"The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale." --Thomas Jefferson (1816)
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This week we honor the life of President Ronald Reagan, who inherited from his Democrat predecessor, Jimmy Carter, the last near-depression economy, and turned it into the largest economic expansion since World War II. It is no small irony that, in the same week, the current crop of Republican "leaders" in the House and Senate, Speaker John Boehner and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, are preparing to roll over on the deferred "Fiscal Bluff" deadline -- in effect fueling our nation's collision course with economic collapse.

 

As I noted just after Barack Hussein Obama's re-election, despite his minuscule 51.1 percent victory (most of it cast by his naive and dangerously uninformed populist constituency), he would reign as if universally worshipped by all people. Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, and Obama will continue his strong-handed winner-takes-all approach to compromise -- which is to say, he won't compromise.

 

To that end, Obama arrogantly insisted that Republicans, again, acquiesce to his demands for more taxes, few-if-any spending cuts and another deferment of the Fiscal Bluff sequestration, now scheduled for 01 March. And once again, that demand is countered by a lot of Republican hand-wringing but little Republican resistance. In fact, Republican leadership appears down for the count.

 

"There is no doubt, we need additional revenue," Obama insists, "coupled with smart spending reductions, in order to bring down our deficit." By "revenue," Obama means another round of tax increases. By "smart spending reductions," he means another round of smoke-and-mirror accounting, resulting in no real budget cuts.

 

Obama also demanded that Republicans "fix" the sequestration date -- meaning that he will use the presidential soapbox to convince the American people that the consequences of mandatory cuts, if sequestration occurs, are Republicans' fault. And he will, of course, blame Republicans, which is why so many of the establishment types are running for cover.

 

The current sequestration debacle began with Obama's Budget Control Act of 2011, a "deal" cut in August of that year, in return for Republican agreement to increase the national debt ceiling by $2.1 trillion. That in turn allowed Obama to borrow more money, primarily from the Red Chinese, to fund his runaway socialist entitlement programs and bloated "stimulus spending" boondoggles.

 

In return for more spending ability, Obama agreed to cap discretionary spending growth to "save" $950 billion over 10 years. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid refer to those caps as "cuts." He also agreed to establish a Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction (a.k.a. "super committee") to implement another $1.5 trillion in "savings." If, however, the super committee didn't come to an agreement by November of 2011, Obama's suggested sequestration trigger -- automatic budget "cuts" of $1.2 trillion over the next decade -- would commence on January 2 of this year. But, as noted earlier, Republicans have since kicked that can down the road to March.