printRand Paul’s Tea party State of the Union 2013 rebuttal was the only speech worth listening to on that day. Even so, I found myself bristling at Rand’s philosophical compromises, as I went down the page and distilled the facts for you.
Rand Paul’s rose-tinted unemployment number: The junior United States Senator for Kentucky cited “official” unemployment figures, rather than real joblessness, which not even the U6 statistic covers.
Another bum note Rand sounded was on the “Balanced Budget Amendment”:
To begin with, we absolutely must pass a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution!
It’s the sort of philosophical compromise his father would not have made. As this column observed in “Dead-End Debt Debate,” “what a balanced-budget requirement implies is that the government has the right to spend as much as it can take in; that it should be permitted to squander however much revenue—now there’s a nice word for taxes—it can extract from its enslaved wealth producers.”
Ron Paul would have demanded that entire departments be shuttered, not that the bums merely bring into balance what was stolen (taxes) and what is squandered (spending).
Another misstep saw Paul call for “ending all foreign aid to countries that are burning our flag and chanting death to America.”
As for “another downgrade of America’s credit rating”: It is not a bad thing because it is well-deserved. A downgrade is a must, as no serious spending cuts have been forthcoming.
Oy! And Rand Paul supports charter schools. Educational vouchers and charter schools are a species of the publicly funded system.
In any case, certain facts presented in Rand’s rebuttal should be pretty humdrum by now:
• “The US government is borrowing $50,000 per second.”
• “Over the past four years [BHO] has added over $6 trillion in new debt.”
• “Every debate in Washington is about how much to increase spending – a little or a lot.”
• “T]he $1.2 trillion sequester that [BHO] endorsed and signed into law … “doesn’t even cut any spending. It just slows the rate of growth.”
• “Even with the sequester, government will grow over $7 trillion over the next decade.”
• In essence, and “increase of $7 trillion in spending over a decade” is being “called a cut.”
• “[B]ig government and debt are not a friend to the poor and the elderly. Big-government debt keeps the poor poor and saps the savings of the elderly. This massive expansion of the debt destroys savings and steals the value of your wages. Big government makes it more expensive to put food on the table. Big government is not your friend. The President offers you free stuff but his policies keep you poor.”
• “Under President Obama, the ranks of America’s poor swelled to almost 1 in 6 people last year.”
• “Only through lower taxes, less regulation and more freedom will the economy begin to grow again.”