More Spending Ideas From Two Liberal Women Senators

Liberal Democratic Senators Mary Landrieu (LA) and Patty Murray (WA) wrote an editorial in Wednesday's edition of the Wall Street Journal entitled How to Close the Skills Gap.

It's a study in how liberals see a failure of an existing system as a reason for government to spend billions more elsewhere.

The hapless duo begin with,

"According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. currently has approximately three million job openings, all waiting to be filled. With so many Americans out of work, what is the delay? Workers want to work, and so many businesses want to hire—but there is a widening "skills gap" that prevents many Americans from filling the jobs of the 21st century economy. If we want to get our economy back on track and get workers back on the job, we will have to address this issue in a better way.



Consider this: According to a report by the National Commission on Adult Literacy, 90 million adults have literacy skills so low that success in postsecondary education and training is becoming more and more challenging. Anthony Carnevale of Georgetown University, using Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data, reports that of the nearly 50 million new jobs the BLS projects to be created by 2018, 30 million will require recognized postsecondary credentials. However, there will be three million too few workers with these credentials. Meanwhile, high-school graduation rates are falling—1.2 million students in America drop out of school every year, and young adults are now less educated than their parents' generation was.


A recent report on this issue from the perspective of CEOs and college presidents found that more than half of the companies surveyed reported a challenge in finding candidates with the right skills. Of the smaller businesses, 67% said finding skilled workers was difficult. A Wells Fargo/Gallup Small Business Index Survey reveals that while half of small-business owners hired new workers in 2010, 42% of these hired "fewer" [employees] than needed." Sixty-two percent of that group said this was because it was "hard to find qualified employees for [the] positions available."  "

Now, to most sensible observers and readers, this information would lead one to conclude that Landrieu and Murray are going to, or should be, advocating fixing US education. You know, some NEA or AFT union-busting, endorsing the privatization of primary and high school education. The sort of thing that would focus teachers and schools on students' education, instead of teachers' administrators' and union officials' compensation and careers. Because the obvious problem isn't a lack of skills among US residents, so much as, according to the above information, a failure of the existing education system to provide said skills.

They continue,


"Adding to the urgency of the situation is the reality that the U.S. competes in a global economy, and businesses today take stock of assets around the globe when they make investment decisions. The sad fact is that we spend considerably less than other developed countries on labor-market policies, including work-force training and job-search programs. At the individual level, the U.S. invested only $908 per labor-market participant—$84 dollars, or 9.2%, less than the average amount spent by other member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).


We believe that the skills gap is a consequence of our failure to seriously invest in the education of America's work force. Without an educated pool of workers from which to hire, small businesses are bearing the financial burden of teaching these skills."

Wow. Color me hopeful here. Could these two liberal Democratic stalwarts actually be about to take on entrenched unionized educators and their union bosses? Let's see.....they proceed to write,

"John Russo, the president of Scientific Analytical Solutions in North Kingston, R.I., recently talked to the AP about the problem his small business faces: "It's very difficult to find the right person, and there's all walks of life trying to find jobs. I honestly think there's a large swath of unemployable. They don't have any skills at all."


The Small Business Administration (SBA) hears the same sentiments from those on the front lines in its field offices across the country. At a recent roundtable organized by the Senate Small Business Entrepreneurship Committee, SBA district directors repeatedly cited the alarming, widening skills gap in the nation as preventing small businesses from expanding.


As we work to create jobs and get our economy back on track, closing this skills gap needs to be a top priority. A critical first step: reauthorizing and reforming the Workforce Investment Act, our nation's foundational federal work-force development policy. We also need to expand innovative approaches that have produced results, such as career pathways programs that provide labor-market information to students and job seekers about in-demand jobs, and the skills and education necessary to get them.


Other important elements of tackling this problem include integrating education and work-based learning, and supporting strategies that allow learners to work while receiving training (also known as "earn and learn" strategies). We should also support public–private partnerships that draw on the expertise of successful members of the business community to help provide assistance and job-preparation advice to our work force.


Building a bigger and more highly skilled work force will help our small businesses step up to global competition. There's no excuse to delay getting to work on the problem any longer."


