Your daily newspaper and your favorite news websites have been dominated recently by news about guns and gun control. Since the awful shootings at the Sandy Hook elementary school, where a heavily armed lunatic murdered more than two dozen children and adults, our political leaders have been talking a lot about firearms and what we can do to prevent another horrible massacre.
In an odd way, the opportunity to talk about guns must be a kind of welcome relief for our politicians, because the gun control debate lets each party retreat to safe, time-honored positions that appeal to their bases. Democrats understand that most of their voters will support attempts to license gun owners, register all weapons, and restrict or even ban ownership of “assault weapons” or other firearms. Republicans, on the other hand, know that their supporters will cheer vigorous defenses of the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms and stalwart opposition to overly zealous attempts to regulate gun ownership.
I suspect that all of the talk, talk, talk about guns is, in part, a means of distracting voters from other pressing issues. Members of Congress and the Obama Administration would rather stay snugly in their gun debate comfort zones than deal with the spending, tax, and budget deficit issues that have far more long-term significance for our country. With all the talk about guns, how much discussion of those core economic issues have you heard recently? When those issues are in the forefront, and feet are being held to the fire, there are no easy, pat answers and no rote appeals to political bases.
As terrible as the Sandy Hook shootings were, we shouldn’t let our political leaders divert our attention from the federal debt time bomb and other issues that are restraining our economy. Yesterday we received an unpleasant reminder of these problems when it was announced that gross domestic product dropped in the fourth quarter of last year. Imagine: our economy actually shrank during the hottest shopping season of the year. It’s time we remind Congress and the President of the paramount need to focus on the hard budget and economic issues, before our economy plunges into another recession.
Democrats kept control of the U.S. Senate, while Republicans kept control of the House of Representatives. In short, the United States is in for more divided government. After two consecutive “wave” elections, the message of this election seems to be to maintain the status quo.
This one proposal, I think, reflects President Obama’s deeply held view of the world — and why I must conclude, regrettably, that he will never truly grapple with our soaring budget deficits and federal debt, which I believe are the two most crucial problems facing our country.
We called it the butt belt. It was a machine linked to a canvas belt. You stood on a platform, slipped the belt around your keister or waist, and turned on the motor. The belt vibrated and you leaned back, letting the contraption shake your rump like crazy.
The Congressional Budget Office forecasts that this year’s deficit will be $1,170,000, 000,000 — $1.17 trillion. That breathtakingly huge number comes on the heels of the $1,300,000,000,000 deficit in the last fiscal year. Our deficits topped $1,000,000,000,000 during each of President Obama’s three years in office.
There’s plenty of blame to go around. Congress has shirked its responsibility to pass honest budgets and specific spending bills, administrators have wasted tax dollars, and huge segments of the American public have an apparently insatiable appetite for federal benefits and perks. But I have grown sick to death of President Obama’s constant attempts to dodge his share of the blame for the ignominious failure of the government that he — and he alone — heads. Successful Presidents are able to lead and work within our political system to deal the issues of the day. President Obama, in contrast, throws out unrealistic budgets that don’t even receive the votes of members of his own party in Congress and then blames his predecessor — the one who left office more than three years ago — for our mounting debt problems. Meanwhile, the spending and deficit binge continues. I don’t view President Obama’s approach as quality leadership. In fact, I don’t view it as leadership at all — and if a President doesn’t lead, he has failed on the most fundamental part of his job.
I don’t subscribe to Santorum’s ultra-traditional views of how life should be lived or families should be structured. I’m also concerned by the overt nature of his religious beliefs. I heard clips of 
We can expect that each side will blame the other. Congress might not be able to make hard decisions, but they are peerless in shirking responsibility for failure. Even more sad, yet predictable, Congress also is talking about deactivating the automatic spending cuts that were supposed to make a grand compromise more likely. If they do that, of course, the entire supercommittee charade will be exposed as a silly sham that has done nothing except demonstrate that our leaders lack the discipline and the will to make tough choices — even when the grim example of countless debt-ridden Eurozone countries shows clearly what ultimately will happen if our constant deficit spending habits are not curbed.
According to the CBO, 
The bird is the sage grouse. In the last two years, the USDA will have paid $112 million to farmers and ranchers in 11 western states to implement practices to preserve the bird’s habitat. Yet, the sage grouse — which is found in Wyoming, Colorado, Montana, Idaho, South Dakota, North Dakota, Utah, Nevada, Washington, Oregon and California — is too numerous to be included on the endangered species list. Indeed, 10 of the 11 states where the bird is found allow it to be hunted.
It’s like an old fan dance, where the flashing fans of the dancer seek to tantalize while hiding what lies beneath. The Senate has contributed the ill-defined “Gang of Six” proposal. The House Republicans passed “cut, cap, and balance.” President Obama continues to insist on a “balanced approach.” Everybody uses every opportunity to trumpet that everybody else is behaving abominably and making outrageous proposals. And the latest report is that the 
The 
Another interesting time and timing issue was raised when the President talked about a “failsafe” that would be part of his plan. The President stated: “But just to hold Washington — and to hold me — accountable and make sure that the debt burden continues to decline, my plan includes a debt failsafe. If, by 2014, our debt is not projected to fall as a share of the economy -– if we haven’t hit our targets, if Congress has failed to act -– then my plan will require us to come together and make up the additional savings with more spending cuts and more spending reductions in the tax code. That should be an incentive for us to act boldly now, instead of kicking our problems further down the road.”
ext said the tax code is “loaded up with spending on things like itemized deductions.” He agrees with “the goals of many of these deductions, from homeownership to charitable giving,” but “we can’t ignore the fact that they provide millionaires an average tax break of $75,000 but do nothing for the typical middle-class family that doesn’t itemize.” He then called for “limiting itemized deductions for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans.”
I’m all for making the tax code simpler and fairer — but does anyone really think President Obama is well positioned to do so? His health care legislation is already producing volumes of regulations that are of breathtaking complexity. And this is not a President who has shied away from advocating tax breaks and incentives for causes that he agrees with — like green energy. A better course, I think, would be to get away from deductions altogether. I’d like to see an end to special tax treatment of donations to charitable and religious organizations and the non-profit political groups, right and left, whose vile advertising makes TV watching during the election season so revolting. Our tax policy should not encourage such groups.
