The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has announced that America’s debt will rise to 90% of national GDP:

President Obama's fiscal 2011 budget will generate nearly $10 trillion in cumulative budget deficits over the next 10 years, $1.2 trillion more than the administration projected, and raise the federal debt to 90 percent of the nation's economic output by 2020.

… The federal public debt, which was $6.3 trillion ($56,000 per household) when Mr. Obama entered office amid an economic crisis, totals $8.2 trillion ($72,000 per household) today, and it's headed toward $20.3 trillion (more than $170,000 per household) in 2020, according to CBO's deficit estimates.

That figure would equal 90 percent of the estimated gross domestic product in 2020, up from 40 percent at the end of fiscal 2008. By comparison, America's debt-to-GDP ratio peaked at 109 percent at the end of World War II, while the ratio for economically troubled Greece hit 115 percent last year.

Things are not looking good for the federal government, as The New York Times pointed out that for the first time, the Social Security system paid more out than it took in:

This year, the system will pay out more in benefits than it receives in payroll taxes, an important threshold it was not expected to cross until at least 2016, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

… The problem, he said, is that payments have risen more than expected during the downturn, because jobs disappeared and people applied for benefits sooner than they had planned. At the same time, the program’s revenue has fallen sharply, because there are fewer paychecks to tax.

Analysts have long tried to predict the year when Social Security would pay out more than it took in because they view it as a tipping point — the first step of a long, slow march to insolvency, unless Congress strengthens the program’s finances.

What is America’s problem?  Over the last decade, the federal government has not been able to keep spending under control at a reasonable level.  The Washington Times explains:

While spending grew just 11 percent faster than inflation during the entire 1990s, it expanded by 62 percent in the 2000s — the largest growth of the federal government over any 10-year period since the 1950s. And only a small fraction of this new spending is a temporary result of the recession. Most of it represents a permanent and accelerating expansion of government…

Budgets are about setting priorities and making trade-offs. It is understandable for a few top priorities to take funding precedence. Yet it is completely unsustainable to provide permanent, massive spending increases…

It’s time for new, responsible leadership that will make the federal government live within its means, just as American citizens try to do.

Ralph Benko has written a piece exploring the odd history behind the nominations of some of the Supreme Court’s most liberal appointees, and then reflects on the influence that the liberal elite in America have had on the Supreme Court:

According to the NPR story on Stevens’ announcement that he was retiring, given Stevens’ lack of political ties, his rise was to some extent a fluke, according to his onetime law clerk Clifford Sloan. “It was an accident of history,” Sloan says. “The stars lined up in a way that could not have been possible before that precise moment and probably could not have been possible after that precise moment.”

… [President Eisenhower’s attorney general, Herbert Brownell] once told … the story of how he sold Ike on nominating [Supreme Court Associate Justice William Brennan] because, having been late to a speech he mistook the sentiments of the conservative Judge Vanderbilt for those of the liberal Judge Brennan.

… Two flukes, two elitists?  Coincidence?  Perhaps not entirely.  And the damage done at the whim of elitists on the high court has been noted even by such independents as investigative reporter Bob Woodward.

Mr. Benko goes on to cite from a piece Woodward wrote, denouncing the impact that liberal elites have had on the court, especially on the infamous Roe v. Wade decision:

EVER SINCE the Supreme Court issued its controversial abortion decision, Roe v. Wade, 16 years ago today, many legal scholars and millions of other critics have cried foul. They have argued that the court was legislating social policy and exceeding its authority as the interpreter, not the maker, of law.

New evidence has now surfaced that some of the justices who wrote and supported the opinion were doing precisely that….  Legal criticism of Roe v. Wade certainly isn’t new. Scott Armstrong and I reported … that many of the 1973-era law clerks were surprised to see the justices accepting an opinion that reflected medical and social policy rather than constitutional law. …

One hopes that the United States Senate … will scrutinize not so much about whether the nominee is liberal or conservative but whether the new Justice will confine herself to ruling from “enduring and permanent constitutional values” rather than imposing their own arbitrary conclusions upon America.

