Pirate's Cove

Yes, I know, some of you do not like it when I call him things like Chump and Sparky, but, how can I resist when we are treated to weekly addresses like this?

Over the last month, I’ve been traveling the country, talking to Americans about how we can out-educate, out-innovate, and out-build the rest of the world. Doing that will require a government that lives within its means, and cuts whatever spending we can afford to do without.  But it will also require investing in our nation’s future – training and educating our workers; increasing our commitment to research and technology; building new roads and bridges, high-speed rail and high-speed internet.

Hooray! High speed rail! Give it up to Obama, he can beat a meme to death. It used to be that private entities would do the majority of what he mentioned, at least until they realized that they were money losers and/or The Government took the projects over (with lower quality). Oh, and what’s with all the unnecessary fossil fueled flights? Bad climahysteric!

In Wisconsin, a company called Orion is putting hundreds of people to work manufacturing energy-efficient lights in a once-shuttered plant.  And in the small community of Marquette, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, widely accessible high-speed internet has allowed students and entrepreneurs to connect to the global economy.  One small business, a third-generation, family-owned clothing shop called Getz’s is now selling their products online, which has helped them double their workforce and make them one of America’s 5,000 fastest-growing companies in a recent listing.

Hmm, Orion? Given $260,000 in stimulus money, without which they might have gone under, because they couldn’t make a profit. Marquette? How about if the freeloaders paid for the Internet themselves, instead of costing the taxpayers $20 million to reach 4,600 people? Getz’s? They’ve been on-line since….1997!

Each of these places reminds us that investments in education, innovation, and infrastructure are an essential down payment on our future. But they also remind us that the only way we can afford these investments is by getting our fiscal house in order.  Just like any family, we have to live within our means to make room for things we absolutely need.

That’s why I’ve called for a freeze on annual domestic spending over the next five years – a freeze that would cut the deficit by more than $400 billion over the next decade, bringing this kind of spending to its lowest share of our economy since Dwight Eisenhower was President. Just to be clear, that’s lower than it was under the past three administrations, and lower than it was under Ronald Reagan.

Yet, his proposed 2012 budget would be $100 billion more than his previous recommended budget. Go figure.

I’m willing to consider any serious ideas to help us reduce the deficit – no matter what party is proposing them. But instead of cutting the investments in education and innovation we need to out-compete the rest of the world, we need a balanced approach to deficit reduction. We all need to be willing to sacrifice, but we can’t sacrifice our future.

We’ve heard this talk before, on the Stimulus, ObamaCare, and other “historic” pieces of legislation, and “serious ideas” still means “only ones that my vast experience as a business executive community organizer would make me like.”

Next week, Congress will focus on a short-term budget. For the sake of our people and our economy, we cannot allow gridlock to prevail. Both Democratic and Republican leaders in the House and Senate have said they believe it’s important to keep the government running while we work together on a plan to reduce our long-term deficit.

Given that, I urge and expect them to find common ground so we can accelerate, not impede, economic growth. It won’t be easy. There will be plenty of debates and disagreements, and neither party will get everything it wants. Both sides will have to compromise.

So, now that Democrats lost the House, lost several seats in the Senate, and lost an enormous number of state assemblies and governors mansions, now Obama wants to work together? In reality, he doesn’t. This is a setup to Blame Republicans when they refuse to include a ton of progressive style bits of legislation into the budgets, when they are cutting unhinged progressive programs and reducing funding for out of control agencies, and Obama vetoes the budget. The People spoke in November, Sparky: whether they were voting for Republicans or against you and your free spending big government palls in the Democrat party, it matters not. They spoke. You should listen.

Crossed at Right Wing News and Stop The ACLU