Entitlement reform: If not now, when?

Entitlement reform: If not now, when? https://t.co/Vcd3shljXb by @emilyjashinsky pic.twitter.com/eDTYxZkmHa

— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) December 27, 2017

Trump wants $800 billion, 10-year cut in entitlement programs

Trump wants $800 billion, 10-year cut in entitlement programs https://t.co/R5P5MKJiiq pic.twitter.com/r1TaUNTJxf

— Roll Call (@rollcall) May 11, 2017

John Boehner: They Say Entitlement Reform Is Impossible. We Just Proved Them Wrong.

They Say Entitlement Reform Is Impossible. We Just Proved Them Wrong by @SpeakerBoehner for #TheJournal http://t.co/xP4eYD3RCE

— IJReview (@ijreview) April 17, 2015

Conservatives should be happy we got this done, and confident Republicans will continue fighting to curb Washington’s worst habits for the sake of our children’s future.

Raging Whiner Nation: It's not about "activism" - it's about entitlement:

◼ The rise of the Rage Whiners - HotAir

...Just this weekend we saw the #blacklivesmatter brigades shutting down a major interstate to no particular purpose other than stopping ambulances from getting crash victims to hospitals. Previously, we witnessed the disruption of dining for largely liberal consumers in largely liberal cities by the #BlackBrunch crowd, who seemed to ignore the fact that not only were many of the diners not white, but just as many of the employees who relied on the operation of the businesses for their livelihood were minorities as well. (The Boss Emeritus had a column recently on this phenomenon titled Attack of the Black Brunch Brats which is well worth a read if you missed it.) But no matter… they were invading traditionally white spaces.

All of these protesters exhibit a similar set of traits, lack of a cohesive message aside. In one of those “Gosh darn, I wish I’d written that” moments, Jim Geraghty encapsulates this new zeitgeist in what he describes as The Raging Whiner Nation....

◼ Winter in Raging Whiner Nation - Jim Geraghty

Storming into bars and restaurants, locking themselves to concrete-filled-barrels and blocking Interstates… this is the progressive grassroots of 2015. This is the Left, capital-L. This is blind fury, lashing out at others for having the audacity to drink beverages, eat brunch, or commute in a manner that the self-appointed arbiters of justice on the Left deem insufficiently down with the cause. There is no actual “activism” here. There is no attempt at persuasion here. There is no thought here. There is only resentment and anger and a desire to lash out at anybody who isn’t one of them. There’s no agenda or plan to actually improve things. There’s no call to action. It’s just rage-whining....

My fellow men and women of the Right… yes, we have our bad days. Yes, there are times somebody on our side embarrasses us or does something stupid. But we can all thank our lucky stars we don’t have idiots, losers, and misanthropic rage-mongers like this claiming to act in the name in our cause.

A Cut Above

◼ Some time ago I got a tweet from a young lady who informed me that she was sure that I was not paying my "fair share" and although she could neither tell me what my fair share would consist of or knew anything about the amount of tax and other state and federal assessments I pay, she was sure it was not enough and I should be forced to pay more. - Charlie Daniels/CNS

She said she had a hard time getting ahead and she seemed to think that part of the reason for that was because people like me did not pay their fair share of taxes so that people like her could get the government aid they were entitled to, to level the playing field, she also informed me not to tell her to "try harder" because she had done that and it simply didn't work.

At this point, I gave up even trying to reason with her, even though I wanted to tell her that, with the attitude she had, she was never going to achieve any higher position in life than she already had, for the simple reason that she had swallowed the one-size-fits-all, you-didn't-build-that, "somebody helped you," "the reason you don't prosper is because somebody else is unfairly taking your piece of the pie" socialistic crap.

Krauthammer: Obama is Robbing the Military to Inflate the Entitlement State

◼ “There’s nobody to back us up if we strip our military and neuter it as we do now.”

◼ Jonathan Hendershott of the New York Post recently reported that members of our armed services, some of whom are currently serving overseas, are about to receive pink slips...

In a stunning display of callousness, the Defense Department has announced that thousands of soldiers — many serving as commanding officers in Afghanistan — will be notified in the coming weeks that their service to the country is no longer needed.

A society in which a majority of births are out of wedlock cannot be other than a Big Government welfare society. Ruining a nation’s finances is one thing; debauching its human capital is far harder to fix.

◼ The Death of the Family - Mark Steyn/National Review

Obamaphones: $2.2 billion in 2012 alone

◼ WSJ: Millions fraudulently claimed eligibility for federal phone subsidies - Erika Johnsen/HotAir

◼ Millions Improperly Claimed U.S. Phone Subsidies - spencer.ante@wsj.com

◼ STATE OF THE UNION: 11,629 MORE GO ON FOOD STAMPS EACH DAY... - Elizabeth Harrington/CNS

Since taking office in 2009, food stamp rolls under President Barack Obama have risen to more than 47 million people in America, exceeding the population of Spain.

“Now is the time to act boldly and wisely – to not only revive this economy, but to build a new foundation for lasting prosperity,” said Obama during his first joint session address to Congress on Feb. 24, 2009....

When you say, “My God, one of every three welfare recipients lives in California,” or “California schools are terrible,” you mean really, “Not in Newport or Carmel. So who cares about Fresno, or Tulare — they might as well be in Alabama for all the times I have been there.”

