving the taxpayers money by opting for a cheaper abortion instead of having labor and delivery of a baby. The post doesn't go into the morality of the decision-making, but rather focused on H. R. 3 likely costing the taxpayers more money and killing, rather than creating, jobs. Obviously, the subject is controversial so we looked forward to interesting debate through comment posting. Unfortunately, a RedState moderator decided that if he didn’t agree with something, it simply shouldn't be there. This person, Neil Stevens, deleted our post content and in a childish act replaced it with a YouTube video, a comment saying "get lost," and changed the subject of our post to "Scram."

An explanation from Mr. Erickson on was requested via Twitter, but he failed to respond. We even asked again, and still he failed to respond. Our guess is that we were just too fiscally conservative for Mr. Stevens' liking, so he decided that censorship was the solution. While it is unlikely that Mr. Stevens' is a supporter of the Third Reich, his censorship is more similar to what the Nazis engaged in than what American freedom represents.

It has been our observation that the environment at RedState is not one where the interest lines up with what is best for the American people, especially on matters of fiscal conservatism. At RedState, members attack and flame anything that does not follow the Republican or Tea Party line. Praising President Obama's move to use supply-side economics to lower the national debt, for example, came under attack at RedState -- not because the idea was a radical far-left idea, but because the community there values attacking President Obama more than it values moving the country in the right direction where jobs will be created so Americans can afford to feed their families and pay their rent without relying on unemployment checks funded by the taxpayer.

As a result of our observations and yesterday's events, effective immediately, The Report will no longer be involved with RedState. We will remain open, however, to posting our content at other websites. We will continue our posting on Twitter, and welcome reader suggestions about other websites to post our content.

Dear John, Where Are The Jobs in H. R. 3?

When the American people elected a majority Republican House of Representatives last November, they did so because they wanted representatives in Congress who would listen to the mandate of the people that long-term job creation was the most important thing to the American people. Additionally, the people mandated that they wanted the deficit to be reduced without hikes in taxes. The new Speaker, Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio) said he would make job creation a priority. Even President Obama, in The Wall Street Journal and in his State of the Union address, championed supply-side economic principles with a strength not seen since the administration of Ronald Reagan in order to to reduce the deficit and create jobs.

The Republicans started out pretty well. They read the Constitution aloud to start the 112th Congress and implemented new rules to ensure bills have to be Constitutional to be brought before the House. H. R. 2 was a measure to repeal an act passed by the previous Congress that would kill jobs and was not wanted by a majority of the country.

H. R. 3 is the "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act," and while it sounds like it would save tax dollars by preventing taxpayer funds from going to pay for abortions, it actually will cost the taxpayers more.

When a woman becomes pregnant, there are a few basic outcomes that can happen. The first possible outcome is that a woman carries the child for a period (usually around 9 months) and gives birth to a baby. The second possible outcome is a natural or unwanted failure of the pregnancy, such as a miscarriage. The third outcome is that the pregnancy is intentionally ended, which is known as an abortion.

While H. R. 3 would prohibit taxpayer funding for an abortion, it would still allow taxpayer funding for the labor and delivery of a baby. As illustrated below, using a low-range figure for the cost of labor and delivery, it is far cheaper for the taxpayers to fund a woman having an abortion, or even a dozen abortions, than to fund having a child:

From a pure economic sense, and for lowering the deficit, it seems that the government ought to actually encourage abortion instead of having children for people on government healthcare. It also is the case that many children who are born will have much of their costs not paid for by their parents, but paid for via government welfare programs, creating greater burden on the American taxpayer.

Worse, H. R. 3 does not create a single job. There is no mention of the word "job" or "jobs" in the bill. If anything, it kills jobs because a reduction in demand for abortions will put abortion doctors, nurses, and counselors out of business. Jobless, they'll also seek unemployment benefits that are funded by taxpayers.

At this point, with unemployment still over 9 percent, H. R. 3 just is not the type of bill that Congress needs to pass. The American people need Congress to focus on passing job-creating bills, not job-killing bills.

Back to December

Perhaps watching Taylor Swift's latest music video convinced the Republicans of a great idea -- go back to the good ol' days of December. No, not December 2010. Rather, a glorious December... a December before before Barack H. Obama was President of the United States: December 2008. By restoring December 2008 spending levels, the GOP says it can save the American people billions of dollars.

