Saturday morning it was the President’s “weekly address,” posted in video form on the White House website.  President Obama began with:

This week I asked Congress to hold a final vote on reform that will give families and businesses more control over their health care…

As anyone who hasn’t been in a coma for the past year knows, the central purpose of each of the two, 2,500 page health care bills now pending in Congress is to give government not just more, but total control over health care.  The idea that families and businesses would have more control is perhaps the most preposterous of a constellation of health care deceptions.

This comes after nearly a year of debate, as well as a seven hour summit with Democrats and Republicans where we had a public and substantive discussion on health care.

Wow!  After Congressional Democrats and their twenty-something staffers spent months writing massive bills in closed sessions the President actually allowed a few elected Republicans in the room for seven whole hours!  Are we supposed to be impressed?

Since then I’ve said I’m willing to incorporate some ideas offered by Republicans and we’re eliminating special provisions that had no place in health care reform.

Like most of the public communication from the Obama Administration, this sentence was designed to deceive those who don’t have the time or inclination to monitor the political process every day and keep track of the details.  “I’ve said” is simply meaningless.

Democrats in Congress have already embarked on a two-step legislative strategy that does not include any Republican input.

Step 1: The House is to pass the 2,500 page Senate version with no changes, even though scores of House Democrats are dead set against several of its provisions.  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has spent the past two weeks twisting arms among her 255 Democrats in a so-far futile effort to round up the 216 votes needed for passage.   If she finally succeeds…

Step 2: Write a bill of amendments to reconcile enough of the differences between House and Senate versions to pass the the Senate with 51 Democrat votes and the House with 216 Democrat votes.

After step 1 the President will sign the Senate Bill and it will become the law of the land, even if step 2 never happens.  So far, Pelosi does not have enough votes for step 1, because House Democrats  don’t trust Senate Democrats to complete step two.

Even as he talked of incorporating Republican ideas Obama knew that if any Republican ideas were added to the bill of amendments, even more Democrats would vote no, guaranteeing failure.

Regardless of Obama’s protestations, the health care stalemate is not due to Republican opposition.  It’s due to lack of agreement among his own Democrats.

Report # 1

The Wall Street Journal found that the Obama Administration has directed the US Import-Export Bank to loan $2 billion to Petrobras, Brazil’s state owned oil company.  The money will fund exploration and drilling in a massive, off-shore oil field recently discovered off the coast of Rio.  This would seem most curious and incomprehensible, considering Obama and his supporters loath oil drilling and the US government is broke.  But apparently the explanation lies in report #2.

,

Report # 2

From Reuters, a summary of a year-end SEC filing by the hedge fund owned by Billionaire and Obama Supporter George Soros.  According to Reuters Soros’ SEC filing discloses a:

large bet on Brazilian gas and oil giant Petroleo Brasileiro SA (PETR4.SA) (PBR.N), also known as Petrobras.

…this was better than expected…and shows the measures we’re taking to turn our economy around are having some impact.

Not to be out done, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid took to the Senate floor and outperformed The President:

Today is a big day in America. Only 36,000 people lost their jobs today, which is really good.

Obama and Reid have apparently forgotten that there is a philosophy and set of policies with a proven tack record of job creation. The historical data is here for Obama, Reid and everyone else to see.

These charts compare the two worst recessions since the 1930s, and the results of the two, directly opposite responses from Washington.

Thirteen months ago President Obama inherited a deep recession.  His response has been to:

• Expand the bailout program begun under the Bush administration;
• Enshrine as explicit government policy the theory that some companies are deemed too-big-to-fail and will always be rescued from the consequences of their own negligence, especially if their workforce is unionized;
• Enact the stimulus, now nearly $900 Billion in extra borrowing and spending, hyped with the promise that it would, in Obama’s words “immediately jumpstart job creation;”
• Subsidize blue-sky energy schemes that are too expensive and unreliable to survive in the competitive marketplace;
• Threaten employers with tax increases, hyper-regulation, new health care mandates, and an artificial energy shortage imposed by government.

