On The Road To Socialism? We've Arrived! On The Road To Socialism? We've Arrived! By PATRICK J. BUCHANAN | Posted Tuesday, March 03, 2009 4:20 PM PT In his campaign and inaugural address, Barack Obama cast himself as a moderate man seeking common ground with conservatives. Yet his budget calls for the radical restructuring of the U.S. economy, a sweeping redistribution of power and wealth to government and Democratic constituencies. It is a declaration of war on the right. The real Obama has stood up and lived up to his ranking as the most left-wing member of the Senate. Barack has no mandate for this. He was even behind John McCain when the decisive event that gave him the presidency occurred — the September collapse of Lehman Bros. and the market crash. Republicans are under no obligation to render bipartisan support to this statist coup d'etat. For what is going down is a leftist power grab that is anathema to their principles and philosophy. Where the U.S. government usually consumes 21% of gross domestic product, this Obama budget spends 28% in 2009 and runs a deficit of $1.75 trillion, or 12.7% of GDP. That is four times the largest deficit of George W. Bush and twice as large a share of the economy as any deficit run since World War II. Add that 28% of GDP spent by the U.S. government to the 12% spent by states, counties and cities, and government will consume 40% of the economy in 2009. We are not "headed down the road to socialism." We are there. Since the budget was released, word has come that the U.S. economy did not shrink by 3.8% in the fourth quarter, but 6.2%. All the assumptions in Obama's budget about growth in 2009 and 2010 need to be revised downward, and the deficits revised upward. Look for the deficit for 2009 to cross $2 trillion. Who abroad is going to lend us the trillions to finance our deficits without demanding higher interest rates on the U.S. bonds they are being asked to hold? And if we must revert to the printing press to create the money, what happens to the dollar? As Americans save only a pittance and have lost — in the value of homes, stocks, bonds and other assets — $15 trillion to $20 trillion since 2007, how can the people provide the feds with the needed money? In his speech to Congress, Obama promised new investments in energy, education and health care. Every kid is going to get a college degree. We're going to find a cure for cancer. Who is going to pay for all this? The top 2%, the filthy rich who got all those Bush tax breaks, say Democrats. But the top 5% of income earners already pay 60% of income taxes, while the bottom 40% pay nothing. Those paying a federal tax rate of 35% will see it rise to near 40% and will lose a fifth of the value of their deductions for taxes, mortgage interest and charitable contributions. Two-thirds of small businesses are taxed at the same rate as individuals. Consider what this means to the owner of a restaurant and bar in Los Angeles open from noon to midnight, where a husband and wife each put in 80 hours a week. At year's end, the couple find they have actually made a profit of $500,000 that they can take home in salary. What is the Obama-Schwarzenegger tax take on that salary? Their U.S. tax rate will have hit 39.6%. Their California income tax will have hit 9.55%. Medicare payroll taxes on the proprietor as both employer and salaried employee will be $14,500. Social Security payroll taxes for the proprietor as both employer and employee will be $13,243. In short, U.S. and state income and payroll taxes will consume half of all the pair earned for some 8,000 hours of work. From that ravaged salary they must pay a state sales tax of 8.25%, gas taxes for the 50-mile commute, and tens of thousands in property taxes on both their restaurant and home. And, after being pilloried by politicians for having feasted in the Bush era, they are now told the tax deduction they get for contributing to the church is to be cut 20%, while millions of Obama voters, who paid no U.S. income tax at all, will be getting a tax cut — i.e., a fat little check — in April. Any wonder native-born Californians are fleeing the Golden Land? Markets are not infallible. But the stock market has long been a "lead indicator" of where the economy will be six months from now. What are the markets, the collective decisions of millions of investors, saying? Having fallen every month since Obama's election, with January and February the worst two months in history, they are telling us the stimulus package will not work, that Tim Geithner is clueless about how to save the banks, that the Obama budget portends disaster for the republic. The president says he is gearing up for a fight on his budget. Good. Let's give him one.