Sadly, no, they don't. In fact, they veer sharply away from discussing current schooling, opting, instead, to advocate creating more post-education federal programs on which to spend billions more. With no basis, in effect employing a non sequitor. A (public education) is flawed, so let's create B (more federal training programs for adults), rather than bother discussing A, because A is a liberal pet campaign funding honeypot.

Here's a newsflash- people like me were actually able to find white-collar employment and advancement solely on the basis of our primary, secondary, college and, in some cases, graduate educations. For which either public taxes, our parents, or we paid.

Why do we need successive layers of new training and education programs to try to correct the flaws of the existing systems?

Let's just rip the current, failed US public schooling systems apart and let towns and districts contract with private firms to provide teachers and administrators to work at public-owned facilities.
However, let's avoid Landrieu's and Murray's baseless suggestions to create yet another adult training program in order to avoid addressing yet another liberal failure- US public schooling.

GOP Wins Wisconsin State Senate Recalls 4-2 & Retains Control

Wisconsin Republicans won 4 of 6 recall elections, retaining control of the Senate. Meanwhile, more recalls are likely, only this time for the Democrats who illegally fled the state to deny the state Senate a quorum during passage of the teachers' union-affecting bill which triggered such outrage.

By the way, if you weren't already convinced of the Huffington Post's overwhelming liberal bias, consider these two stories from Reuters and Huffington.

The latter's headline? "Wisconsin Recall Election Results: Democrats Win Two Seats, Fall Short Of Taking Over Senate," then led with this copy,

"Democrats won two Wisconsin state Senate seats in Tuesday's dramatic recall elections, but they fell short of the three needed to take the majority away from Republicans."



Clearly, Huffington's editors place Democratic fortunes before the actual outcome of the elections.
Reuter's headline was "Wisconsin Republicans stave off recall challenge," with the lead copy reading,

"Republicans narrowly retained their majority in the Wisconsin state Senate on Tuesday, staving off a strong recall election challenge from Democrats and union members angered by a new law curbing the power of organized labor.



Two Democratic challengers ousted incumbent Republican lawmakers in special elections. But Republicans successfully defended four other seats up for grabs, denying Democrats the three victories they needed to seize control of the Senate."


Even ABC's website had a fairly succinct, factual, non-dramatic headline, "Wisconsin Recall: GOP Retains Senate Control."

Meanwhile, this overtly conservative site provided some details on the two GOP losses,

"With four retentions and two losses (one being the Republican in the Democratic district, and the other being the guy with the alleged adultery problem), I think that we can safely bring forth the unofficial Democratic Base Theme Song (Loser by Beck)."



Governor Scott Walker made nice with some empty blah blah about 'the people want us to work together,' but, in reality, the GOP have won renewed voter approval of their actions.

This can't be good news for public sector union chiefs who were hoping for Wisconsin to be the first turnaround in this epic battle for state budgets and the fiscal health of American government at both state and federal levels.

Given how much the unions staked on this recall effort, the Wisconsin GOP win can't be understated for its importance nationwide.

Like a Broken Record.....

Let's see...S&P downgraded US debt to AA+ last Friday. The most recent GDP numbers were dismal. Unemployment remains stubbornly high while net new jobs are pathetically low. Europe's own debt crisis is now so bad that the ECB is pledging to buy Italy's and Spain's sovereign debt, if necessary.

In the midst of this global economic and financial sluggishness, what do Wonderboy and his minions do?

Why, call for more spending, of course!

One of the Democrat's more liberal Representatives was on a cable news network calling for more stimulus spending. Wonderboy himself spent a good part of his Monday afternoon speech regarding the downgrade pleading for higher spending and taxes.

These people must be living on a different planet. The entire developed economic world is grappling with excessive public debt, pension and healthcare spending while their GDP growth rates have slowed.

There's insufficient private wealth being generated by business activity to pay for more government spending.

That's part of what S&P's downgrade was about- future fiscal budgets which strained credulity.

Apparently liberal Democrats really can only sing one tune- tax and spend. No matter what the context.

Geithner's Unsurprising Decision To Stay At Treasury

Is anyone really surprised that tax-cheat and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner has chosen to remain at Treasury for the rest of Wonderboy's term?

