Mia Love - Are Entitlements Killing The American Dream?

"Well it's interesting, because what his [Barack Obama] policy did was incentivize bad behavior and punish good behavior. Somehow, it's not ok -- they removed the incentives for people to actually go out and work -- and not lose everything. And what we're doing is we are crippling Americans, and saying 'We're just going to hand you a paycheck and you don't have to do anything about it.' ... Well, we spend $900 billion on poverty programs that are supposed to end poverty, but it continues to grow and grow and grow, which tells you it's not working. This president would rather rate his success on how much money he's divvying out than actually rating his success on how many people actually need those programs. ... I think he's stripping away the American dream as we know it."

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Star Parker - Paul Ryan’s Budget Is a Moral Budget

Rep. Paul Ryan, (R-Wis), chairman of the House budget committee, provoked some angry push back when he claimed that not only is his proposed sweeping revamp of the US budget fiscally sound but also morally sound.

In a CBN interview, Ryan said he draws inspiration from his Catholic faith.

He argues that Catholic priority for caring for the poor should focus on helping folks move out of poverty. “…..don’t make people dependent on government so they stay stuck in their station in life, help people get out of poverty out onto life of independence.”

Catholics criticizing Ryan don’t see it this way. They see him cutting back on welfare programs that focus on the needy.

But this is not a new debate, and it’s not limited to Catholics. Those on the religious left of all religious persuasions have long been criticizing religious conservatives, claiming they’re indifferent to poverty and care only about abortion and homosexuality.

It’s a critical discussion for our nation today and Ryan deserves credit for casting his proposed reforms in moral as well economic terms. It provides the opportunity to challenge today’s conventional wisdom that morality and economy are separate universes having little to do with each other.

It’s not true.

I can speak from personal experience going back to my years on welfare. The intent of federal welfare programs might have been to help the poor, but they caused far more damage than benefit.

When you tell a poor mother that to qualify for her check, she must demonstrate that she is single, not working, and has no savings, what are the chances she’ll get married, look for a job, and put money in the bank? When this goes on for generations, what do you think this does to a community?

It’s no accident that in 1960, according to the Pew Research Center, five years before President Johnson signed into law his War on Poverty, 61 percent of black adults were married. By 2008 this was down to 32 percent. In 1960, 2 percent of black children had a parent that had never been married. By 2008, this was up to 41 percent.

Consider Social Security. Social Security’s Board of Trustees just issued a devastating annual report. They project the system going into the red in 2035, three years earlier than predicted last year. The system’s long term unfunded liabilities – the amount by which projected obligations exceed projected revenues - are $8.6 trillion, more than half the size of the entire US economy.

Discussions about how to fix the system focus on numbers and accounting. But the numbers are symptoms, not causes.

The Social Security payments that current retirees get are from the payroll taxes that those currently working pay. What is driving the system into bankruptcy is the shrinking number of those working per retiree. In 1950 the average was 16.5 workers per retiree. Now it is 2.9. The Trustees report projects this to be down to 2.0 by 2035.

What happened?

One major factor is we’re having fewer children. Fertility rates - the average number of births per woman - have fallen dramatically. The average U.S. fertility rate, per the UN, in the period 2005-2010 was 40 percent lower than during 1950-1955.

John Mueller of the Ethics and Public Policy Center argues convincingly of the major impact of legal abortion to this dramatic drop in the ratio of those working to retirees.

To solve our national crisis we need to sort out symptoms from causes. The bankruptcy of our entitlement programs is the symptom.

The cause is loss of individual freedom and breakdown of values, personal responsibility and marriage caused by entitlement culture materialism.

Paul Ryan is right to see this in moral terms. We must change, and all change begins with character and personal transformation.

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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Austin Hill - Against The Grain: President Obama Out Of Step With American Sensibilities

Sensibility – the capacity for sensation or feeling; keen consciousness or awareness.

Sometimes dictionary definitions can seem vague or esoteric. So let me suggest that the word “sensibility” might also be described as one’s “gut instincts” about their experiences.

And it may also be the case that President Obama’s recent decline in the polls is not merely because unemployment is high, or because the cost of living is rising higher. It may be that some of President Obama’s own recently stated positions are violating the “gut instincts” that many Americans have about their own country.

Let’s start with the insurance industry mandates for abortion coverage, and the alleged “war on women.” When President Obama mandated in February that medical insurance companies provide coverage for abortion, sterilization and contraception, reaction was swift and visceral. Many religious organizations – most notably the Catholic Church – responded very negatively, and characterized the decision as a threat to religious freedom.