Like President Obama, President Reagan inherited a deep recession as he took office in 1981. By some measures it was worse than the current downturn.  Reagan’s economic program, based on his commitment to liberty, was the opposite of Obama’s:

• Reduce regulation and government intervention in the economy;
  
• Cut taxes to leave capital in the hands of those who had earned it and were best equipped to invest in job creating enterprises;
• Release the creative and productive energies of The People from the yoke of imperial government.
  

The upper chart shows the job market is still deteriorating, after 27 months of Bush/Obama policies.

The results, in the lower chart, speak for themselves.  Reagan’s policies turned the job market around after 15 months of losses. Employment grew continuousy for 90 months, a total of 21 million new jobs, for a 24% increase in the number of Americans with jobs.

Price controls have been tried many times, all over the world, and are usually the last phase of failed experiments in government central planning and regulation.  The most recent experience in America was during the seventies, under President Nixon, who proved that no government is powerful enough to overrule the laws of mathematics.  No business, large or small, can survive if government holds its selling prices below its cost.

Regardless of the verdict of history, President Obama’s version of ObamaCare, published last week in the form of a marketing brochure, includes the possibility of government price controls on health insurance, if the other requirements of ObamaCare drive premiums too high.

Those other requirements begin with what the insurance industry calls “guaranteed issue,” or accepting people with pre-existing conditions for health insurance.

Both House and Senate versions of ObamaCare make guaranteed issue a universal entitlement.  Thus, anyone who is already sick would be permitted to plunk down one month’s premium for “insurance” and then immediately submit a claim and receive tens of thousands of dollars of medical services at the expense of the insurance company.  This is like buying fire insurance on a house that’s already on fire.

To a large extent guaranteed issue is already in effect.  A 1996 federal law, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), requires guaranteed issue for members of employee groups after one year on the job.  Some states also require guaranteed issue for individual policies.

The recent rapid rise in the cost of health insurance in recent years coincides with varying forms of guaranteed issue imposed by state and federal law.

We all feel compassion toward someone who couldn’t afford to become insured before getting sick.  Nobody wants to see such unfortunate people denied medical care.  Politicians want the credit for providing care for uninsured sick people but don’’t want the blame for higher taxes that would be required if government paid for it.

So the political solution of choice is guaranteed issue, making insurance companies the de facto tax collectors, by forcing them to raise premiums for everyone to cover the costs of caring for people who are already sick when they apply for insurance.

An unplanned consequence of government imposed guaranteed issue has been the incentive for healthy people to delay buying insurance until they get sick, adding even more upward pressure on the premiums that have to be collected from those who are buying insurance. Even politicians can understand that the insurance business won’t pencil out, and eventually will cease to exist, if enough people take advantage of this loophole.

Obama and the Democrats have sought to couple guaranteed issue with a mechanism that coerces everyone who is not sick to pay for insurance.  Both House and Senate versions of ObamaCare include fines imposed on those who don’t buy health insurance.  In the President’s own version of ObamaCare the fine $695 per year.

Obviously, this fine is only a small fraction of the price of a health insurance policy.  It would take a much larger fine to coerce people who have decided to defer buying insurance until such time as they may become sick and need treatment.  Also, it appears that these small fines will be kept by government and not paid to the insurance companies who must collect enough from their customers to cover the cost of guaranteed issue.

So the whole exercise misses the mark.  It will do nothing to slow down rising premiums brought on by guaranteed issue requirements.  The insurance companies will still bear 100% of the ever increasing risk and cost of guaranteed issue.  To remain solvent and able to pay all claims insurance companies will have no choice but to continuously raise premiums on everyone who does buy insurance before they get sick.

