Tim Pawlenty just went way up on my list of candidates after that particular remark in my title.
Is Obama anti-business? Well, how about this for a factoid: 77% of investors think he is. He was anti-business in 2009. He was anti-business in 2010. And he is still anti-business in 2011. How many eggs are you going to get when you’re out to get all the chickens and when the chickens know you’re out to get them?
Here’s an article that talks about this former governor who has been successful where Obama has failed, failed and failed some more. What is interesting is how we hear Pawlenty talk about how to fix our broken economy, and Obama talking about wtf???
Republican presidential candidate Pawlenty: ‘We are in deep doo-doo’
By Abdon M. Pallasch PoliticalHow badly has President Barack Obama managed the United States’ economy?
Pretty badly, says plain-talking former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty in a campaign stop in Chicago Tuesday.
“We are in deep doo-doo. We are in deep crap,” Pawlenty said Tuesday, in a locale meant to drive home the Republican presidential candidate’s differences with the president.
In a classroom at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy Studies, located across the street from the law school where Obama used to teach, Pawlenty laid out his tax-slashing, budget-cutting proposal that he says will save the U.S. economy:
There would be only three tax rates: Zero, for low-income earners who currently pay no federal tax; 10 percent, for single people earning up to $50,000, or married couples who earn up to $100,000; and 25 percent, for people who earn more than that (down from a top rate of 35 percent now). He would cut the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 15 percent and end the estate tax.
Those tax cuts, plus a freeze on federal spending, would spur growth of 5 percent a year, he said.
Democrats immediately said Pawlenty’s proposed tax cuts would disproportionately benefit the wealthy.
Obama senior advisor David Axelrod, who finished a speech on the North Side just before Pawlenty started his, credited Pawlenty with “good stagecraft” for holding the speech on Obama’s old stomping grounds. But he said Obama’s budget-fixing recipe is better.
Pawlenty “left his own state with a $5 billion deficit and now he’s counseling the rest of the country on how to handle finances,” Axelrod said. “He proposes massive new tax cuts for upper-income Americans … that would produce huge new deficits. He wants to replay the same formula that got us into the jam in the first place.”
But Pawlenty told the classroom full of students at the university that people should not focus on “whether this makes some group a little more wealthy or a little less wealthy. You can’t be pro-job and anti-business. That’s like being pro-egg and anti-chicken.”
Flirting with the so-called “third rail” of American politics, Pawlenty said he would raise the retirement age for younger workers to start collecting Social Security in the future. People nearing retirement now would not be affected, he said.
“If you’re coming in new to the work force, gradually, over time, we are going to raise the retirement age,” Pawlenty said. “If you’re wealthy, you’re not going to get the cost-of-living adjustment.”
Proposals that can be short-handed as “cutting Social Security” can kill campaigns, but Pawlenty said, “It’s going to be the ‘Jack Nicholson election.’” Referring to the movie “A Few Good Men,” Pawlenty said, “There’s that famous line when he’s on the witness stand and he said, ‘You can’t handle the truth.’ The American people, I think, can handle the truth. It doesn’t mean we freak ’em out. It doesn’t mean we scare ’em. … I’m only doing this because I love the country. We’ll only get it to a better place if people are willing to tell the American people the truth. I am. President Obama isn’t. He’s ducking, bobbing, weaving.”
In a speech at the Misericordia, a home for children and adults with disabilities, Axelrod told the story of how, back in April, he and Obama were crafting a joke about Pawlenty for Obama to use at the White House Correspondents Association dinner. The two were interrupted by a National Security Council staffer who had to brief Obama on something, so Obama asked Axelrod to leave the room.
When Axelrod came back in, Obama rejected a suggestion for a joke about how Pawlenty “could really be a strong candidate but for his unfortunate middle name: bin Laden.”
“ ‘That’s so hackneyed, bin Laden, that’s so yesterday, Why don’t we take that out,’ ” Obama said, Axelrod recalled. “ ‘We’ll put in “Hosni.’’ ’ ” Axelrod didn’t think that was as funny, but he agreed to it.
