Dr. Ben Carson on Obamacare

Dr. Benjamin Carson Addresses National Prayer Breakfast, Criticizes Obamacare - Real Clear Politics

DR. CARSON: Here's my solution: When a person is born, give him a birth certificate, an electronic medical record, and a health savings account to which money can be contributed -- pretax -- from the time you're born 'til the time you die. When you die, you can pass it on to your family members, so that when you're 85 years old and you got six diseases, you're not trying to spend up everything. You're happy to pass it on and there's nobody talking about death panels.

Eric Cantor

A Wall Street Journal interview with Eric Cantor.
From: Eric Cantor: “Our country is suffering” - Scott Johnson

Federal Debt Ceiling

Dear Congress, Your Credit Application Has Been Turned Down - A. Barton Hinkle

Thank you for your interest in the American Public Trust's Gold Card credit program. Rest assured your application has been given thorough and careful consideration by the American people.

After reviewing the information provided in your application as well as your credit report, we regret to say that we are unable to extend you further credit at this time. The reasons for our decision are as follows:

(1) Inadequate income.Our records indicate that your annual income for the 2011 taxable year was $2,170,000,000,000. You have requested a credit limit of $17,000,000,000,000. These figures exceed the American Public's debt-to-income guidelines for credit issuance.

(2) Excessive spending. The receipts you provided indicate your annual expenditures for the 2011 fiscal year total $3,820,000,000,000, or $1,650,000,000,000 more than your total income for the year. The American Public prefers that its members of Congress maintain a positive or neutral rather than a negative cash flow.

(3) High debt utilization. Your credit report indicates that you have a credit limit of $14,300,000,000,000, and of that amount you have utilized $14,300,000,000,000, for a debt utilization ratio of 100 percent. Consumer banking industry guidelines recommend a debt utilization ratio of no greater than 30 percent for standard creditworthiness, and 10 percent for exemplary creditworthiness. A debt utilization rate of 100 percent meets our classification of "You're *&^%$#@! kidding, right?"

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You may also wish to contact a consumer credit counseling agency. The National Foundation for Credit Counseling can help you locate a reputable counseling agency in your area. You may also wish to visit the NFCC's website for helpful tips on such subjects as

• drawing up a budget
• living within your means
• saving during tough economic times
• steps to take when your finances get out of control

Government Handouts

Government Cash Handouts Now Top Tax Revenues - Elizabeth MacDonald

U.S. households are now getting more in cash handouts from the government than they are paying in taxes for the first time since the Great Depression.

Households received $2.3 trillion in some kind of government support in 2010. That includes expanded unemployment benefits, as well as payments for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and stimulus spending, among other things.

But that’s more than the $2.2 trillion households paid in taxes, an amount that has slumped largely due to the recession, according to an analysis by the Fiscal Times.

Also, an estimated 59% of the 308.7 million Americans in this country get at least one federal benefit, according to the Census Bureau, based on 2009 data. An estimated 46.5 million get Social Security; 42.6 million get Medicare; 42.4 million get Medicaid; 36.1 million get food stamps; 12.4 million get housing subsidies; and 3.2 million get Veterans' benefits.

And the handouts from the government have been growing. Government cash handouts account for a whopping 79% of household growth since 2007, even as household tax payments--for things like the income and payroll tax, among other taxes--have fallen by $312 billion.

State Deficits

The Tao of Jerry - William Voegeli

Californians can take scant comfort from the prospect that a blue-state meltdown may start elsewhere. (Illinois, for instance, appears to have dug itself into an even deeper hole.) No matter which other states have it worse, California faces years of austerity. According to a report issued in November 2010 by the Legislative Analyst's Office (LAO)—California's counterpart to the Congressional Budget Office—the state's general fund is heading for a $20 billion shortfall every year until 2016, as far ahead as LAO cares to project. Since LAO does not expect general fund revenues to exceed $100 billion until 2015, these deficits would be more than one-fifth of the state's budget for half a decade.

And that's the good news. "We believe that our projections probably understate the magnitude of the state's fiscal problems during the forecast period," the report says. The picture would have been even bleaker if LAO had factored in the billions of additional dollars California must devote each year to fulfill pension and health care obligations to public employees who have retired or will in the future. (When and how the state will pay for those promises, and whether it will bend or break some—these were too murky for the agency to quantify and forecast.) LAO does estimate that the unfunded liabilities for these obligations amount to $136 billion. California's "long-term fiscal liabilities—for infrastructure, retirement, and budgetary borrowing—are already huge," the report states. "By deferring hard decisions on how to finance routine annual budgets of state programs to future years, the state risks increasing further the already immense fiscal challenges facing tomorrow's Californians."

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The planted axiom is that higher taxes—California's are already among the highest in the nation—will get the state through the recession and recovery without further reductions or reorganizations of its public sector, hastening the happy day when things can go back to normal. The long-term structural deficits that appear endemic in the blue-state model of high taxes, big government, and strong public employee unions all argue, however, that "normal" is the problem. Americans are endorsing this proposition with the articles they write and the bonds they sell but also, more importantly, by decisions about where to build lives and enterprises. The first results from the 2010 census, released in December, show that the population of Texas, a state with no corporate or individual income tax, grew twice as fast as the nation's overall population between 2000 and 2010. California grew at the national rate, meaning that for the first time since 1850, the census will result in no additional California seats in the House of Representatives. (New York will lose two House seats; Illinois and New Jersey will each lose one. Texas adds four.) More generally, as Michael Barone has calculated, 35% of the nation's population growth since 2000 took place in the nine states that have no income tax, which together accounted for only 19% of the nation's total population at the beginning of the decade.

National Debt

A Very Good Question about Our National Debt - Jim Manzi

A very smart commenter at the American Scene called “cw,” who almost always disagrees with me in a highly productive way, asked what I think is an excellent question:

So here is a technical question for Jim or whoever else can answer it: how much would taxes need to be raised to maintain our current entitlement regime?

The total present value of payments expected under Social Security and Medicare beyond what is expected to be collected under current tax laws is about $100 trillion. One way to put that amount of money in context is to note that it is about twice the amount of all the net private assets that exist in America today.

To answer cw’s question directly, the best back-of-envelope estimate is that meeting this unfunded portion of our Social Security and Medicare commitments would require roughly an immediate 80 percent increase in federal income taxes, sustained forever.

That is one end of a spectrum. The other is to cut out $100 trillion of present value of anticipated entitlement spending.