So How does the President plan to solve this problem, created by his guaranteed issue requirement and his toothless fine for non-compliance?  In defiance of the laws of mathematics he will impose price controls.  The following is from page 3 of the Summary of the President’s version, posted on the White House web site:

One essential policy is “rate review” meaning that health insurers must submit their proposed premium increases to the State authority or Secretary for review. The President’s Proposal strengthens this policy by ensuring that, if a rate increase is unreasonable and unjustified, health insurers must lower premiums, provide rebates, or take other actions to make premiums affordable.

What would make an increase “unreasonable and unjustified?”  Probably, one that sparks a public backlash against politicians!

A majority of Americans is too young to remember the fiasco that was the Nixon price controls of the Seventies. So what the heck?  Lets try it again!

Previously: Prelude Act I Act II

During Act II, the Health Care Summit, Representative Joe Barton articulated the principles that have guided Republicans’ response to the Democrats’ massive health insurance and health care regulation bills:

I do think, though, that there is a fundamental difference in the vision that you and your friends on the majority have put forward, and the vision that myself and those of us in the minority have put forward.  It’s the fundamental role of government.

We believe that we should use free markets to empower people and give them choices. And for the best of intentions, yourself and most of your allies in the Democratic Party seem to believe that the government, either through a mandate or through a regulatory requirement, knows better and will do better for health care for most Americans.

In his weekly address, released on Saturday, President Obama kicked off Act III of the Melodrama, an effort to establish in the mind of the public the notion that ObamaCare, as written, is the product of faultless wisdom, and there can be no legitimate disagreement.   He began by attempting to demean Republicans like Joe Barton:

We need to move past the bickering and the game-playing that holds us back and blocks progress for the American people.

Obama often resorts to this sort of rhetoric, dismissing principled dissent as mere “bickering and game-playing,” as if everything he puts forward were undeniably flawless and there could be no justification for disagreement.  At the Summit his position was that since Republicans share his concern about rising insurance premiums and costs to government they should support the Democrats’ massive government take-over, as if there were only one, self-evident strategy for dealing with those problems.

Smearing Republicans is futile in any event because the legislative log jam has nothing to do with Republican objections.  Democrats began have such commanding majorities in both houses that Republicans are nearly irrelevant.  In truth, ObamaCare could have become law months ago were it not for Obama’s inability to fully unite Democrats behind it.

It’s hard to understand how this exercise, inviting Republican input and then dismissing that input as bickering, will move the President any closer to his goal.  But maybe The Greatest Politician Ever knows something the rest of us don’t.  All we can do is wait and watch.

This week we have seen what post-Constitutional government looks like.  No-limit government means our liberty, rights, and prosperity are always subject to the whims of erratic political forces in Washington.

Whether or not we the people will be subjugated by an authoritarian government take-over of health care, with it’s  resultant loss of liberty, impenetrable bureaucratic complexity, and horrendous cost, now depends on which alternative Democrats think will be least catastrophic for their party in the November election.

As the polls below demonstrate, a substantial majority of the public is against ObamaCare.  In particular, independent voters, whom Barack Obama can thank for his Presidency, are overwhelmingly opposed.  Democrats now face two choices, and for them both are indeed grim:

1. Attempt to force passage via a combination of Reconciliation and even more outrageous bribes of individual members in exchange for their reluctant votes. If they try this and succeed they hand Republican challengers the ideal, poll tested issue to campaign against and will loose dozens of seats in November.  If they try it and fail the Republicans will still clean their clocks at the polls with the simple campaign slogan, “vote these guys out. It’s the only way to be sure ObamaCare doesn’t come back next year!”
2. Give up and let their dream of an extreme makeover of the nation’s health care be swept into the dust bin of history. If they choose this they’ll lose big time in November because their Leftist base will boycott the election and withhold campaign donations.  And, the same Republican campaign theme, fear of ObamaCare coming back can and will still be used against them.

The U.S. Constitution guarantees individual liberty by limiting the power and scope of government to a few functions called “enumerated powers.”  Providing medical services, forcing people to buy health insurance, and regulating the terms of health insurance policies by bureaucratic decree were not included on the list of enumerated powers.

