PJTV: A Debt that Will Live In Infamy: America's Ticking Debt Bomb

Is the growing federal debt a looming attack similar to Pearl Harbor? Will Obamanomics lead to the empowerment of the rich and poor, at the expense of the middle class? Find out on this Trifecta.

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Debt Limit - A Guide to The Federal Debt Made Easy

The United States debt limit explained. A satirical short film taking a look at the national debt and how it applies to just one family.

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State of the Union Address 2013

Some of the lies and obfuscations Barack Obama said during the 2013 State of the Union address.

NOTE: Obfuscation (or beclouding) is the hiding of intended meaning in communication, making communication confusing, willfully ambiguous, hard to interpret and understand.

Barack Obama quotes 2013 SOTU:

“Over the last few years, both parties have worked together to reduce the deficit by more than $2.5 trillion.”

“Already, the Affordable Care Act is helping to slow the growth of health care costs.”

“Let me repeat--nothing I’m proposing tonight should increase our deficit by a single dime.”

“We have doubled the distance our cars will go on a gallon of gas, and the amount of renewable energy we generate from sources like wind and solar – with tens of thousands of good, American jobs to show for it.”

“That’s why my Administration will keep cutting red tape and speeding up new oil and gas permits.”

“As long as I’m Commander-in-Chief, we will do whatever we must to protect those who serve their country abroad, and we will maintain the best military in the world. We will invest in new capabilities, even as we reduce waste and wartime spending.”

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., delivers GOP response to President Obama's 2013 State of the Union address.

Congressman Rand Paul speaks on behalf of conservative values, responds to President Obama's address.

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Star Parker - In Search of Conservative Leadership

The annual Independence Day party that I host at my home was particularly alive with conversation this year. Conversation probably not too different from what was taking place in a lot of backyards around the country.

Folks are concerned that our nation is in bad shape and dangerously, maybe even hopelessly, adrift.

The choreography was in place to assure a downbeat Independence Day party for a house filled with conservatives. A listless economy, coupled with the cold shower of the Supreme Court’s decision in the prior week giving most of Obamacare a constitutional green light. To compound the injury, the dismally disappointing decision was written and handed down by a Chief Justice nominated by a Republican president and an alleged conservative.

But Chief Justice Roberts’ words captured, really, the rub of what is bothering many conservatives:

"Members of this court are vested with the authority to interpret the law; we possess neither the expertise nor the prerogative to make policy judgments. Those decisions are entrusted to our nation's leaders, who can be thrown out of office if the people disagree with them. It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices”

Maybe how Roberts interpreted the constitution disappointed. But his point is indisputable. If you’re looking for political leadership, “It’s not our job.”

Conservatives are looking for leadership at this difficult and challenging time.

Maybe because the crowd at my California home this July 4th consisted of many long time Southern Californians, there was talk about Reagan.

Yes, Carter was bad. But Reagan did not just run against a bad economy and a confused, uninspiring president. He understood and believed in America – and he ran on this vision. This is leadership.

It happens that last month marked the 25th anniversary of Reagan’s famous “Tear down this wall’ speech in Berlin. The author of the speech, Peter Robinson, recalled the event in a Wall Street Journal column.

The story has been told many times. But it cannot be recalled too many times that the political professionals – the president’s advisors and the various members of the president’s staff – opposed including the ‘Tear down this wall” line in Reagan’s Berlin speech.

Despite numerous attempts to remove the line from the speech, it stayed in – because of Reagan.

This is leadership.

The problems we have today did not start four years ago. They are the accumulation of many years of a slow but consistent departure from our core principles of being a free nation, under God.

Of our now almost $16 trillion in debt – 100 percent of our GDP - $5 trillion was added over the last four years. But ten trillion – almost two thirds – was added over the last twelve years.

Forty percent of our four trillion dollar federal budget consists of inefficient entitlement programs tilting into bankruptcy. These are old and outdated programs – Social Security going back to the 1930’s, Medicare and Medicaid to the 1960’s.

Our public school systems hold 60 million children captive by teachers unions that are dedicated to left wing ideas and moral relativism.