“It was only the next day that we realized that he had not only eliminated Bin Laden from the joke. He had given the order to eliminate bin Laden from the face of the Earth,” Axelrod told the crowd.
Later, speaking to reporters, Axelrod laughed when asked if he agreed with potential Republican candidate Sarah Palin, who said over the weekend that Paul Revere’s famous ride was an attempt to “warn the British’’ — that the British were coming.
“I think that’s a good reflection of why we can’t abandon education,” he said. “We need good education so everybody knows their history lessons and gets them properly.”
Pawlenty just laughed when asked the same question. He proceeded to a fund-raiser.
Well, first of all,we are – to put it in Pawlenty’s accurate term – ” in deep crap” – and the best Axelrod can do is talk about a joke that Obama’s people are going to go after Sarah Palin for an impromptu remark about Paul Revere when their guy is on the record saying he’d visited 57 states with one more yet to go?
And Obama’s going to talk about Pawlenty’s $5 billion deficit? Seriously? And just how many TRILLIONS of deficit does he have just so far??? Obama’s budget just for this term would add THIRTEEN TRILLION DOLLARS to the national debt. From McClatchy:
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama proposed a $3.73 trillion budget Monday for fiscal 2012 that he said will start reining in runaway budget deficits, but his plan envisions the gross national debt swelling by almost $13 trillion over a decade.
Obama’s budget sets up a clash with the Republican-led House of Representatives over how to recover from the deep recession of recent years and strengthen the economic foundation for the future, with federal spending the pivotal battleground.
Obama added $3 trillion to the deficit in less than two years. Another way to put it: In just nineteen months, Obama added more to the debt than every single US president from George Washington to Ronald Reagan – combined.
And this idiot is talking about $5 billion??? Like we’re not supposed to laugh our asses off and then impeach Obama as a clear and present danger to the United States? Particularly when in fact Pawlenty in fact DID actually leave office with the budget balanced? If you’re going to talk about devastating developments after the guy was gone – especially when that characterization is being made by the guy’s political enemies – at least have the courtesy to do the same sort of redacting with Bill Clinton’s legacy – who managed to take all the credit for balancing the budget but wasn’t in any way responsible for the disastrous Dotcom crisis that unfolded on his watch.
Which is to say, Democrats should either give Tim Pawlenty plenty of credit for balancing the budget or at least shut the hell up.
Tim Pawlenty as a man has a good, solid life. And he’s got the background and the bona fides to get behind. He is a candidate worthy of consideration.
On Cavuto’s Fox News program on Friday, Cavuto pointed out that the White House was questioning whether Tim Pawlenty was being realistic about whether he could create the kind of 5% GDP that he is talking about. Pawlenty’s response was almost as good as his quip in my title. I don’t have an exact quote, but basically he said “I’m an optimist, and I have an optimistic view of America’s future. We’ve been great before, and I believe we can be great again. And if Barack Obama could say that he was going to provide jobs for the all the jobless, slow the rising oceans, heal the planet, end all the wars and basically remake our nation, I think I can talk about doubling our GDP.”
Touché.
Tim Pawlenty wants to increase our GDP and grow our economy and create jobs by NOT being anti-chicken while claiming to be pro-egg. In other words, the man actually makes sense.
Obama has spent three years demonizing and attacking businesses while demanding that they create more jobs. That, by stark contrast, is 100% pure insane, no additives or preservatives.
Pawlenty wants profound tax cuts. And while liberals want to ignore history and argue that the more you tax, the more you collect in tax revenue, Pawlenty cites the fact that every single time we have cut tax rates, we have dramatically increased our tax revenues. See my article “Tax Cut’s INCREASE Revenues; They have ALWAYS Increased Tax Revenues” for that documented history.