It only makes the liberals happier. "The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism, but under the name of liberalism they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program until one day America will be a socialist nation without ever knowing how it happened." – Norman Thomas, 1936 presidential candidate on the Socialist ticket We Are All Socialists Now http://www.newsweek.com/id/183663 The interview was nearly over. on the Fox News Channel last Wednesday evening, Sean Hannity was coming to the end of a segment with Indiana Congressman Mike Pence, the chair of the House Republican Conference and a vociferous foe of President Obama's nearly $1 trillion stimulus bill. How, Pence had asked rhetorically, was $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts going to put people back to work in Indiana? How would $20 million for "fish passage barriers" (a provision to pay for the removal of barriers in rivers and streams so that fish could migrate freely) help create jobs? Hannity could not have agreed more. "It is … the European Socialist Act of 2009," the host said, signing off. "We're counting on you to stop it. Thank you, congressman." There it was, just before the commercial: the S word, a favorite among conservatives since John McCain began using it during the presidential campaign. (Remember Joe the Plumber? Sadly, so do we.) But it seems strangely beside the point. The U.S. government has already—under a conservative Republican administration—effectively nationalized the banking and mortgage industries. That seems a stronger sign of socialism than $50 million for art. Whether we want to admit it or not—and many, especially Congressman Pence and Hannity, do not—the America of 2009 is moving toward a modern European state. We remain a center-right nation in many ways—particularly culturally, and our instinct, once the crisis passes, will be to try to revert to a more free-market style of capitalism—but it was, again, under a conservative GOP administration that we enacted the largest expansion of the welfare state in 30 years: prescription drugs for the elderly. People on the right and the left want government to invest in alternative energies in order to break our addiction to foreign oil. And it is unlikely that even the reddest of states will decline federal money for infrastructural improvements. If we fail to acknowledge the reality of the growing role of government in the economy, insisting instead on fighting 21st-century wars with 20th-century terms and tactics, then we are doomed to a fractious and unedifying debate. The sooner we understand where we truly stand, the sooner we can think more clearly about how to use government in today's world. As the Obama administration presses the largest fiscal bill in American history, caps the salaries of executives at institutions receiving federal aid at $500,000 and introduces a new plan to rescue the banking industry, the unemployment rate is at its highest in 16 years. The Dow has slumped to 1998 levels, and last year mortgage foreclosures rose 81 percent. All of this is unfolding in an economy that can no longer be understood, even in passing, as the Great Society vs. the Gipper. Whether we like it or not—or even whether many people have thought much about it or not—the numbers clearly suggest that we are headed in a more European direction. A decade ago U.S. government spending was 34.3 percent of GDP, compared with 48.2 percent in the euro zone—a roughly 14-point gap, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. In 2010 U.S. spending is expected to be 39.9 percent of GDP, compared with 47.1 percent in the euro zone—a gap of less than 8 points. As entitlement spending rises over the next decade, we will become even more French. This is not to say that berets will be all the rage this spring, or that Obama has promised a croissant in every toaster oven. But the simple fact of the matter is that the political conversation, which shifts from time to time, has shifted anew, and for the foreseeable future Americans will be more engaged with questions about how to manage a mixed economy than about whether we should have one. The architect of this new era of big government? History has a sense of humor, for the man who laid the foundations for the world Obama now rules is George W. Bush, who moved to bail out the financial sector last autumn with $700 billion. Bush brought the Age of Reagan to a close; now Obama has gone further, reversing Bill Clinton's end of big government. The story, as always, is complicated. Polls show that Americans don't trust government and still don't want big government. They do, however, want what government delivers, like health care and national defense and, now, protections from banking and housing failure. During the roughly three decades since Reagan made big government the enemy and "liberal" an epithet, government did not shrink. It grew. But the economy grew just as fast, so government as a percentage of GDP remained about the same. Much of that economic growth was real, but for the past five years or so, it has borne a suspicious resemblance to Bernie Madoff's stock fund. Americans have been living high on borrowed money (the savings rate dropped from 7.6 percent in 1992 to less than zero in 2005) while financiers built castles in the air. Now comes the reckoning. The answer may indeed be more government. In the short run, since neither consumers nor business is likely to do it, the government will have to stimulate the economy. And in the long run, an aging population and global warming and higher energy costs will demand more government taxing and spending. The catch is that more government intrusion in the economy will almost surely limit growth (as it has in Europe, where a big welfare state has caused chronic high unemployment). Growth has always been America's birthright and saving grace. The Obama administration is caught in a paradox. It must borrow and spend to fix a crisis created by too much borrowing and spending. Having pumped the economy up with a stimulus, the president will have to cut the growth of entitlement spending by holding down health care and retirement costs and still invest in ways that will produce long-term growth. Obama talks of the need for smart government. To get the balance between America and France right, the new president will need all the smarts he can summon.
Basically that entire article is one big straw-man. The "couple" doesn't really exist and everything that happens to "them" is a fairly tale. I find it odd that having higher taxes for the uber rich and lower taxes for the less fortunate is socialism. It's all a bunch of ridiculous propaganda.
Attention BBS socialists - at tonight's meeting, we will discuss the chapter of Das Kapital where it explains that not reducing the marginal rate from the highest bracket from 39 to 36 is the path to a worker's paradise, along with AMT relief and its role in liberating the workers of the world. Thanks, as always, IN ADVANCE!
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Yeah, when those rates were in place during the Clinton years I was so worried about the socialistic tide sweeping America.
Was Patrick Buchanan aware that his idol Adolf Hitler actually implemented a socialist economic system in Germany?
Most Americans would be shocked to learn that from 1932 to 1984 the United States was a socialist republic.
one more. thanks. <object width="480" height="295"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/tPl9Go3hHDI&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/tPl9Go3hHDI&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="295"></embed></object>
IT depends on radical. If by radical you mean not very much then the article is correct, but if by radical you mean radical, then the article is hogwash.
Liberals... conservatives... does anyone even know what the terms really mean any more? "Pat Buchanan is a nutcase that has modified and molded his image to suit voters for decades and still comes off as a nutcase." -CrazyDave, 2009 ClutchFans the BBS
I read recently where "Liberal" is not the bogeyword it once was, so the wingers are casting about for something that meets their denigration threshold. So far, they seem to be settling on "Socialist," but since the Cold War came to a close almost 20 years ago, it doesn't have the same oomph it had in the 50's and 60's.
I'm sorry I can't make the meeting. I have to finishing editing the next copy of the Daily Worker and attend a meeting of the Breshnev fan club.
I've had the appointment to get the hammer and sickle tattooed on my buttocks, at that time. But since we are all socialists we can be lazy and avoid the meetings and the govt. will still take care of us. I have no incentive to do anything now that Obama gave me a tax break and raised the rates for the wealthy up 3%