It is clear that government spending needs to be reduced. The American people want to see the deficit reduced, but have also rejected tax hikes as a means of reducing the deficit. The government has two choices:   (1) increase its revenue without tax hikes using supply-side economic concepts; or (2) cut spending. Recently, President Obama has suggested the idea #1, and the GOP took back the House of Representatives on promises to implement idea #2. There's a third option -- combine #1 and #2 to increase revenue and cut spending, providing greater ability to reduce the deficit.

The perfect place to start on reducing spending is with Congress' salaries. Members of Congress received $169,300 in base pay in 2008. However, Congress took a raise of $4,700 to $174,000 in base pay for 2009. While millions of Americans were facing unemployment and tough economic times, Congress members ended up with a raise of over 2.7%. If Congress wants to cut spending, they can roll back their paychecks to December 2008 levels. Perhaps members of Congress will have to make tough choices like many Americans, and cancel, or give up buying a new television, or downgrade from buying a luxury foreign car to a Ford Focus.

An even better idea, Congress should make itself more representative of the average American by passing legislation setting its salary equal to what the average American made the last year - roughly $51,000. This system would provide monetary incentive to members of Congress to create jobs, since people who are unemployed have lower income and bring down the average for the entire country.

Pathetic

The single word that can best describe Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) this week is "pathetic." Pathetic because Senator Reid doesn't care about ensuring that the Senate adheres to the will of the American people.

In the House of Representatives, the House and held a straight yea/nea vote on the "Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act." The House passed the bill with a vote of 245 YEA to 189 NEA. A majority of the American people supported the repeal of healthcare reform (also known as Obamacare), so it made sense that the House would take up the issue, hold a direct vote on it, and voted with the will of the people.

In the Senate, however, Senator Reid says that he won't allow a straight yea/nea vote on the bill, effectively killing it. Given that the Democrats have majority control of the Senate (51 votes) and the two independents in the Senate to lean left, many would wonder why Senator Reid is afraid to allow a straight yea/nea vote. It's because Senator Reid is a weak leader, and many moderate Democrats will follow the will of their constituents instead of that of Senator Reid and President Obama. If all Republicans in the Senate voted in favor of repealing Obamacare, only four Democrats or independents would need to join them to pass the repeal. With some Democrats having campaigned on promises to support the elimination of some parts of Obamacare, and other looking at 2012 races in districts with a large number of independents and/or conservatives, it is very likely that Obamacare repeal could actually pass in the Senate.  Senator Reid doesn't want that to happen, so he simply will use procedural tactics to stop a legitimate vote on the issue and prevent the will of the American people from being followed in the Senate.

Senator Reid is even more pathetic because he is playing a role as President Obama's protector. If the American people, the House, and the Senate all supported Obamacare repeal, President Obama would be forced to either sign the bill or veto it. If he vetoed the bill, which is the most likely outcome, then the President would be in a very bad position going into the next election, having blatantly and directly ignored the will of the American people and disregarded the votes of both houses of Congress. By preventing a bill from reaching President Obama's desk, Senator Reid is protecting the President at the expense of the American people who deserve the opportunity to have the Senators they sent to Washington actually vote on legislation that matters to them.

Democrat Accuses GOP of Blood Libel

When Sarah Palin referred to attacks against her as "blood libel," it set off a firestorm of criticism. While criticism was primarily from the left, it also came from the center and even some on the right. Oddly, the same level of criticism isn't happening following Representative Steve Cohen (D-Tennessee) using the term "blood libel" to refer to the Republican efforts to pass House Resolution #2, a bill aimed at repealing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare. Here's what Rep. Cohen said:

They say it's a government takeover of health care, a big lie just like Goebbels. You say it enough, you repeat the lie, you repeat the lie, and eventually, people believe it. Like blood libel. That's the same kind of thing, blood libel. That's the same kind of thing. The Germans said enough about the Jews and people believed it -- believed it and you have the Holocaust.

It appears that accusing your opposition of blood libel isn't allowed when you're a conservative under attack, but that when you're a Democrat trying to defend legislation that has been ruled partially unconstitutional and is has its repeal supported by a majority of the country, then it's fine. Does anyone else see the problem with this?

Obama Must Be Listening

After reading President Obama's opinion piece in today's Wall Street Journal, Towards a 21st-Century Regulatory System, we're convinced that President Obama must be reading and listening to at least some of what we've said.

President Obama opens by praising free market capitalism:

For two centuries, America's free market has not only been the source of dazzling ideas and path-breaking products, it has also been the greatest force for prosperity the world has ever known. That vibrant entrepreneurialism is the key to our continued global leadership and the success of our people.