But, as we wrote here, the Democrats now hold that the Constitution empowers them to do anything they can ram through Congress.  In Nancy Pelosi’s own words, they have “unlimited power” over our medical care. Many, though not all Republicans are only a little better when it comes to adherence to Constitutional principles.

Thus, we can no longer expect elected officials to obey the Constitution and protect rather than diminish our liberty.

All we can do now is wait and watch as Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Barack Obama decide not if our liberty is important, but which disagreeable option is least horrible for future of their political party.

We can also begin planning a new, urgent, forceful campaign for Constitutional government.

It didn’t turn out the way President Obama and the Democrats had hoped.   The Republican leaders, starting with a very articulate Senator Lamar Alexander were obviously better organized and in better command of the facts than Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid.

Republicans stood their ground and did not permit the President or the Democrats to portray them as evil agents of greedy insurance CEOs.  In fact it’s safe to say the Republicans were so well prepared they intimidated the Democrats.

The Republicans generally advocated less government intervention and removal of government imposed barriers such as the existing ban on interstate insurance competition.  They continuously pressed their poll tested position, that the humongous bills produced by the House and Senate be set aside so Congress could start over with “a clean sheet of paper.”

A lot of assertions were made that were not completely true.  Perhaps the most significant was when The President defended Medicare Cuts in the House and Senate bills as nothing more than depriving evil insurance companies of undeserved lucre from Medicare Advantage, a program that permits about 20%  of seniors to receive their entitlement from an HMO.

While it’s not true that Medicare Advantage is a gravy train for the insurance companies, it is true the bills would eliminate this option.  But it’s also true that the Democrats’ claim that their bills don’t add to the deficit depend on:

• reducing Medicare reimbursements to physicians by 21%, beginning this year;
• further cuts in Medicare, to be ordered by unelected boards.  The boards would be created by the legislation and their decisions would immediately have the force of law unless canceled by special legislation that would have to be passed by the House and Senate and signed into law by the President.

For two weeks, ever since Obama announced and scheduled today’s summit Democrats have been trying to coerce Republican cooperation by threatening to use “reconciliation” in order to to pass a bill in the Senate with 51 votes instead of the 60 votes that are required under normal rules.  In his opening remarks Senator Alexander said:

Before we go further today we’re asking that the Democratic leaders and you Mr. President renounce this idea of a partisan process we call reconciliation.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, in his rambling, unprepared, nearly incoherent opening statement asserted, preposterously, that “nobody has talked about reconciliation.”

Obama responded later that he would not renounce reconciliation because the didn’t think The People were interested in hearing about “process issues.”  But Obama didn’t back up Reid’s assertion.

Obama played the roles of chairman, primary spokesman for his side, and parliamentarian.  He spoke more than anyone else, in part because the rest of the Democrats in the room were outclassed by the better prepared Republicans.  In his lengthy “closing” he once more addressed the conflict between starting over with a clean sheet of paper, and continuing with the current enormous bills, through reconciliation:

What I do know is if we saw significant movement, not just gestures, then we wouldn’t need to start over because everyone here knows what these issues are.  We cannot have another year long debate about this.  Is there enough serious effort that in a months time or six weeks time we can resolve something?   If we can’t then we have to go ahead and make some decisions and thats what elections are for.

Translation, Obama realized that:

• This summit stunt failed to make Republicans look evil.
  
• He failed to lay the blame on Republicans for the Democrats’ failure to pass ObamaCare even though they have huge majorities in both houses of Congress.
• There’s no reason for Republicans to go against the will of the majority of Americans as expressed in polls to help democrats pass ObamaCare.
• Wavering Democrats in the House and Senate could not have been encouraged by today’s performance.  They could see that supporting ObamaCare would, in the mind of the voter, couple them with a loser.

So now, the President and his party face some grim choices.