Mr. Benko’s concern for proper constitutional principles is valid, especially considering those with whom the President tends to associate.  Goodwin Liu, on whom APP has previously written, is a great example.  An extremist liberal academic, Liu has been appointed by the President to a federal appeals court position, which is understood to be a stepping stone to a future Supreme Court nomination.

Liu has stated that he “envisions the judiciary…as a culturally situated interpreter of social meaning.”  This sounds similar to Mr. Benko’s fear that on important constitutional issues, the Supreme Court has become a legislator of “social policy.”  This opens the court up to all sorts of subjective evaluation, rather than simple interpretation of the Constitution and laws.

Republican presidents have struggled in the past to nominate strict constitutionalists, but now the time has come for Republican Senators to earn their stripes on the judicial battlefield.  If the President’s association with Liu is any indication, the Constitution is under threat from the liberal elite.  No matter who Mr. Obama appoints to the Supreme Court, Republicans in the Senate must be scrupulous when vetting the nominee.

William Saunders recently wrote a piece for APP, discussing the front-runners to become the President’s Supreme Court nominee.  He emphasized the need for Republicans, now that they have the numbers to filibuster, to stand strong for American principles.

The job of the Senate, and particularly perhaps the Republican minority, is to explore a nominee’s judicial philosophy, and to reject him unless he supports a view of judicial restraint in line with the intent of our Founding Fathers, one that lets the people govern themselves.

… I think the problem of judicial activism is so grave that I would go so far as to say it is their Constitutional duty to do so.

Saunders is placing an imperative on the Senate during the confirmation process: they must uphold the oaths they made to support the Constitution by opposing a nominee who has embraced activist tendencies.  The conservative viewpoint that judicial activism is contrary to the Constitution has been well established, and Saunders knows that Republicans are willing to work to control the movement, while Democrats have furthered it.

Obama has clearly shown that he is willing to embrace activist judges, notably in his nomination of Sonia Sotomayor, who became infamous for saying that “the court of appeals is where policy is made.”

Here are a few other writers who are pursuing Saunders’ line of thinking:

• Edward Whelan notes that President Obama has previously expressed concern for conservative judicial activism, but Whelan emphasizes that the proper response is not to appoint a liberal judicial activist.  Instead, he advocates that the President “favor a third way, the path of judicial restraint.”  The ideal nominee “would steadfastly defer to the political processes and leave in force democratic enactments unless they violate the clearly ascertained meaning of a constitutional provision.”
• Ovide Lamontagne, a candidate for the U.S. Senate in New Hampshire, has contrasted himself with his opponent in the Republican primary, saying that she would have voted for Sonia Sotomayor.  Lamontagne argues that his opposition to judicial activism is a crucial difference between him and his Republican opponent, especially because he will “say ‘no’ to the Obama plan to pack the Court with a new generation of liberal judicial activists.”
• Orrin Hatch, the Republican Senator from Utah, and former Judiciary Committee chairman, has expressed similar sentiments.  Hatch did not vote to approve Sonia Sotomayor, and he appears willing to lead Republicans in the fight against another activist judge.  According to The Salt Lake Tribune, the nominee “could be liberal and still win Republican support, Hatch said, so long as he or she does not view it as the court's job to make law.”

Republicans like Hatch know that Obama’s potential nominees would never make their own short lists, so they have to be pragmatic as well, and accept the fact that an Obama nominee will not be conservative.  But, at the very least, they must maintain the Constitutional principles that they swore to uphold and oppose an activist nominee.

As chatter increases about the proposed concept of a value-added tax (VAT), commentators across the political spectrum are weighing in. Cato’s Daniel J. Mitchell gives a fair explanation of what the VAT is all about:

The VAT is a type of national sales tax, levied on the value-added at each stage of production. Consider a piece of furniture: The VAT would be imposed when the raw timber is sold, when the sawmill produces lumber, when the manufacturer builds a chair, a tax at the wholesaler level and then when a retailer sells the chair to a consumer.