The President further went on to criticize excessive government intervention and regulation, calling them "unreasonable burdens on business -- burdens that have stifled innovation and have had a chilling effect on growth and jobs." Previously, we wrote about President Obama looking towards the concept of supply-side economics to help reduce the national debt. In reading his Wall Street Journal piece, it appears that he is embracing the supply-side economic concept of removing government hinderances to the production of goods and services, which can help lead the country to greater prosperity. President Obama then mentions his new executive order:

This order requires that federal agencies ensure that regulations protect our safety, health and environment while promoting economic growth. And it orders a government-wide review of the rules already on the books to remove outdated regulations that stifle job creation and make our economy less competitive. It's a review that will help bring order to regulations that have become a patchwork of overlapping rules, the result of tinkering by administrations and legislators of both parties and the influence of special interests in Washington over decades.Where necessary, we won't shy away from addressing obvious gaps: new safety rules for infant formula; procedures to stop preventable infections in hospitals; efforts to target chronic violators of workplace safety laws. But we are also making it our mission to root out regulations that conflict, that are not worth the cost, or that are just plain dumb.

The executive order from the President makes it clear that he is interested in reducing government involvement in the free market and eliminating rules and regulations that are bad for business and bad for the economy. President Obama cites removing regulations that stifle job creation, making it clear that he somewhat understands the American people believe job creation should be a top priority for the country.

President Obama seems to also be taking a hint from Representative John Boehner (R-Ohio), the Speaker of the House of Representatives, in indicating that the American people must be listened to when developing rules and regulations. President Obama wrote that moving towards a better regulatory system for the country requires "writing rules with more input from experts, businesses and ordinary citizens." Additionally, the President suggests "using disclosure as a tool to inform consumers of their choices, rather than restricting those choices," indicating that he understands that the American people should be free to make their own decisions instead of having the government make decisions for them.

President Obama, who is the first United States President to be on Twitter and the first to utilize a smartphone (reportedly, a BlackBerry), also called for "means making sure the government does more of its work online, just like companies are doing." The President further noted that the federal government would focus on "getting rid of absurd and unnecessary paperwork requirements that waste time and money." In the private sector, using technology to eliminate paper has resulted in a savings of time and money, and also created new jobs. It is good for the American people that President Obama understands the need to utilize ideas proven in the private sector in the federal government.

As an example of fixing government regulation, President Obama pointed to the EPA and saccharin:

...the FDA has long considered saccharin, the artificial sweetener, safe for people to consume. Yet for years, the EPA made companies treat saccharin like other dangerous chemicals. Well, if it goes in your coffee, it is not hazardous waste. The EPA wisely eliminated this rule last month.

While many who make up President Obama's base on the left may balk at the idea of reducing government regulation and intervention in order to grow the economy, President Obama is wise to embrace supply-side economic principles. After all, they worked during the 1980s when Ronald Reagan was President.  As written about yesterday, former Vice President Dick Cheney suggested that President Obama will be a one-term President. However, if President Obama continues to listen to the American people, adopts more moderate positions, and successfully turns the economy around, he could win the votes of some "Obama Republicans" back and retain "Reagan Democrats." Indeed, if the President acts properly, American people might just vote in 2012 to give him four more years.

Barack Hussein Obama - Not Approved

A majority of Americans do not approve of Barack Hussein Obama's performance as President of the United States. Recently, four different polls confirm that President Obama has an approval rating below 50%:

• Gallup - 48%
  
• Rasmussen Reports - 46%
  
• Quinnipiac University - 48%
  
• Marist College - 48%
  

Interestingly, the American people support repealing the job killing, tax hiking health care reform legislation more than they do President Obama. 55% of Americans support Obamacare repeal. President Obama, however, defies the American people and has insisted that he will veto a repeal if it ever reaches his desk. Additionally, Senate Democrats have vowed to disallow a straight yea/nea vote on the matter in the Senate should it pass the House of Representatives, which is taking up the issue tomorrow and will vote on Wednesday. Several Democrats are expected to back the Republican-led Obamacare repeal effort, coming from districts where their constituents oppose the bill and put them in office under the impression that they would not support Obamacare.

If President Obama does not want former Vice President Cheney's prediction that he will be a one-term President to be true, then he must learn how to listen to the will of the American people. President Obama would be wise to follow the model of House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), and the White House should also be "the People's House."