The so-called “President’s Plan” is merely a list of promised benefits and unsupportable claims about improving care and saving money.  Amazingly, it includes some of the same contradictions that made the House and Senate versions of ObamaCare so unpopular after they were exposed in blogs and Conservative media.  For example, it includes this, a modified version of one of Obama’s most often repeated claims:

The Senate bill includes a “grandfather” policy that allows people who like their current coverage, to keep it.

So far, so good.  But in the very next sentence this claim is contradicted. Obama describes several changes that will be forced upon these “grandfathered plans,” making them different, and much more expensive than what customers currently have and like.

The President’s Proposal adds certain important consumer protections to these “grandfathered” plans.  Within months of legislation being enacted it…requires plans to cover adult dependents up to age 26.

If the  plan doesn’t already include such coverage then the premium will have to increase to cover this new insurance company risk.

…mandates that plans have a “stronger” appeals process.

Stronger than what? What does “stronger” even mean?  Is this really code for forcing the company to cover more services and procedures than the written policy requires?  If so, the premium will have to increase.

…will require “grandfathered” plans to cover proven preventive services with no cost sharing.

“Cost sharing” means co-payments.  If your plan doesn’t already cover these services with zero co-pay then the premium will have to increase.  Indeed, the most significant factor differentiating lower and higher cost plans is the amount of co-payment required from the patient at the time services are rendered.  The lower the co-pay, the higher the monthly or annual premium.

…will prohibit all annual and lifetime limits.

If the plan now has an annual or lifetime limit, as most plans do, then the premium will have to increase.  As with covering dependents up to age 26, the company can’t add to coverages and risk without charging more.  Lack of any limit means the insurance company’s risk is unlimited.  It must increase premiums in order to take on more risk and still remain solvent and able to pay all claims.

…ban pre-existing condition exclusions.

This means the company must accept new customers who are already sick.  The company will then be obligated to pay unlimited medical bills, tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, in exchange for the first month’s premium.  This is like “insuring” a house that is already on fire, or issuing car insurance after a wreck, just as the ambulance and tow truck arrive on the scene.

This is not insurance. This is a public benefit program, mandated by the government.   The political-media establishment demonizes insurance companies over this issue with emotionally loaded terms like “discrimination.”   But a company cannot take on this obligation and remain solvent and able to pay all claims, without increasing premiums on everyone.  Indeed most of the premium increases of recent years have resulted from federal and state laws requiring companies to accept more and more people with pre-existing conditions.

Politicians like want to look generous and compassionate by providing needed care to those who lack the means to pay.   But those same politicians don’t want to be held responsible by the voters for higher taxes.  So they force insurance companies into the role of de facto tax collector.

Since the beginning of his campaign the President has demonized the companies for doing what federal and state laws force them to do: increase premiums on everyone to cover the cost of accepting, and providing medical services to people who are already sick.

The nation awaits the so-called “bipartisan summit” scheduled for Thursday.  Republicans should begin by emphasizing the glaring contradictions between reality and Obama’s campaign hype

This week, President Obama and the Democrats are producing a five-day Health Care Melodrama.  Liberty Works will provide updates as each act and scene unfolds.

ObamaCare

Last year the House and Senate each passed a version of ObamaCare.  This morning the Obama version of ObamaCare was posted on the White House website as promised.

BUT, it isn’t written in the form of legislation that Congress can act upon.

Instead, it’s a campaign style marketing piece, a summary of promised benefits and results, with none of the legal fine print or financial details that would enable a genuine analysis.  In sales they call this selling the sizzle rather than selling the steak.  Withholding the details is the strategy for this week’s melodrama because Obama does not want to get bogged down in a substantive debate.  This week is about emotion and TV visuals.