Think of it in terms of gas (as I’ve argued before in more detail). As the price of gas went up and up and up, did people buy the same amount of gas? No way; they very quickly cut back on their driving. If you increase the price of something, you sell less of it. And in the same way, if you increase tax rates, you invariably end up encouraging counter-productive behavior, as the wealthy find it worthwhile to quit investing and instead pursue tax shelters and loopholes to protect their assets.
It is simply a repeatedly documented fact that every single time we have cut tax rates, we have ended up with increased revenues, as businesses and individuals were encouraged to invest because they were being rewarded with the ability to actually keep more of their own profits. It comes down to this: if I give you a job, and you work hard, but at the end of the day the tax man comes and takes it all away, you’re not going to bother to take my job. With total taxes exceeding 50% in a number of states, businesses and individuals are put in a position in which they take all the risks in hiring and investing – and if they lose they lose big – but even if they win they aren’t allowed to keep enough of their money to make the risks worth taking.
Democrats claim that the deficit has increased with lower tax rates. And that is true. But that isn’t the fault of the lower tax rates – WHICH AGAIN ACTUALLY INCREASED THE GOVERNMENT REVENUES DRAMATICALLY. The bizarre argument that Democrats are making is analogous to the argument that the guy who lives in his parent’s basement and makes minimum wage and lives within his modest means actually makes more money than the multi-millionaire who buys multiple mansions, yachts and cars and then finds himself in debt. It was the reckless spending that put us into the hole, not the tax policies that resulted in the politicians who spent that money having more money to spend. Pawlenty is arguing that we need to profoundly cut tax rates and simultaneously have a balanced budget amendment and dramatically cut our spending.
That isn’t even mentioning the constant hypocrisy of the Democrats as they fail to live up to their own demagogic rhetoric.
Then there’s the issue of the Bush tax cuts. Democrats say we’ve had the Bush tax cuts, and look what’s happened. Two things.
First, consider this: Obama signed the compromise to extend the Bush tax cuts for two more years on December 17, 2010. Many experts believed Obama would be forced to do this as a result of the Republican landslide victory that changed the political landscape in early November. So let’s look at what has happened to the jobless rate since November:
November 2010: 9.8%
December 2010: 9.4%
January 2011: 9.0%
February 2011: 8.9%
March 2011: 8.8%
April 2011: 9.0%
May 2011: 9.1%
Interestingly, Obama initially appeared to be reaching out to the business leaders he had been attacking. After getting his head handed to him in November 2010, Obama began to reach out to Republicans. And then in mid December, he began to reach out to business – with his signing of the Bush tax cuts extension a major part of that reaching out. In early January, he appointed as his new chief-of-staff a man who had a “business-friendly” persona.
And the market, the investors, the businesses, ordinary Americans, liked what they heard. The public clearly, overwhelmingly wanted to see Obama reach out to the party that had just won massively. Republicans are the party of business; reach out to business. Let’s get to work growing this economy rather than attacking the people who grow the economy.
But even as people liked what they heard, there was always a question, as asked in this case by CNN Money:
“So is Obama really changing his tune on big business? Or is the president merely glad-handing big business while plowing ahead with his 2012 goal of making the rich pay more?”
Unfortunately, it didn’t take long before the business and investment community realized that Obama hadn’t changed his spots at all. It’s either “same lies, different tune,” or “different lies, same tune” with this guy.
Before hardly any time had passed, “William Daley” became an afterthought and Obama was right back to attacking business with the same ferocity as before.
Obama’s senior economist Austan Goolsbee – now the FIFTH senior Obama economist to jump Obama’s HMO Titanic (with “HMO” standing for “His Majesty Obama” had this to say shortly before HE left. And this according to an obvious liberal:
When Amanpour asked [Goolsbee] what the Administration could or should be doing to improve conditions, he ticked off items you’d expect to hear from a typical GOP Presidential adviser: we’ve got to get the debt under control; we have a White House effort to identify and get rid of governmental regulations that are preventing the private sector from growing the economy; we should pass “free trade” agreements backed by the Chamber of Commerce; and we should leverage limited public dollars to release billions in private funding for investments.