Friday's S&P downgrade of US credit from AAA to AA+ is probably not the note on which Geithner wants to end his Treasury career. To leave now would provide an air of, well, resignation. An admission of defeat.

Then there's the little matter of his replacement.

Sure, pundits were favoring Jamie Dimon to be Geithner's replacement. But, with Wonderboy's recent bumbling of the debt limit talks, and falling poll numbers with just a year and change to go before the 2012 election, does Dimon want to trade a fairly safe career as Chase CEO for as long as he wants for what could well be a one-year, highly-politicized tour at Treasury? Wouldn't the same be true for anyone in the financial community who is unsullied by the recent crisis, but smart enough to read the Tea (Party) leaves?

Face it, whoever follows Geithner, who was never more than a financial plumber by experience, will only be even more of a hack than he was. It's damage control time at Treasury with what will be, after confirmation of Geithner's replacement, just about 12 months to go before the election. And his/her prospects for a longer career than one year are highly in doubt.

So that left the administration with the possibility of an Undersecretary filling in for Geithner as it desperately tried to find someone respectable, or at least adequate, and potentially didn't succeed.

Can you imagine the US going without a Treasury Secretary for several months right after the nation's first credit downgrade?

My guess is that it was made clear to Geithner that his life after Treasury would be as nightmarish as Wonderboy and his allies could make it, should he unwisely desert the ship of state in its hour of need.

The S&P Credit Downgrade As A Check On Wonderboy's Spending Spree

As I wrote here on my companion business blog late last month, a lot of the flap about Friday's after-hours credit downgrade of the US government by S&P from AAA to AA+ is actually a non-event.


Media coverage would have you believe otherwise. But let's consider several aspects of the downgrade.


Wonderboy's people are calling it a politically-motivated mistake by S&P. They mention and arithmetic error in a pre-release draft in the amount of several trillion dollars. That's nonsense. The US has been increasing its deficits for decades, but never so quickly as in the past 2 1/2 years.

As Kaminsky, and others, have attested, the true risk of US debt has already been 'baked into' rates. In that sense, this is a non-event.

Of course, the Democratic retort is to blame the messenger. Ceaselessly citing the bogus ratings by S&P, and other agencies, of mortgage-backed bonds, Barney Frank, Wonderboy, Treasury and every other Democrat in Washington with an ego has now decided that ratings agencies are not to be trusted in the first place.

Actually, as Doug Dachille has pointed out in the past on CNBC, at least for municipal, state and many other ratings, that's true. It's just that now is an awfully suspect time for the federal government to declare it.

However, in terms of the black eye suffered by Wonderboy's administration by allowing itself to be put in the position of being unable to fulfill S&P's quite public $4T spending cut requirements, it's a real event. It provides the ammunition that the GOP needs to fend off further spending. The continuing sluggish US economy provides the bookend of not justifying large-scale, significant tax increases.



So, as I wrote in that linked post,

"Well, American voters need only look in the mirror for whom to blame. They consciously elected and re-elected generally inept spendthrifts since 1932, then wonder why the country has amassed so much net external debt.



It's time for Americans to wake up to the consequences of their poor political choices for the last eight decades.


And when the rating downgrade happens, the resulting increased funding costs will help put a stop to excessive spending and bad tax policies, only from outside, uncontrollable forces, rather than internal, political ones."
 
For all we know, on a relative basis, global demand may now be lower, at every rate, for US Treasuries. The new constraint on boundless US debt growth is, if it exists, now uncontrollable and external.
 
To me, that's a good thing. Eight decades of inept fiscal policy in Washington has led us to this point. I'm quite content with markets spanking the federal government and putting limits on what the federal officials whom US voters have mistakenly allowed to spend us into the poorhouse can now spend and borrow.

The Debt Limit Deal- Government American Style

I wrote in this recent post,

"Actually, they do. And we know for a fact that voters in at least 87 House districts, the ones which elected freshmen GOP members, and a handful of states which elected Senators like Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, and other Tea Party-inclined GOP freshmen Senators, don't care about bi-partisanship which allows the free-spending liberal Democrats to continue their usual Washington ways.