… The VAT has its virtues: As a single-rate, consumption-based system, much like the flat tax or national sales tax, it would introduce far fewer economic distortions than today's income tax — and a heckuva lot less paperwork.

The utility of a value-added tax is worth contemplation. However, the VAT is not being introduced as an alternative to the federal tax system. Instead, the Obama Administration is considering the VAT as an additional tax. Advocates are framing the policy as one of pragmatic necessity due to the tremendous increase in spending anticipated for the next decade:

This idea has emerged thanks to runaway spending and unfunded entitlements.

… With the national debt at $12.8 trillion and the deficit at $1.4 trillion, fiscal accountability is long overdue. Otherwise, our children will spend the rest of their lives paying all this money off. Could the VAT actually prove beneficial in this regard?

Unfortunately, the Obama Administration still has not considered the simplest way to reduce the deficit: control spending. The greatest concern the American public should have about the VAT is the moral hazard an entirely new, additional system of taxation will introduce to Washington. As Cato’s Mitchell says:

Adding a VAT … merely gives politicians more money to spend and a chance to auction off a new set of tax breaks to interest groups. That's good for Washington, but bad for America.

America’s federal government is sick: it is addicted to spending money. This is a disease that even President Obama has diagnosed, thus the new interest in the VAT. But adding a new, major system of taxation – no matter how much “pragmatism” might call for increased revenue – will only cover up the symptoms seen in bloated deficits and ever-increasing debt. The only way to truly cure our ills is to pursue fiscally responsible policies and budgets that taxpayers can afford.

A value-added-tax, or some other tax increase, might become a necessity sometime in the future, in order to pay off America’s growing debt. But those who advocate fiscal responsibility must first fight for reduced annual deficits. Unless the pragmatism of a tax increase is balanced with a commitment to principled deficit reduction, noble-intentioned VAT promoters will be reduced to enablers of Washington’s misguided spending spree.

Politico announced last week that over 2,000 House staffers earned six figure salaries in 2009.  The article notes that many of the staffers have advanced degrees, and that many of them could make as much or more money in the private sector.  However, increase in government salaries is never good for taxpayers.

“When you have a whole bunch of people making very, very high salaries, you’ll have people who are expecting to be paid certain salaries and benefits. That’s not a good thing for taxpayers, because ultimately ... taxpayers are going into debt,” Ellis said.

Recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that in many cases, government jobs actually pay better than equivalent private-sector work. Average federal salaries in 2008 were higher than the average private-sector pay in 83 percent of comparable work, the data show.

The article also notes that those who hold entry-level positions on the Hill still earn fairly low salaries.  The appeal for these staffers is the opportunity for public service through government work.  Has this appeal been lost on those 2,000 staffers who earn six figures?

This news is sure to raise eyebrows in light of The Wall Street Journal’s report that “Personal income in 42 states fell in 2009.”  Interestingly, over the same time period, income actually increased in Washington, DC.  So while the rest of the country has worked to become more responsible in its spending, the nation’s capital has been expanding.  The rest of America has been tightening its collective belt, and it is time for those in Washington to do the same.

It was announced Tuesday that 13 US state attorneys general have filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the health care reform bill.  The bill was filed in the home state of Attorney General Bill McCollum, and he was joined by Republican attorneys general of South Carolina, Nebraska, Texas, Utah, Alabama, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Washington, Idaho, South Dakota and Michigan, and the Democratic attorney general of Louisiana.

States have taken other action as well:

Virginia filed a separate suit on Tuesday asking a federal judge to invalidate the entire health care reform act because the federal government overstepped its authority in requiring people to buy health insurance.

"There has never been a point in our history where the federal government has been given the authority to require citizens to buy goods or services," Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli said in a statement.

… The governor of Idaho signed a bill into law last week blocking federal mandates requiring individuals in his state to purchase health insurance and a similar bill was passed in Virginia.

