WASHINGTON — John McCain, riding high off victories in New Hampshire and South Carolina, has raised more than $7 million this month, collecting in three weeks more than he took in during a three-month period last year.
Florida and Super Tuesday could throw a wrench into this whole race, but I have to tell you, I am getting the feeling we are looking at our nominee.
My work on the Fred Thompson campaign concluded today. So I am back to blogging.
I will probably have a lot to blog about in the coming weeks. For now, here are my first thoughts.
The accord came as the White House said Thursday an agreement was imminent.Pelosi, D-Calif., agreed to drop increases in food stamp and unemployment benefits during a Wednesday meeting in exchange for gaining rebates of at least $300 for almost everyone earning a paycheck, including low-income earners who make too little to pay income taxes.
Families with children would receive an additional $300 per child, subject to an overall cap of perhaps $1,200, according to a senior House aide who outlined the deal on condition of anonymity in advance of formal adoption of the whole package. Rebates would go to people earning below a certain income cap, likely individuals earning $75,000 or less and couples with incomes of $150,000 or less.
I am certainly not going to complain about getting $300 of my hard earned money back from the Capitol Hill thieves, but let’s not kid ourselves here. This move is nothing more than political cover. Neither party wants to go into November squabbling back and forth over who is responsible for the slower economic gains and the sub-prime mortgage crisis we are experiencing. These rebates are simply a feel good measure to try and quell the growing public concern towards the situation at hand. It will resolve nothing in the long term.
First of all, by definition we are not in a recession, not yet anyway. Could we be headed towards one? Perhaps, but the economic minds have been making prediction after prediction of a recession over the past few years and it has yet to occur. The sub-prime mortgage crisis alone is not an indicator of rough economic times ahead. Lenders, through pressure of the Federal government and radical left wing groups like ACORN, lowered their standards and handed out mortgages to people who were simply not financially responsible, be it through bad credit histories or over extending themselves in the type of property they purchased. When the interest rates went back up and the fixed term of these ARM loans expired why was anyone surprised that many of these people could not continue making the payments? Amusingly the politicians expressed their hypocritical outrage at the lenders for “scamming” people into these loans despite the fact that it was they who were responsible for it to begin with.
Bailing out these lenders with corporate welfare and those who have defaulted on these loans will do nothing more than establish the government as a security blanket for corporate America and the public to turn to when they screw up. It will not correct the behavior, but only encourage it further by abdicating responsibility on one’s self. Both the lenders and the homeowners need to sink on their decisions and allow the market to correct itself and recover naturally. Throwing a few hundred dollars out there at middle class and lower income wage earners is not going to resolve any looming economic crises and will only create a budget deficit of well over $100 billion, when we already experienced a similar deficit for 2007. Furthermore, the problem with Pelosi’s insistence that the lowest wage earners get tax “rebates” on income taxes they never paid to begin with is another government forced shift of wealth from contributers to our economy to receivers. These lowest wage earners don’t contribute to our economy, they suckle from it.
Don’t be fooled by these gestures of “good will” by the White House and Congress. They are irresponsibly avoiding the problem and engaging in a smoke and mirrors magic show to cover their asses in an election year.