Goolsbee’s bottom line: “It’s now up to the private sector.” That’s exactly what you’d expect from President Romney’s economic adviser.
And, of course, that brief flash of clarity was immediately followed by Goolsbee’s resignation. We won’t be having any anti-Marxist heresies on Comrade Obama’s watch, no sir commissar.
Just in case you’re wondering why the economy seemed to be improving before going back into the toilet, there’s your answer. The people who actually create jobs began to think that Obama finally had some level of actual awareness about how the economy and business and job-creation works, before Obama slammed the door on that idiotic thesis. They believed Obama’s lies right after the election, then Obama demonstrated (“dictated” is more like it) that he hates business as much as he ever did, then he renewed his war on business, and it’s right back into the crapper with the U.S. economy.
So there’s the backstory behind the economy appearing to improve before diving headfirst back into the gave. Obama is right back to being “pro-job” but “anti-chicken.”
Up above, I said there were “two things” about the Bush tax cuts and their impact on the economy. The first point is that the extension of the Bush tax cuts DID work for five months of straight improvement – at least until Obama and the Democrats made sure that businesses and investors knew that they were as hated as ever.
The SECOND point about the Bush tax cuts – or ANY other tax cuts, for that matter – is that they have to be consistent and long-term before they will truly succeed. This is because businesses need to know their operating environment before they will be willing to take risks such as hiring more workers. They need to have a clear, long-term picture (most think at least five years) of what their tax liability will be. And they need the same kind of knowledge about their health care liability and their regulatory liability. If you start or expand a business, you’ve got one primary question: “Am I going to be able to make this work?” And in order to answer that fundamental question, you need to know what your costs will be.
Obama signed the Bush tax cut extension for two years – and then very quickly went back on that signature by demagoguing the very thing he’d signed. Will these tax rates be there for them in two years? Certainly not, if Obama wins. And there goes the window to make important investment/growth decisions. Obama made sure that business owners wouldn’t have a long-term understanding of their taxes. ObamaCare has thousands of pages being written as we speak; Obama’s regulations are being written as we speak; and nobody knows anything about how any of it will affect them.
Hence the paralysis.
Tim Pawlenty knows that no nation and no economy has ever had a recession that lasted forever – save when leftists have been allowed to run those nations/economies. He also knows that economic growth and expansion are there just waiting for Obama to leave us the hell alone and get off our backs so that business owners can build better lives for themselves and their families – and create the jobs that result from those businesses growing – by allowing wealth creators to keep more of their own money.
He knows that if you really want to be pro-job, you had better be pro-business. And that is something that Barack Obama has now proven he will never be, regardless of what he might say to the contrary.
[Update, 8/13]: Today, Michelle Bachmann won the Iowa Straw Poll, versus Pawlenty – who had spent a lot more time and money – coming in a very distant third.
I can’t explain why Iowans basically walked away from Pawlenty, but I can tell you why I’ve been annoyed with him. It’s simple: his non-stop attack on Michelle Bachmann.
You want to go after people, Tim? Go after Obama. Heck, go after Mitt Romney like a lot of people said you should have done during the first debate. But to go after Michelle Bachmann is just dumb.
To not go after Romney and then go after Bachmann makes you look like a guy who was afraid to fight the star quarterback and then started punching a cheerleader to show you were still “tough.”
You’re trying to present yourself as a true-blue conservative. Everyone KNOWS Michelle Bachmann is a true conservative. So why go after her when you could be going after a Mitt Romney who has held whatever position made him look good at the moment?
To continue, some of your attacks against her are just stupid. Like the one that Michelle Bachmann didn’t stop things like cap and trade and ObamaCare being passed in the House. As if she was somehow the Imperial Queen of the chamber rather than one minority Republican (at the time) in a chamber with 434 other representatives. That was just a plain dumb attack.
You finished a distant third, Tim. Which apparently will allow you to survive. But if you keep tee-ing off on Bachmann, you won’t be around much longer.
Start Thinking Right 