The Marketing Piece called “The President’s Proposal” includes some of the same promises we’ve heard from Obama for a year:

1. Gives tens of millions of Americans the same insurance choices members of Congress will have;
2. Offers “insurance” to people who are already sick (pre-existing conditions). This scheme lets the President and the Democrats play the role of heroes for providing medical services to uninsured sick people and transfers the responsibility for extracting the money to pay for their generosity from the tax collector to the insurance companies who will have to raise premiums on everyone else to cover the cost.
3. Keeps premiums down
   
4. Reduces the federal deficit

Obviously it’s impossible for all four of these results to come from the same legislation.  Insurance companies can not accept every who is already sick without raising premiums.  Members of Congress are on the federal employee insurance program which is more generous and thus costs more than most private sector plans.  So private sector employers will have to pay more to give employees the same choices.

But the fact that 1 – 4 are above are impossible to achieve won’t stop Obama from asserting that Republican ideas are unworthy of consideration because they won’t accomplish 1 – 4 above.

More from the Obama version Marketing Piece:

• Obama promises subsidies to individuals for the purchase of health insurance.  The subsidies would be administered through the IRS tax system enabling the President to deceptively label them as “tax cuts” or “tax credits.”  Its not clear how these subsides would be funded.
• In future years the Medicare program will cost Trillions more than the current medicare payroll tax generates in revenue.  So the President proposes to, for the first time, apply the medicare tax to non-payroll income including rents, royalties, dividends, and interest.  But the additional revenue won’t be applied to the increasing cost of Medicare.  It will be used to fund other, new benefits included in the President’s plan.
• New taxes on drugs and medical devices.  In a marketing piece with no details and no real numbers the President can promise anything.  In this case he promises to make health care more affordable for all of us by imposing new taxes on the companies that provide drugs and medical devices!
• Closing tax loopholes.  The President claims some taxpayers are exploiting unintended loopholes in the tax code.  He promises to raise more tax revenue by closing the loopholes, which are unrelated to health care, but only if Congress passes this vast new health care power grab.

So, the curtain closes on Act 1 of the Great Health Care Melodrama.  We’ll bring you the next act as it happens.

In best melodrama tradition, the Obama script is contrived to present to the audience – you – an emotional story of good Vs evil.  The entire political-media establishment will serve as supporting actors, stage crew and pit orchestra, urging the audience to cheer for the good guys and hiss at the bad guys.

Obama has cast himself as the determined, compassionate hero, leading the good guy band of of earnest, sincere Democrat public servants, all striving mightily to protect hapless citizens from evil insurance company executives and loathsome Republican with black hats and fat cigars.

We know the outlines of the plot already.  Hero Obama has invited the wicked Republicans to appear on stage at a televised, “health care summit” in the White House on Thursday.  In the meantime, the good guy Democrats, are developing a parliamentary strategy to jam ObamaCare through Congress without the votes of any Republicans.  They need a new strategy because with the election of Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown, and a few probable defections from their own party they no longer have the needed sixty Senate votes to pass a bill under regular procedures.

Throughout the week the good guy Obama-crats and the media will find ways to tug at our emotions so we’ll be fully prepared to despise the nefarious Republicans when they appear in front of the TV cameras on Thursday.

Act One is scheduled this morning.  Hero Obama will post the final version of his government run health care bill on line for the world to see.  He will denounce any objections as petty bickering and politics as usual from the bad guys or people who are beholden to the bad guys.  He will demand immediate action on his “comprehensive” – meaning government runs everything – “reform.”

The private sector’s ability and willingness to generate income and profits for government to seize through taxation is rapidly diminishing due to the increase in federal power and intervention.

The drop in individual income tax revenue in fiscal 2009 was the steepest since 1939.  As the chart shows revenue continues to plummet in fiscal 2010

Virtually all individual income tax is paid by the top half of income earners, those with the resources to invest in business enterprises that create jobs.  Half the taxpayers earning over $200,000, the group targeted by President Obama for punitive tax increases,  are small business owners, who directly invest their own after-tax profits in business expansion. Investment of after tax profits is especially critical in 2010 as bank credit is still restricted.