Some 34 other states out of the nation's 50 have either filed or announced their intention to file similar legislation, according to the National Conference on State Legislatures.

… But the question of whether the federal government can require people to buy health insurance will likely head to the Supreme Court, said Jonathan Siegel, a law professor at George Washington University.

Judge Andrew Napolitano, a former New Jersey Superior Court Judge, makes a strong and succinct argument that the bill will indeed be overturned by the Supreme Court, considering the Ninth and Tenth Amendments and the development of case law regarding the Commerce Clause.

Randy E. Barnett, a law professor at Georgetown University Law Center, suggests another possibility for states:

Make it unconstitutional. Article V of the Constitution gives state legislatures the power to require Congress to convene a convention to propose an amendment to the Constitution. If two-thirds of state legislatures demand an amendment barring the federal regulation of health insurance or an individual mandate, Congress would be constitutionally bound to hold a convention. … But the very threat of an amendment convention would probably induce Congress to repeal the bill. 

A Rasmussen poll shows that a majority of Americans are against the bill, and a plurality support state action against the federal government.

The Thomas More Law Center, a national public interest law, has also filed on behalf of the Law Center itself, and four individuals from the Southeastern Michigan area.

Clearly, America still has plenty of opportunities to overturn this health care reform bill.

I wrote before about the proposed House bill, the Student Nondiscrimination Act of 2010.

The bill was clearly motivated by a radical agenda; now, we have the chance to see what that bill might lead to, should it pass.

A similar bill (LD 1196, “An Act to Extend Civil Rights Protections to All People Regardless of Sexual Orientation,”) has been law in Maine since 2005, and questions are now being asked about whether the bill goes too far in its attempt to "protect" the rights of transgender students.

Here are the fruits of Maine's legislative labor (bold mine):

New guidelines under consideration by the Maine Human Rights Commission designed to clarify the rights of transgender students in Maine has sparked a passionate debate over what some feel are impractical or abhorrent new requirements for public schools.

The commission’s proposed guidelines … state that transgender students are guaranteed access to public school bathrooms, locker rooms and sports teams based on whatever gender they consider themselves to be.

That means a boy who identifies himself as a girl is by law allowed to use girls bathrooms, locker rooms and participate on girls sports teams, or vice versa. Being “transgender” means having a gender identity that is opposite a person’s biologically assigned sex at birth.

Various moral, ethical, and practical issues aside, there are also questions regarding the commission’s broad power to interpret the vague law in any way it sees fit.

If the current Congress approves the comparable Student Nondiscrimination Act of 2010, who is to say that a commission appointed by President Obama wouldn’t interpret and apply the law similarly?

Tim Pawlenty, governor of Minnesota, and possible 2012 Republican presidential candidate, spoke this weekend at CPAC.  He outlined his four conservative principles:

1. God is in charge, a position Pawlenty conceded might not be politically correct, but was good enough for the Founding Fathers and should be good enough for each and every one of us.
2. We can't spend more than we have, a point which he's talked at length (and received some pushback) on before.
3. People spend their money differently when it's their money, a point he used when talking about his health care ideas.
4. Bullies prey on weakness. Pawlenty said his message for President Obama on this was: "Mr. President, no more apology tours, and no more giving Miranda rights to terrorists in our country."

Pawlenty has begun to display an interesting mix of social and fiscal conservatism, appealing to both the religious and tea party wings of the conservative movement. He has trumpeted his work on balancing Minnesota’s budget, as well as his policy views on health care, in effort to shore up his fiscal credentials.

This article was written when Pawlenty was considered for McCain's VP spot, and describes Pawlenty’s social conservatism as appealing to the Evangelical base.

Here, Pawlenty discusses his 5 steps to health care reform.

Pawlenty will also be headlining a Susan B. Anthony List banquet held in late March.