As presidential politics go, Mr. Obama’s mandate probably achieved its intended short-term goal: it successfully re-directed the national conversation away from issues surrounding the economy, the national debt, and a faltering foreign policy, and toward a discussion of abortion and religion. But the ways in which the conversation has devolved since its initial re-direction may not be playing to the President’s favor, and may now be contradicting Americans’ sensibilities about personal responsibility.

Most Americans do not share President Obama’s enthusiasm for abortion. But, fortunately, a majority of Americans still do not share the President’s support for economic entitlements either, nor are most of us as excited about government control over private businesses as he seems to be.

Yet the abortion enthusiasts who have run to the President’s defense in the last several weeks – most notably Georgetown University student Sandra Fluke, who we now know has a direct connection to former Obama Advisor Anita Dunn – have pushed a message of support for both abortion, and entitlements. “If somebody else doesn’t pay for my abortion and birth control,” Ms. Fluke is essentially telling us, then she is being “denied access” to healthcare – and this amounts to a “war on women.”

Americans are tiring of the “somebody else should pay for my stuff” attitude. In fact, there is a growing perception that the Obama entitlement culture is damaging our economy and our future, and the reality that President Obama would intertwine abortion and economic redistribution contradicts our gut instincts about how America should operate.

Another problem for the President may be his recent handling of the military. In the aftermath of the horrific news that a U.S. Marine allegedly massacred several civilians in Afghanistan, the American people have been treated to a barrage of conflicting information. The Marine had a “brain injury;” the Marine was “suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder;” he may have been “drunk,” and he was angry about another deployment. We’ve seen all these explanations emerge, with no clear comments from the President or his Administration.

Yet what we have seen and heard from the Administration has been worse than mere message mismanagement. The President and his Administration have exhibited a sense that they neither enthusiastically appreciate the men and women in uniform, nor do they trust them.

It started last Monday March 12th, while President Obama was being interviewed by a Denver television anchor. When asked about the massacre allegations, the President noted the horrific nature of the killings, but then went on to say of our troops that “you can’t help but be proud of them, generally..”

To be fair, the President is in an awful position. He commands the military, yet one that he commands now stands accused of heinous crimes.

Yet the sensibilities of most Americans regarding the military are such that we aren’t just “generally” proud of our troops. Our trust and respect for the men and women in uniform is a near-constant, and it is a rare instance when an individual solider fails to meet our expectations.

To make matters worse, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta paid a visit to Afghanistan days after the offense to address the troops and the Afghani government. But before American military personnel were permitted to enter the room where Secretary Panetta spoke, they were forced to disarm, and leave their weapons outside.

The Administration later noted that the reason for this was because there were Afghani troops in the room who were required to disarm, so therefore the U.S. troops needed to be treated equally with the Afghani’s.

Again, the Obama Administration appeared to be out of step with American gut instincts. While Americans trust the men and women of the military and regard them as superior to any other fighting force, the Obama Administration appears distrusting of the troops, and uncertain of the mission in Afghanistan.

Americans disagree vehemently on ideology and public policy. But, for better or worse, we still haven’t given up on the idea that collectively we are still a good country, and we try to live with a sense of personal responsibility.

President Obama has reminded us that his policies undermine personal responsibility, while advancing the cause of entitlement. His handling of the Afghanistan fiasco suggests that the nation which many of us believe is great, is perhaps for him, not so great after all.

Austin Hill

Austin Hill is an emerging American voice, addressing culture-defining questions through books, talk radio, web, speaking, and interviews. His recent books "White House Confidential" and his new title "The Virtues Of Capitalism" show his range from whit-infused writer to thought-provoking expert on the intersection of philosophy, religion, politics & culture. Hill helps to make the complex seem simple when exploring capitalism, socialism, and other "Isms".

He is an editorial contributor to national publications such as U.S. News & World Report, a columnist with TownHall.com, and is a popular expert-host on radio from leading stations in Washington DC, Chicago, Phoenix and Los Angeles, and nationally with networks such as Fox NewsTalk Radio.  He hosts the "Austin Hill Show" weekday mornings at Fresno, California's Talk Radio 105-9 KMJ-FM,  and weekday afternoons at Boise, Idaho's Newstalk 580 K I D O radio.

Hill holds a Bachelor's Degree in English Literature from California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo, and a Master's Degree in Philosophy of Religion and Ethics from Biola University in California.

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Bill Whittle - I'M TALKING TO YOU

At current spending rates, there will be no U.S. Economy by 2027. That's not Bill's opinion: that's the opinion of the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, using the Obama Administration's own numbers, and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner doesn't even bother to deny it.

