By Theodore King

The budget battle

Congressman Paul Ryan's budget plan

Junking the Dollar

On February 18th, the House voted for the Mike Pence, Republican of Indiana, amendment to defund Planned Parenthood, the nation's leading abortion mill. The vote was 240 to 185. All five members of the Oklahoma delegation voted for the Pence amendment. Money from taxes, according to news sources, is not used for abortions per se, but it is going to an organization that provides abortions as part of its "services." The purpose of the Pence amendment is to cut PP off from taxes paid to the government. Almost two months later, the Senate rejected the cuts to PP passed by the House by a vote of 42-58. Both Senators Coburn and Inhofe voted to cut off PP funds.

Late on Friday April 9th, the White House and congressional Republicans reached a deal that would keep the federal government going for another week. The deal would cut 39 billion from the budget for the rest of fiscal year 2011. The White House wanted to spend an additional 79 billion dollars for the rest of 2011! The battle over funding of Planned Parenthood was set aside to make a deal with the White House and avoid a government shutdown. The only consolation the White House was willing to agree to was for public funding of abortions in the District of Columbia (Washington). A week later, the House voted for a budget to fund the government through the remainder of 2011.

On April 13th, the President made a televised speech in which he blamed George W. Bush for our problems, vowed to stop Republican proposed cuts, proposed his own reforms, and revealed his plans to address the budget crisis by ending the Bush era tax cuts, i.e. raising taxes! Unemployment is near 10% and really higher, as those who have quit looking for work are not included in the 10%. The economy is in recession, and the national debt is the highest it has ever been, and the way to change things for the better is to raise taxes?

Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan has proposed a plan to save our Republic from bankruptcy. Congressman Ryan, by the way, has an Oklahoma connection: his wife, Jana, is from our state, and they were married here. His proposed budget would eliminate 6.2 trillion dollars from the budget over the next ten years. He calls this "The Path to Prosperity."

One way he would accomplish debt reduction is to bring spending below 20% of the Gross Domestic Product or GDP. Currently, the federal debt is close to 100% of GDP! The Ryan plan would budget the federal government at below its 2008 size and freeze the budget at those levels for the next five years. It would also impose attrition on federal positions. In other words, when someone at the bureau or department of whatever decides to retire, that person is not replaced with someone new. It would also eliminate waste at the Department of Defense, which has been a sacred cow for those of us on the Right for too long. Defense is necessary and constitutional, but waste that takes place in the Department of Defense at taxpayers' expense has not been scrutinized and eliminated. Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae, the federal home loan agencies, would be eliminated as would the Troubled Assests Relief Program or TARP. Elimination of those three alone make this plan worth our support. Some agricultural subsidies would be cut by the sickle in this proposal. I remember telling someone in Garden City, Kansas (better name for the town is Moonscape) about my desire to end federal subsidies for agriculture. That's not a good way to win friends and influence people in the wind-swept purgatory of western Kansas, but I digress. This proposal would roll back federal subsidies for silly alternative energy sources. Yes, solar panels, while perhaps very nice atop one's home or business, and windmills as a source of energy are silly, and ethanol is evil. God did not create corn to burn. He created corn to eat! Raising corn to burn for an inefficient source of gas while driving food prices up across the globe, causing malnutrition, is just plain evil.

Congressman Ryan's proposal would place Medicaid into a block grant, to be given to the states to decide how they would allocate the money, rather than have the federal government decide how the system is run. Starting in 2022, a mere eleven years from now, Medicare recipients would be able to choose different plans best suited to the individual. This is a sacred cow to the Left. It would also eliminate federal job creation programs and create career scholarships that would do the same thing as the federal job creation programs. States would no longer be rewarded for adding recipients to the food stamp program under this proposal.On taxes, the Ryan plan would cap taxes at 25% for top income earners including corporations. Corporate loopholes would be eliminated in this plan so that no corporation would be able to skirt paying taxes.

Social Security is only mentioned in the Ryan plan, but no details are offered. There are other praiseworthy benefits in following Congressman Ryan's plan, but I won't go into them here. On April 15th, the House passed Congressman Ryan's plan. Medicare, which is unconstitutional, is going broke. The Ryan plan, as passed by the House, would keep Medicare for those 55 and older, but younger workers would receive subsidizes from the government to purchase insurance instead of Medicare. Those subsidies would diminish over time. The non-binding bill passed 235 to 193. Not one Democrat voted for the bill. That means Dan Boren, my congressman, voted against the Ryan budget cut-ting plan. In fairness to Congressman Boren, staunch conservative Republican Congressmen Ron Paul of Texas, Denny Rehberg of Montana, Walter Jones of North Carolina, and David McKinley of West Virginia also voted against this bill. Their reasons for opposing this plan is that they don't believe the Ryan plan goes far enough. Congressman Boren voted against this bill because he is a Democrat.

The Senate, controlled by Democrats, are expected not to act on the Ryan plan, thus killing it for this Congress. There was an alternative plan by the Republican Study Committee (H. Con. Res. 34) by Congressman Garrett of New Jersey, which would have cut even more from the budget. It was voted down 119 in favor to 136 opposed. 172 Democrats voted "present" at that vote. Here's the breakdown on that Republican Study Committe vote from Oklahoma. Congressmen Cole, Sullivan, and Lankford voted yes. Lucas voted no, and Boren voted present.

President Obama told the Associated Press: "We will raise the debt limit. We always have. We will do it again." He also stated that he should be re-elected because, get this: he has "been able to yank this economy" out of recession. As of 11:47 pm Central Daylight Time on tax day, April 15, the national debt was $14,411,097,821,866.08. It jumps dramatically every second! The ship of state has started to sink, and the band played on.

A few years ago, I was driving into Tulsa on a Saturday afternoon. I had the radio dial on some AM talk show. The host was unfamiliar to me. It might have been Jim Bohannon, but I am not sure. The reason I mention this is that the guest was former chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, Alan Greenspan. Toward the end of the conversation, the host asked Mr. Greenspan about a proposed amero dollar, which would be a regional currency combining the Canadian, American, and Mexican currencies into one just like the European Union's euro. Mr. Greenspan's answer was interesting. He said that in order for the amero to come about, the U.S. dollar would have to be devalued to the level of the Mexican peso, and until that dire devaluation came to pass, there could be no amero.

I believe that this administration is deliberately over spending to bring the nation to a financial crisis that will enable a new currency to be minted. America will simply default on its loans, and the only way out will be to junk the dollar for a new currency. This has been the goal of the central planners for decades, and now the time has come for them to play their end game. Speaker John Boehner knew that if he allowed the government to shut down, the Republicans would get hammered in all the press, save the Fox News Channel and talk radio. The truth is that most of the media is corrupt. And by that I mean you can present the facts to them, and they don't care. Paul Krugman of The New York Times and Chris Matthews at MSNBC are of a privileged breed whose children attend private schools and have little worries when it comes to their future. Your kids' future in America be damned as far as they are concerned: they don't know you or see you, and if they think of you at all, it is with general derision.

President Obama is a radical who does not want what is best for our nation. He was weaned on ideological resentments since he was a boy. He began his political career as a candidate for the Illinois state Senate in the Chicago living room of Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, both unconvicted terrorists from the 1960s. He has had the assistance of radical billionaire George Soros, who has funded his campaign and many left wing support groups. These four and their many surrogates have a common goal -- to bring down our system and way of life -- and they are dangerously close to achieving that evil goal.

This is not an endorsement for Donald Trump, but a friend of mine came up with a great slogan for his farcical candidacy -- Trump the Chump!

"It's almost worth the Great Depression to learn how little our big men know."

- Will Rogers