Much hype has been made over the newly introduced House bill, the Student Nondiscrimination Act of 2010. We can take a look at the facts behind the bill to try to gain a deeper understanding of it.  Implicit in the language of the bill are broad assumptions about the manner in which schools are to handle sexual orientation and gender identity issues.  Some of Congress’s findings:

(1) Public school students who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT), or are perceived to be LGBT, or who associate with LGBT people, have been and are subjected to pervasive discrimination, including harassment, bullying, intimidation and violence, and have been deprived of equal educational opportunities, in schools in every part of our Nation.

(2) While discrimination, including harassment, bullying, intimidation and violence, of any kind is harmful to students and to our education system, actions that target students based on sexual orientation or gender identity represent a distinct and especially severe problem.

The mainstream American view differs – parents believe they should be able to discuss these contentious issues privately with their children.  Especially when questions of morality exist, as they do here, parents reserve the right to educate their children according to their own values.

In fact, the bill does not represent Americans and their principles. The sponsor and all 65 of the cosponsors are Democrats, proving the highly partisan nature of the legislation. Americans should evaluate this partial list of groups who endorse the bill:

American Civil Liberties Union, Gay-Straight Alliance Network, GLAD (Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders), GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network), Human Rights Campaign, National Center for Lesbian Rights,  National Center for Transgender Equality, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Action Fund, and Transgender Law Center.

Clearly, this bill comes from a radical sector of the country, trying to impose its own view of the educational system upon all Americans.

Editor's note: A spokesperson for the White House also expressed support of the bill.

On February 8, President Obama’s faith-based office narrowly voted to recommend that churches wishing to use federal funds for social services be forced to set up separate non-profit corporations to handle those funds.

The White House’s Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships is the successor to former President Bush’s own faith-based office.  This vote has been recognized as a step in a different direction that President Bush originally intended the office to take, and puts the office’s future motivation and purpose in question.

Associated Baptist Press reports the details released by the office’s blog:

"The President’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships voted 13-12 to endorse the recommendation that federal officials “should require houses of worship that wish to receive direct federal social service funds to establish separate corporations as a necessary means for achieving church-state separation and protecting religious autonomy, while also urging states to reduce any unnecessary administrative costs and burdens associated with attaining this status."

The tally was announced on the White House faith-based office’s blog Feb. 8. The minority voted instead to recommend that separate incorporation not be required "because it is not always the best means to achieve these goals, and because it may be prohibitively costly and onerous, particularly for smaller organizations, resulting in the disruption and deterrence of effective and constitutionally permissible relationships."

APB makes the point that although some religious groups do have separate corporations, “President Bush argued that the requirement was one of many unnecessary barriers preventing small religious charities providing effective social services from expanding their programs.”

In APB’s estimation, the work of President Obama’s office is in direct opposition to “the centerpiece of [Bush’s] domestic policy [which] was to change federal laws and regulations that required such separate incorporation so churches could participate in grant programs.”

In the end, it comes down to a battle between those who believe that government and religious groups can work together to promote the common good, and those who believe in a high wall of separation between church and state.

Religious conservatives and moderates tend to support President Bush’s view that government ought to utilize existing church infrastructures, which have already been designed to reach out to the poor and needy. Religious liberals and secularists tend to view this approach negatively, seeing it as another attempt by the intensely religious to use the government to promote their views.

Conservatives, who argue that their institutions can work with government to achieve results desired by all, can point to a newly released study showing that the plurality of volunteers in America do their work through religious organizations.

The Washington Post writer David Waters, in his Under God column, claims that the disagreement between liberals and conservatives over religious issues means that the concept of a faith-based office has been a failure.  He says:

"The Obama administration's efforts to build a multifaith consensus on government funding of faith-based social services is commendable, but ultimately doomed. Conservative religious groups will never compromise on the hiring issue, and progressive religious groups will never be satisfied with the Bush-era status quo.

The real problem with the faith-based initiative -- under Bush and Obama -- is that it's a fundamentally flawed concept. The federal government and U.S. religious groups serve two different masters. The government serves taxpayers, religious groups serve God. When it comes to distributing and overseeing the use of federal tax dollars, government overrules God."