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Austin Hill - Change, Change, Change - The Obama Transformation is Here

“We are five days away,” the future President famously said in October of 2008, “from fundamentally transforming the United States of America…”

So how does Barack Obama’s “fundamental transformation” look to you now?

If the world seems chaotic to you, you’re not alone. President Obama promised “change” during his first campaign for the presidency, and in less than one full term he’s delivered.

American foreign policy, historically devoted to protecting American interests and championing liberty, is now focused on “outreach” to people who want to destroy us. But the “transformation” has not just impacted America’s place in the world.

Your private world – your day-to-day environment and the cultural norms that order that environment – is changing as well (so is mine). And while it’s difficult to measure people’s changing attitudes, there is clear evidence that Americans are increasingly developing a negative attitude towards work, productivity, and success.

Depending on what poll you’re reading, roughly half of the American population agrees with President Obama’s assumption that “rich” Americans need to be taxed at a higher rate. Concerns about undermining people’s incentive to achieve just don’t matter to many of us – making “somebody else” pay makes a lot of us feel better.

There also seems to be a change in Americans’ attitudes towards working. And while there are far too many of us who are earnestly trying to find work and cannot, there nonetheless appears to be growing numbers of us for whom working is just not a priority.

The reality of Americans choosing to not work – or, at a minimum, choosing to work less – would seem to be a very intentional consequence of President Obama’s agenda. Indeed, it has long been the belief of the President’s science adviser John P. Holdren that the world would be a better place environmentally if “Americans worked, produced, and earned less.”

This may seem counter-intuitive, yet the numbers don’t lie. As the unemployment rate has recently dropped a bit, so also has the “labor force participation rate” – the statistic that represents the ratio between the labor force itself, and the overall population. Assuming that the Bureau of Labor Statistics is telling the truth, participation in the labor force has dropped to a 30 year low, as roughly 1.2 million Americans recently chose to exit the labor market.

It’s difficult to deny that the decline in the number of people who want to work correlates with the President’s agenda. At the very least, one has to admit that this change corresponds on the timeline with Mr. Obama’s presidency.

Yet within his first three years as our President, we’ve seen the amount of direct federal payments to individual households – both direct payments for specific usages, and for “unrestricted” usages – skyrocket by more than $600 billion. One might argue that these direct payments rose out of necessity because of the recession, although President Obama has slated for another $500 billion worth of annual increases in direct payments between now and 2016. If the trend continues, within the next four years direct payments will account for two-thirds of all annual federal government spending.

But wait, there’s more. A record forty-nine percent of all American homes have somebody living in them who is receiving some sort of federal benefit. And reliance on food stamps has expanded forty-five percent during the Obama presidency, thanks in no small part to the President’s insistence that the expansion of food stamp funding be included in his “economic stimulus bill.”

So has the expansion of “federal assistance” brought about “fundamental transformation?” President Obama insists that it creates a sense of “fairness” in our society. Yet it’s difficult to argue that it doesn’t create at least some incentive to cease being productive.

And then there’s President Obama’s signature “healthcare reform law.” Nearly two years ago the Congressional Budget Office warned that with all the robust entitlements that the law promises, it would most certainly impact the labor market.

Speaking at a little-noted event at the University of Southern California in October of 2010, C.B.O. Director Doug Elmendorf noted that, outside the healthcare sector of our economy, the greatest impact of the Obamacare agenda would be with people’s interest in working.

Furthermore, Mr. Elmendorf stated that, in some cases, Americans would simply choose to no longer work, because their needs for healthcare will be provided by the enhanced Medicaid funding entailed in the Obamacare law.

Proclivities to make somebody else pay, and a declining interest in working – indeed America is being transformed. Will voters choose more of it this November, or will we choose to get back to being Americans?

Austin Hill

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Austin Hill is an emerging American voice, addressing culture-defining questions through books, talk radio, web, speaking, and interviews. His recent books "White House Confidential" and his new title "The Virtues Of Capitalism" show his range from whit-infused writer to thought-provoking expert on the intersection of philosophy, religion, politics & culture. Hill helps to make the complex seem simple when exploring capitalism, socialism, and other "Isms".

He is an editorial contributor to national publications such as U.S. News & World Report, a columnist with TownHall.com, and is a popular expert-host on radio from leading stations in Washington DC, Chicago, Phoenix and Los Angeles, and nationally with networks such as Fox NewsTalk Radio.  He hosts the "Austin Hill Show" weekday mornings at Fresno, California's Talk Radio 105-9 KMJ-FM,  and weekday afternoons at Boise, Idaho's Newstalk 580 K I D O radio.

Hill holds a Bachelor's Degree in English Literature from California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo, and a Master's Degree in Philosophy of Religion and Ethics from Biola University in California.

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