The traditional American family is becoming a relic of history. Out of wedlock births and using abortion as birth control have become fixtures of our society.

When Reagan ran for president in 1980 health care expenditures consumed 9 percent of our GDP. Today they consume 18 percent. We have a health care problem with or without John Roberts’ unpopular decision.

Real recovery is impossible now without inspired leadership dedicated to recapturing principles of limited government, individual freedom, and the traditional values that made America great.

The left has a leader. He is in the White House and he is leading us into oblivion.

Where is conservative leadership? Leadership that will remind us that American community is defined by personal responsibility – not by government mandates?

Star Parker

Star Parker is founder and president of CURE, the Center for Urban Renewal and Education, a 501c3 think tank which explores and promotes market based public policy to fight poverty, as well as author of the newly revised Uncle Sam's Plantation: How Big Government Enslaves America's Poor and What We Can do About It.

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Star Parker - Payroll Tax "Cut" Just Another Welfare State Scam

Last year a one year cut in the payroll taxes that working Americans pay to finance Social Security was enacted in the name of so-called economic “stimulus.”

But, like the rest of the economic stimuli that have come from Washington over the last three years, the only thing that has been stimulated is the growing hole of national debt into which we sink deeper and deeper.

But now, not without surprise, our president and his Democrat colleagues want to continue, and possibly expand, this payroll tax holiday despite its obvious failure.

But wait a second. Failure is a matter of definition.

If the point was helping get our economy back on the road to growth and prosperity, the payroll tax holiday has been a failure.

But if the point of the payroll tax holiday is not to reduce government interference in our lives but to keep it, grow it, and strengthen the decided movement of the last three years to turn our nation into a welfare state plantation, it’s a great idea.

And that is really what is going on here and why President Obama and his Democrat colleagues on Capitol Hill love the idea.

Unlike our income taxes that government takes for general revenue and unspecified spending, the payroll tax is earmarked and specified. It pays for Social Security.

A cut in income taxes, even if not accompanied with an equivalent cut in government spending, puts the pressure for such cuts in place and carries with it the prospect of reduction of government interference in our lives.

But there is no such possibility with the payroll tax. When the tax was reduced “temporarily” last year from 6.2 percent to 4.2 percent, were working Americans asked to agree to an equivalent cut in their Social Security benefits that that payroll tax pays for?

Of course not.

What politician in his or her right mind would suggest to working Americans that they intend to cut Social Security benefits?

But cutting the payroll tax is a dream idea for anyone whose project is turning our nation into a welfare state.

This is because, unlike the income tax, which almost half Americans don’t pay, practically every working man and woman pays the payroll tax.

And, what the payroll tax pays for, Social Security, is impossible to cut.

So, if the payroll tax is cut, you have to find another way to pay for those Social Security retirement benefits.

So how about rich people?

Democrats would like for super high income earners, the top one percent, who already pay 40 percent of America’s income taxes, to also start paying for everyone’s Social Security benefits.

Why not also force high income earners to put their addresses up on the internet and we can all send them our grocery bills, our car payments, and our kid’s tuition bills? Let’s get the rich to pay for all our bills, including our retirement.

Unfortunately, some Republicans are allowing themselves to be suckered into this political blackmail.

Cutting payroll taxes earmarked for a Social Security system that is already bankrupt is no way to run a country and no way for people that are allegedly free and responsible citizens to live.

And using a payroll tax holiday as a back door plan to turn Social Security into a middle class welfare program does not bode well for our nation’s future.

If the point is to fix Social Security, let working Americans keep their payroll tax and use it to fund their own private retirement account – an idea that three of four Americans under fifty favor.

If the point is to restore our economy, let’s cut the trillion dollars in new spending we’ve larded into the government over the last three years and start focusing on rewarding rather than punishing individual freedom and success.

Star Parker

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Star Parker is founder and president of CURE, the Center for Urban Renewal and Education, a 501c3 think tank which explores and promotes market based public policy to fight poverty, as well as author of the newly revised Uncle Sam's Plantation: How Big Government Enslaves America's Poor and What We Can do About It.

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