◼ California at Twilight - Victor Davis Hanson/PJM

...We are like the proverbial spoiled third-generation progeny of the immigrant farmer: the first-generation toiler lived in a hovel until he bought his 80 acres with paid cash. The second remodeled the old house, had a nicer car than a tractor, doubled the acreage, but took the weekend off and had less money in the bank than did his dad. The third fantasized and puttered about in his hiking boots, went through the inheritance, mortgaged the land — and was as glib and mellifluous as he was broke.

California is a tired idea.

Dependency and the Threat to the GOP: Why We Need a Great Leader

◼ The only way to preserve the promise of opportunity in America, and protect the GOP’s political prospects, is to end a substantial part of the dependency state.... - Mario Loyola/National Review

The model here may not be Reagan, who was only facing a few years of stagflation. The model may be a leader such as Margaret Thatcher and Charles de Gaulle, each of whom was able to reverse a national decline that was already well under way, and which had come to seem irreversible.

If conservatives are to meet the challenge that the dependency state poses to their political prospects, the first step is to find a leader who can unite the country behind a mission of national renewal.

Nine years ago, California Democrat Gray Davis became the first U.S. governor in 82 years to be recalled by voters. The state’s 20 million taxpayers still bear the cost of his four years and 10 months on the job.

◼ $822,000 Worker Shows California Leads U.S. Pay Giveaway - Mark Niquette, Michael B. Marois & Rodney Yap/Bloomberg

Davis escalated salaries and benefits for 164,000 state workers, including a 34 percent raise for prison guards, the first of a series of steps in which he and successors saddled California with a legacy of dysfunction. Today, the state’s highest-paid employees make far more than comparable workers elsewhere in almost all job and wage categories, from public safety to health care, base pay to overtime.

Payroll data compiled by Bloomberg on 1.4 million public employees in the 12 most populous states show that California has set a pattern of lax management, inefficient operations and out-of-control costs. From coast to coast, states are cutting funding for schools, public safety and the poor as they struggle with fallout left by politicians who made pay-and-pension promises that taxpayers couldn’t afford.
“It was completely avoidable,” said David Crane, a public-policy lecturer at Stanford University.

“All it took was for political leaders to think more about the general population and the future, rather than their political futures,” said Crane, a Democrat who worked as an economic adviser to former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican. “Citizens should be mad as hell, and they shouldn’t take it anymore.”

Bowles: We Have to Cut Spending

Office of Speaker Boehner: While President Obama is demanding tax rate hikes on small businesses, former Clinton White House Chief of Staff and Democrat Erskine Bowles told CBS Face the Nation, "We have to cut spending." ... "Even if you raise the top rates back to the Clinton rates, that only creates about $400 billion over 10 years. That's $40 billion a year. We have a trillion dollar a year deficit," said Bowles. And the spending cuts offered by the president - which are dwarfed by the new 'stimulus' spending he proposes - are "not enough. We're going to have to do more."

At a press conference (Dec. 7), House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) said there is no progress to report on fiscal cliff talks, in light of the White House's refusal to respond to Republicans' balanced approach to avert the fiscal cliff...



Dec. 5: Speaker Boehner and House Republican leaders just finished up a meeting with small business owners who will get hit if President Obama raises tax rates instead of cutting spending. A former small business owner, Boehner kicked off the discussion by outlining the consequences of the president's tax rate hikes, and Republicans' responsible efforts to protect jobs.



◼ POLL: 76% Favor 'Cutting Government Spending Across the Board'... - Daniel Halper/Weekly Standard

◼ WHY OBAMA ISN’T TALKING ABOUT DEEP DOMESTIC CUTS - Hope Hodge/Human Events

A new Pew poll shows that a majority of Americans—53 percent—will blame the GOP if we go over the fiscal cliff. But the dirty secret of the sequester is that it would be devastating for Democrats too, and particularly Obama, since the plan leads clearly back to him.

◼ Little interest in renewing payroll-tax holiday - Seth McLaughlin/Washington Times

Cliff-jumping with Barack; strap on your parachute, Mr. President. We’ll ride down together.

◼ Why are Republicans playing the Democrats’ game that the “fiscal cliff” is all about taxation? - Charles Krauthammer/Washington Post

...Where is the other part of President Obama’s vaunted “balanced approach”? Where are the spending cuts, both discretionary and entitlement: Medicare, Medicaid and now Obamacare (the health-care trio) and Social Security?

...Obama is claiming an electoral mandate to raise taxes on the top 2 percent. Perhaps, but remember those incessant campaign ads promising a return to the economic nirvana of the Clinton years? Well, George W. Bush cut rates across the board, not just for the top 2 percent. Going back to the Clinton rates means middle-class tax hikes that yield four times the revenue that you get from just the rich.

So give Obama the full Clinton. Let him live with that. And with what also lies on the other side of the cliff: 28 million Americans newly subject to the ruinous alternative minimum tax.

Republicans must stop acting like supplicants. If Obama so loves those Clinton rates, Republicans should say: Then go over the cliff and have them all.

And add: But if you want a grand bargain, then deal. If we give way on taxes, we want, in return, serious discretionary cuts, clearly spelled-out entitlement cuts and real tax reform.

Otherwise, strap on your parachute, Mr. President. We’ll ride down together.