Obama’s campaign promises destroyed in Senate, 97-0

Barack Obama’s campaign of “hope” and “change” was repudiated in a 97 to nothing Senate vote late Thursday, according to a fascinating article on Human Events: Obama Spend-O-Rama

Late Wednesday afternoon, Sen.Wayne Allard (R-Co.) introduced Amendment 4246 into the Senate budget debate. The amendment, which Allard calls “The Obama Spend-o-Rama” proposes funding 111 of the 188 spending proposals put out so far during Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-Ill.) presidential campaign. (These were the proposals which Allard’s staff had time to analyze before the GOP leadership asked him to offer the amendment on the floor.) According to Allard, “There are another 77 proposals with unknown cost estimates that will add billions to this number.”

Allard freely admits that he will oppose his own amendment and urges other Senators to do the same. But, as a senior Senate staffer pointed out to HUMAN EVENTS, “Let’s see how many Senators who have endorsed Obama will actually vote for his budget.”

This is classic. Republicans are so much more entertaining when we’re the minority in Congress. 

Some of the numbers around the federal budget are incomprehensibly large. How do you wrap your mind around a 5-year cost of $1.4 trillion? Senator Allard offers some comparisons to help with that mental exercise:

• This new spending, if enacted, would represent an almost 10% increase over the President’s FY 2009 budget.
• This $300 billion spending proposal would cost more than 42 states’ budgets combined (general fund expenditures).
• It is more than the United States spent last year on imported oil ($294 billion net).
• It is more than 60% larger than any one-year federal spending increase, ever.

Remember, these numbers don’t even include 77 of Obama’s proposals. Frightening. 

An initial draft of the Amendment which was obtained by HUMAN EVENTS shows its purpose of “raisi(ng) taxes by an unprecedented $1.4 trillion for the purpose of fully funding 111 new or expanded federal spending programs.” 

According to Senator Allard’s communications director, Steve Wymer, “This amendment is obviously somewhat tongue-in-cheek. But if leaders in the Democratic Party are going to propose billions…or trillions…of dollars of new spending, at least let’s be honest about it.”

How many of Obama’s supporters realize that Obama’s vision of hope and change is simply recycled socialism? I’m guessing at least 75%, just judging from the ones I talk to on my college campus. 

Senator Richard Burr (R-NC), who spoke immediately after Allard, re-emphasized the point: One year of Obama’s proposed spending increase “is bigger than the 5-year increase (in federal income tax collections) that President Clinton imposed on the American taxpayer.”

“To translate this point into language everyone can understand: if you have an income of $104,000 or more, the plan will cause your tax bill to go up at least an additional $5,300 a year; if you have an income of $62,000 or more, the plan will cause your tax bill to go up at least $2,300 a year. This is on top of the $2,300 increase already assumed by the failure to extend current tax policy.”

So you’re saying I wouldn’t have gotten my new car with my (or, more accurately, my wife’s) tax refund this year if Obama were president? Seriously, what other issue can a president have such a deep impact on people’s lives?   

The Allard amendment went down to a 97-0 defeat late Thursday afternoon, to nobody’s surprise.  Although the measure was hastily prepared, simply getting into the public record the scale of Obama’s spending proposals and the tax hikes required to fund them was a worthwhile endeavor.  Reached for comment after the vote, Senator Allard’s communications director Steve Wymer noted that “(Allard) voted against it with everyone else. But still, the point was made.”

In his closing, Senator Allard noted that this is not simply a hypothetical discussion; the current debate is about the 2009 budget, the first year of the next president’s administration. It is therefore important (and good politics) to show the American public the ugly details of Obama’s pretty talk.

People need to know this stuff. We all know that all Democrat candidates promise way more than they believe they can accomplish, but there can be no arguing Obama and Clinton’s desire to move America towards a more socialist future. It must be stopped.

Are you ready for the largest tax hike in American history?

From Investor’s Business Daily: Taxocratic Rule

Rep. John Spratt Jr., D-S.C., presided over passage on a party-line vote of a $3 trillion budget plan for next year, featuring expansions of domestic programs going nearly 5% above President Bush’s budget. It elicited a promise of presidential vetoes on appropriations bills.

…the massive automatic tax increases that would come from the Bush tax cuts being allowed to expire. As if that’s not enough new taxes, House Democrats would also impose $70 billion in unspecified tax increases as the price for permanently fixing the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT).

Presumably, the U.S. economy will just cooperate and act as if it isn’t getting dealt a body blow of substantially higher tax rates on income and investment. After the Reagan and George W. Bush tax-cut-driven expansions, why is it still too much to expect congressional Democrats to learn from recent economic history?

I’d like to thank President Bush for his promise to veto this budget, and also for the new-used convertible I paid for with my tax return, courtesy of his tax cuts. Yesterday I said the Supreme Court was the biggest reason to hold your nose and vote McCain this fall, but defeating the tax-and-spenders might be an even bigger reason.

Here’s a Wall Street Journal piece on Obama’s Social Security plan: The Obama Tax Hike 

And here’s a Heritage Foundation study on the effect of allowing Bush’s tax cuts to expire on the average American broken down by Congressional district.

An analysis of the House Budget Resolution for FY 2009 (H.CON.RES.312) reveals that the U.S. economy will suffer huge losses in gross domestic product (GDP), job creation and personal income if implemented. Analysts at the Center for Data Analysis estimated the economic costs of the budget resolution by looking at the combined effects of provisions contained within the legislation along with the effects of allowing the Bush Tax Cuts of 2001 and 2003 to expire. The House’s budget could cause a loss of more than $100 billion in GDP in 2012 and could also reduce job creation by over 1 million jobs that year. Furthermore, as a result of the House budget, every taxpayer can expect to pay, on average, more than $2,000 in (additional) taxes in 2012, while also losing an average of $1,767 in personal income.