Thus, a drop in individual income tax revenue signals declining small business profits and declining resources available to invest in businesses and create jobs. Not only is current tax revenue down, but without current investment, future tax revenue will decline even more.

Corporate income tax is a direct tax on corporate profits.  Obama and the Democrats make no secret of their contempt for corporate profits.  But it is those profits that fund job creation and provide tax revenue to government.

The drop in corporate income tax revenue in fiscal 2009 was the greatest since 1932, the depths of the Great Depression.  As the chart shows, revenue continues to crash in fiscal 2010.

When the media finally confronts the Democrats  with this ominous data, they will, of course, dismiss it all as the result of “Bush policies.”  But it has been three years since the Democrats won a controlling majority in Congress.  Obama continued and expanded the TARP program begun at the end of the Bush Administration.  He seized control of AIG, GM and Chrysler.  He discouraged risk-taking and investment by promising to burden businesses with new taxes, health care mandates, forced unionization and an artificial energy shortage created by government.  Obama owns the “policies” driving this downward spiral.

The Bottom Line

The “policy” America desperately needs is smaller government, restricted to the few legitimate functions permitted under the Constitution.

Greater liberty, and much less government intervention will leave companies, investors and entrepreneurs free to create wealth, produce profits and provide jobs.

The path to prosperity is liberty, not larger, more powerful, more authoritarian government. Ironically, greater liberty also generates more tax revenue.

On February 4 President Obama submitted his proposed budget to Congress, including the most spending and largest single year deficit in the history of America.

On February 18 he announced the formation of a yet another Washington “commission,” this one to study government deficits and recommend ways to reduce them, as if there were some mystery about how they occur.

He blamed Congress for the red ink, saying that “politics” kept them from making the decisions necessary to enact a balanced budget.

Obama created the deficit commission with a stroke of his pen, via an Executive Order, an act that violates the Constitution in as much  as Congress defeated Legislation that would have created the same commission just last week.    The government will lease office space, hire staff, purchase computers and equipment, and pay fees to outside “experts,” all without the Constitutionally required spending authority from Congress.  But nobody in the establishment media seems to have noticed or cared.

Obama has had a love-hate relationship with deficits since he took office.  The 19 second video below is from a speech to Congressional Democrats during the second week of his Presidency, when he and they were still intoxicated by their sweeping election victories.  They were eagerly planning to deploy their commanding majorities in the House and Senate to enact a radical, authoritarian agenda of government supervision of every aspect of American life.   They were about to pass the $787 Billion “stimulus” and had swept aside deficit warnings from Conservatives.

One year and another Trillion in debt later the President is trying to reinvent his image.  Now he wants is to believe he has the soul of a budget balancer, but is a victim of “politics.”

We’re told the deficit commission will last only until December of this year, a ridiculous promise considering the ways Washington works.  The government has run deficits in 67 of the past 78 years.  The notion that a commission can “solve” this problem and go out of business in ten months is preposterous.

Since the deficit commission is likely become a textbook example of a permanent bureaucracy, adding to the long term deficit, we thought this would be an ideal moment to repeat this presentation on how bureaucracies grow and evolve.  This phenomenon is as much a cause of deficits as anything else in Washington.

This week marks one year since the “stimulus” or Recovery Act, $787 Billion of extra borrowing and spending, was enacted by Congress.  The President continues to make the preposterous claim that “every economist” agrees the stimulus created millions of jobs.

It’s time for an objective progress report.

A year ago President Obama orchestrated weeks of political-media hype leading up the the Congressional vote, and promised:

I have moved quickly with my economic team and leaders of both parties on an American Recovery Act that will immediately jumpstart job creation and long term growth.

The headline from the January jobs report was that all employers, including both government and private sector, shed 20,000 jobs in January.  What didn’t make the headlines was that the federal government added 19,000 jobs.  So the real economy, that the government loots to gain the resources to provide government jobs, actually lost 39,000 jobs.