This sentiment comes in anticipation of the next round of discussion for Obama’s faith-based office, the issue of publicly funded faith-based groups hiring based on religious grounds.  He rightly sees this as an issue that conservatives will fight for, and then makes the conclusion that the Obama administration should abandon the faith-based initiative completely.

Instead of despairing over the situation, those afraid of faith in the public square need to recognize the contribution that religious organizations have made to the common good.  To quote the White House office’s website, it is possible “to form partnerships between the Federal Government and faith-based and neighborhood organizations to more effectively serve Americans in need.”

These secular ideologues also have to be realistic.  The only way for government to transfer the funds it has to the people that need them is to utilize existing infrastructure – and religious groups accomplish this in a charitable, yet non-threatening manner.

LifeNews reports:

A recent Planned Parenthood report pushing sex and abortion for children is drawing more fire from pro-life advocates. Now, Catholic League president Bill Donohue is attacking the document because he says it rips Catholicism and promotes "sexual engineering" by "smearing religious conservatives, especially Catholics."

The new report, titled Stand and Deliver," sees the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) demanding that governments, religious institutions and society at large provide "comprehensive sexuality education" for children as young as ten years old. According to IPPF, as "young people are sexual beings," it should be self-evident that "sexuality education promotes individual well-being and the advancement of broader societal and public health goals."

... IPPF says that “The taboo on youth sexuality is one of the key forces driving the AIDS epidemic and high rates of teenage pregnancy and maternal mortality.”

Bill Donohue explains that religious "taboos have been historically effective in keeping out-of-wedlock birthrates and STD rates low" - and that it is Planned Parenthood's expanse of its sexual agenda that has caused the rates to go up.

The traditional values that most Americans, whether religious or not, hold dear, are the ones that work. Planned Parenthood's do not.

A recent study, featured in a journal published by the American Medical Association found that abstinence education has been effective in reducing teen sex, while comprehensive sex education has not.

This is an important study for backing up the argument for abstinence education, which follows the logic that a reduction in teen sexual activity leads to a reduction in teen pregnancy.

The Heritage Foundation's blog, The Foundry, has more:

The study found that a short eight-hour abstinence program reduced sexual activity among youth by a third.  Despite the brevity of the abstinence training the effects lasted a full two years after students left the classroom. ...

In contrast, study found that alternative types of sex ed failed.  “Safe sex” programs (which promote contraception only) and “comprehensive sex ed” programs (which teach both abstinence and contraceptive use), had no effect on teen sexual behavior.  These programs neither reduced teen sex nor did they increase contraceptive use among teens, which is their major emphasis.

... These new findings—that abstinence education reduced teen sex, without causing any adverse decline in contraception use, while “safe sex” and comprehensive sex ed programs failed to reduce teen sex or increase contraceptive use—seriously counter the ineffectiveness claim made by opponents of abstinence education.

[Read the blog post for the full story]

[Read the findings of the study here, in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.]

Mr. Whittle is majoring in political science at American University, and is interning for APP.

Thomas Peters posted an article yesterday saying that "the Obama White House [predicts] a $1.6 trillion budget deficit for FY 2010."  Now the New York Post is featuring an analysis from Brian M. Riedl, calling this "the most bloated budget ever":

Obama has offered a budget that does nothing to address the nation's serious short- or long-term fiscal problems. Indeed, it makes them worse. By doubling the national debt over pre-recession levels, he'd push America toward a tipping point -- where rising debt levels will become too large for global capital markets to absorb. This could trigger a financial crisis, an interest-rate spike and gigantic tax hikes.

... This time around, Congress should give priority to the interests of beleaguered taxpayers -- and future generations -- and reject Obama's budget.

[Read more here.]

Riedl's analysis goes beyond the practical problems of increasing deficit and debt levels, and makes a moral evaluation of the situation.  He is addressing true American principles, channeling Thomas Jefferson's view that "the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity under the name of funding is but swindling futurity on a large scale."

Mr. Whittle is majoring in political science at American University, and is interning for APP.