What I believe we are seeing is not a new emphasis on bi-partisanship, but a fleeting moment of collaboration to do the minimum necessary to operate the federal government, until the 2012 elections sweep Democrats from their control of the Senate and, probably, the Oval Office.


But I agree with Charles Krauthammer, who contended recently on Fox News that Americans need a serious, knock-down, drag-out debate about the nation's direction at least once every generation.



That's what is occurring now. The recent debt limit debates and so-called (faux) crisis is merely the opening shot in that battle.


If you can objectively observe the trends of the past four years, it's pretty clear that the election of an inexperienced, spendthrift Senator from Illinois to the presidency, along with majorities in both houses of Congress, was the breaking point.


Now momentum has moved back the other way."


David Rivkin, Jr., and Lee Casey, attorneys who served in the Department of Justice during the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, wrote an editorial in Tuesday's edition of the Wall Street Journal entitled A Debt Deal The Founders Could Love. In it, they expanded on a similar point, eschewing this sudden love of bi-partisan compromise by Democrats,



"The debt-ceiling crisis has prompted predictable media laments about how partisan and dysfunctional our political system has become. But if the process leading to the current deal was a "spectacle" and a "three-ring circus," as Obama adviser David Plouffe put it, the show's impresarios are none other than James Madison and Alexander Hamilton. Our messy political system is working exactly the way our Founders intended it to.



To the extent House members were the most intransigent during the process—a matter of opinion, in any case—they were meant to be. The House of Representatives is the "popular branch," as described in The Federalist Papers, and was intended to "have an immediate dependence on, and an intimate sympathy with, the people." Many people, especially those who elected tea party candidates last November, passionately believe that the federal government has gone off the rails. They think that Washington has been spending like a drunken sailor since President Obama took office, and that this profligacy must end.


By contrast, the Framers conceived the Senate as a body of graybeards (or, at the very least, as modestly mature individuals who have reached the age of 30). It was meant to represent the interests of the states and to serve as a check on "the impulse of sudden and violent passions," or the danger of "factious leaders" offering "intemperate and pernicious resolutions" that might in time characterize the lower house. If the Senate has been less willing than the House to call an immediate halt to federal borrowing and to seek a more gradual return to fiscal responsibility, this too is exactly what it is supposed to do.


The result was a compromise, as it has nearly always been throughout our history. This will be a disappointment to many who voted for real and immediate fiscal restraint, but that too is to be expected. The Framers believed in gradual change. They prized stability and predictability. Most would have agreed with Talleyrand's injunction—"above all, not too much zeal"—and themselves watched as Talleyrand learned this lesson the hard way. An early and enthusiastic participant in the French Revolution, France's future foreign minister was forced to take refuge in the United States after his countrymen started cutting off heads.


Accordingly, the Framers rejected a parliamentary system of government, where power is concentrated in the legislature and very often in one house of the legislature. There truly are winners and losers in such political systems, and governmental policy can indeed be transformed immediately after a new government takes office.


By contrast, our Constitution diffuses power both vertically among the federal government and states and horizontally among the three branches of the federal government—and then again within Congress itself. Change, even good and necessary change, is always difficult. It must be based on consensus.


Yes, reaching consensus on any issue that matters is messy. Shouting and intransigence are commonplace in such battles and have been since the very beginning. Indeed, the Washington circus began well before the capital city was completed, and the Founding generation was second to none in its use of political invective. For example, Thomas Jefferson and his surrogates suggested President Washington had gone senile and claimed that John Adams was a closet monarchist. After he became president, Jefferson himself was excoriated because of an alleged sexual relationship with one of his slaves, Sally Hemmings.


Rarely in our system do the participants, whether in the House, Senate or White House, achieve all or even most of their goals in a single political battle. Sunday night, a debt-ceiling deal was reached that will raise the federal debt ceiling and permit continued borrowing to fund federal government operations through 2012 rather than just for another six months. The hard questions—taxes and spending cuts—have largely been postponed.


But the key point has been made. Few now suggest that we can continue on our current spending binge. That is the beginning of a consensus, and a good start towards genuine change. Postponing the difficult questions also means that the electorate can have its say in the 2012 elections, and represents significant political risks for all parties.