Since the recovery act was enacted:

• the private sector has lost 3.8 million jobs,
• the federal government has added 113,000 jobs.

The political-media establishment is now promoting a second round of stimulus borrowing and spending, this time calling it a “jobs bill,” while continuing to threaten small business employers with:

• Punitive tax increases,
• An artificial energy shortage imposed by government in order to increase energy costs
• New taxes on energy production,
• New health care mandates,
• A new federal law that would force unionization upon employers and employees who don’t want union.

The overall evaluation of the stimulus is simple: A bigger, more expensive, more powerful, more interfering government, funded by fewer, poorer taxpayers.

Just two weeks ago, in his State of the Union message President Obama sneered:

We can’t afford another so-called economic “expansion” like the one from the last decade –- what some call the “lost decade” -– where jobs grew more slowly than during any prior expansion…

We would like to quietly remind the President that the “lost decade” expansion, from August, 2003 to December, 2007 averaged 153,358 new jobs per month.

The President should also be reminded of the report called “The Job Impact of The American Recovery And Investment Plan” (JIARIP), published in January of last year by the same economic team.

Citing JIARIP, Obama confidently predicted that with passage of the recovery act there would be 3,675,000 more jobs at the end of 2010 than at the beginning of 2009. Based on this prediction, and assurances it would “jumpstart job creation” Congress passed the Recovery Act one year ago this week.

But, as of last month there were 4,022,000 fewer jobs than in January, 2009.

Thus, to make good on last year’s projection by the Obama economic team, American businesses would have to create a jaw-dropping 698 thousand jobs every month for the rest of 2010.  Never have that many jobs been created in a single month.

This latest projection, which will likely turn out to be too optimistic, would not restore even a third of the jobs lost since the recovery act became law a year ago.

I am very optimistic about — about Iraq. I mean, this could be one of the great achievements of this administration. You’re going to see 90,000 American troops come marching home by the end of the summer. You’re going to see a stable government in Iraq that is actually moving toward a representative government…I’ve been impressed how they have been deciding to use the political process rather than guns to settle their differences.

Greatest achievements of this administration?  Astounding!

Most of the communication from the Obama White House is deception, targeting people who don’t have the time or interest to dig into every issue and root out the truth.  But this creates a disingenuous category of it’s own.  The truth is that in 2007 and 2008 Then Senator Obama used his office to try to cause the Iraq operation to end in failure.

When the surge strategies that ultimately succeeded were beginning Senator Obama could have seized the opportunity to be an idealistic, visionary leader in the cause of liberty for the Iraqi people, and victory for America.  Instead, he deferred to the defeatist dogma of those in his party who desperately wanted failure in Iraq, to vindicate their position, that “Bush’s war” was an irreversible disaster. In a TV interview Candidate Obama fell back on the simplistic chants of the anti-war Left:

We cannot impose a military solution on what has effectively become a civil war. And until we acknowledge that reality — we can send 15,000 more troops, 20,000 more troops, 30,000 more troops, I don’t know any expert on the region or any military officer that I’ve spoken to privately that believes that that is going to make a substantial difference on the situation on the ground.

In July, 2007 as the intense combat phase of the surge strategies and initiatives was in full force, and the troops deserved unqualified support from the home front, Senator Obama appeared on The Today Show and said:

My assessment is that the surge has not worked and we will not see a different report eight weeks from now.

Obama repeatedly tried his best prevent success in Iraq, first by introducing legislation that would have aborted the surge just as it began, and by twice voting to withdraw funds for the Iraq operation, even as US troops were engaged in daily combat.

As for Joe Biden, let’s not forget his idea, to Divide Iraq into three or four countries, one for each ethnic sub-group.  Thankfully our troops were never ordered to facilitate that train wreck.

Is there a word strong enough to properly characterize Biden’s chutzpa in now the success of the Iraq operation for Obama?