The Framers would be pleased at the "spectacle." "
Rivkin and Casey have done a wonderful job, in my opinion, of debunking, with historical examples, this commonly-, but wrongly-held notion that there was more political civility in our Republic's olden times. One often hears these appeals for bi-partisanship, compromise and civility when a party or leader knows they possess a very weak position, either in terms of votes or ideology.
 
In this most recent case, the debt limit battle, the Democrats were weak on both counts. Thus, the appeal for compromise in order to attempt to hide their weakness on spending and rather naked desire to simply be given the license to embark on a few trillion dollars more in American indebtedness.
 
While it's true that the ultimate amount of spending cuts were minuscule, and the debt ceiling was raised by an amount ($2.4T) calculated by Wonderboy to allow him to get through the next election before seeking to raise it again, the tide has turned, and Tea Party-inspired legislators who voted for the anemic bill made their point.
 
And it's not finished. Michele Bachmann voted no and, I am sure, will use that vote to bludgeon any fellow candidates for the GOP presidential nomination, should they voice support of the bill, as passed.
 
It would have done no good for the US to have gone through the trouble of allocating incoming tax receipts to pay debt interest and some necessary expenses, while shutting down parts of the federal government. But the near-run partial shutdown proved a point.
 
It substantially eroded Wonderboy's remaining low levels of power and standing with voters. I suspect, given the excessive rhetoric of Democratic Senators and the VP, calling Tea Party-backed legislators "terrorists" won't have endeared that party to voters, come 2012. Not to mention Harry Reid's continuing insistence that he wants to raise taxes so he can hand Wonderboy more money to waste.
 
Even if the GOP can't field a candidate who defeats Wonderboy next year, the Senate is likely to shift to GOP control, making the First Rookie's second term, if there is one, essentially pointless.
 
But, as Rivkin and Casey imply, America gets the government it wants and deserves. It tried Democratic hegemony for two years, and found it unacceptable. As I wrote in the earlier post, were the entire Senate up for re-election last November, chances are the Republicans would control that chamber now, too.
 
Come 2012, though, sufficient numbers of independents could be so wary of continued Democratic control of any federal branch of government that even a weak GOP presidential candidate will be washed into office along with majorities in both houses of Congress. To begin the work of cutting back federal government size, reach and spending.
 
Yes, it sure is messy when government change occurs 33 Senate seats, 435 House seats at a time, every two years, and the Oval Office only once each four years. It makes for halting, erratic government during the big power shifts.
 
But I sense a trifecta coming for the GOP in 2012 now that the Democrats showed their true colors during the debt ceiling battle, i.e., raise taxes, borrow more, spend more.
 
I believe most voting Americans no longer want that type of federal government. And when they get what they want next year, it won't look so messy anymore.

Lindsay Graham: RINO Chameleon

Judging by Lindsay Graham's vote against the debt limit bill, he must be getting worried 4 years early.

Last year and earlier this year, the South Carolina Republican Senator was a periodic target of former Fox News program host Glenn Beck. Beck rightly pilloried Graham for having become a closet progressive.

Suddenly, Graham is trying to look and act like a Tea Party activist. Funny, though, how he was absent from the big Washington Tea Party rallies on 9/12/2010 and during the final stages of the Democratic push on ObamaCare.

Jim DeMint, his Senate colleague from the same state, however, was very visible.

I'm thinking that with Nicki Haley's election as a very conservative governor of his state, Graham is worried that he's going to be challenged from the right when he runs again in 2014.

My earliest memories of Graham are from my college days, when he and two other then-Democratic Representatives- Phil Gramm of Texas and Trent Lott of Mississippi- all deserted their party to become GOP members. They were known as the Boll Weevils. All subsequently ran for the Senate and won there, too.

Gramm left the Senate quite a few years ago. Lott was effectively forced out for comments taken by the liberal media as racist.

Though Graham hasn't made a major faux pas like that, he's long in the tooth now. Too many years, I believe, cutting deals and changing patterns like a chameleon to remain in power.

Now, he's just a RINO trying to slip on Tea Party colors while hoping nobody will notice. With luck, either he'll decide to retire after this term, or get shellacked by some young, truly conservative Republican in South Carolina.