The Committee of 13

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
August 4, 2011



The so-called debt ceiling crisis has nothing to do with the government running out of money. It is about the creation of a super committee, a council of thirteen, designed to circumvent Congress and ignore the will of the American people.

The ruling elite have a plan to take America down. The takedown has a timeline, a schedule, and it has been interrupted and set back by Congress. Despite the fact Congress usually does whatever the globalists tell them to do, certain members hold up the agenda by holding hearings and introducing resolutions on everything from the Federal Reserve to the globalist wars in the Middle East, South Asia and now Africa.


The handpicked “super Congress” – six members from the Senate, six from the House, and the president forming a committee or gang of 13 – will now push through the elite’s agenda behind closed doors in direct violation of the Constitution.

Like the Supreme Soviet, the Council of 13 will take on the trappings of democracy – because the committee was proposed by elected officials, namely Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and his counterpart Majority Leader Harry Reid with the consent House Speaker John Boehner – but will act as dictatorship by committee. If allowed to stand, the United States will have its own Central Committee, just like the former Soviet Union.

The Constitution allows each house of Congress to set its own rules. Early on, debate and filibuster were added to the rules. The Committee of 13, however, will strip Congress of its power to filibuster. It will prevent the Speaker from stopping a vote in the House. It will fast-track the entire globalist agenda – from carbon taxes to the total destruction of the Second Amendment. It will end amendments to laws and only allow an up or down vote on legislation. It will turn Congress into a rubber stamp even more than it is already.

In their wisdom, the framers envisioned the House as a place of heated debate and the Senate as more staid place where rhetoric would cool down. It has its origins in the concept integral to our political system that the rights of the minority must be protected from the force of the majority. The idea and practice of a super Congress, a Committee of 13, puts an end to this tradition. It is a totalitarian steamroller.

By voting for the so-called debt ceiling bill, both houses of Congress are voting to legitimize the Soviet-style super committee of 13 globalist grocery clerks. It is another step by the elite to throw the Constitution under the bus.

As a first step, the Gang of 13 will impose taxation as a solution to the astronomical debt placed on the American people by the international bankers who own the private Federal Reserve. A super committee will be required to keep the debt and debt slavery scam going now that an increasing number of Americans understand that the Fed is nothing but a money printing machine designed to devalue the worth of our currency under the guise of stimulating the economy and the perpetually unfulfilled promise to create jobs and prosperity.

It is contempt for the Constitution and the intellectual and spiritual laziness of our so-called representatives that has allowed this atrocious state of affairs to exist under the excuse of confronting a debt the American people do not owe.

Direct political action will be required to put and end to this monstrosity. Short of that, we can expect another dagger to be stuck in the heart of our liberty as the global elite continue step by step to build their authoritarian control structure designed to turn the earth into a sprawling slave labor gulag and plantation.

'Super Congress': Debt Ceiling Negotiators Aim To Create New Legislative Body

Just when you thought you had seen it all!

These days there seems to be no limit as to how far our elected officials will go in their attempt to destroy our Constitution. This just released article from the Huffington Post should scare the hell out of every red blooded American.


article by: Ryan Grim

WASHINGTON -- Debt ceiling negotiators think they've hit on a solution to address the debt ceiling impasse and the public's unwillingness to let go of benefits such as Medicare and Social Security that have been earned over a lifetime of work: Create a new Congress.

This "Super Congress," composed of members of both chambers and both parties, isn't mentioned anywhere in the Constitution, but would be granted extraordinary new powers. Under a plan put forth by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and his counterpart Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), legislation to lift the debt ceiling would be accompanied by the creation of a 12-member panel made up of 12 lawmakers -- six from each chamber and six from each party.


Legislation approved by the Super Congress -- which some on Capitol Hill are calling the "super committee" -- would then be fast-tracked through both chambers, where it couldn't be amended by simple, regular lawmakers, who'd have the ability only to cast an up or down vote. With the weight of both leaderships behind it, a product originated by the Super Congress would have a strong chance of moving through the little Congress and quickly becoming law. A Super Congress would be less accountable than the system that exists today, and would find it easier to strip the public of popular benefits. Negotiators are currently considering cutting the mortgage deduction and tax credits for retirement savings, for instance, extremely popular policies that would be difficult to slice up using the traditional legislative process.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has made a Super Congress a central part of his last-minute proposal, multiple news reports and people familiar with his plan say. A picture of Boehner's proposal began to come into focus Saturday evening: The debt ceiling would be raised for a short-term period and coupled with an equal dollar figure of cuts, somewhere in the vicinity of a trillion dollars over ten years. A second increase in the debt ceiling would be tied to the creation of a Super Congress that would be required to find a minimum amount of spending cuts. Because the elevated panel would need at least one Democratic vote, its plan would presumably include at least some revenue, though if it's anything like the deals on the table today, it would likely be heavily slanted toward spending cuts. Or, as Obama said of the deal he was offering Republicans before Boehner walked out, "If it was unbalanced, it was unbalanced in the direction of not enough revenue."

Republicans, however, are looking to force a second debt ceiling fight as part of the package, despite the Democratic rejection of the plan. Under the Republican plan, lawmakers would need to weigh in on the debt ceiling during the heat of the presidential election, a proposal Democrats reject as risky to the nation's credit rating. "We expressed openness to two stages of cuts, but not to a short-term debt limit extension," a Democratic aide close to the negotiations said. "Republicans only want the debt ceiling extended as far as the cuts in each tranch. That means we’ll be right back where we are today a few months down the road. We are not a Banana Republic. You don’t run America like that."

The aide said that Democrats are open to a series of cuts as well as a Super Congress, but only if the debt ceiling is raised sufficiently so that it pushes past the election. "Our proposal tonight was, do two tranches of cuts, but raise the debt ceiling through 2012 right now, though the McConnell process would be one way," said the aide, leaving open the possibility that Boehner could craft a new process and distinguish it from McConnell's, which the Tea Party despises as a dereliction of duty. "Do that now with a package of cuts, and have the joint committee" -- the Super Congress -- "report out a package that would be the second tranch. Republicans rejected that, and continued to push a short-term despite the fact that Reid, Pelosi and Obama all could not have been clearer that they will not support a short-term increase. A short term risks some of the same consequences as outright failure to raise the ceiling -- downgraded credit rating, stocks plunge, interest rates spike, etc. It is unclear why Republicans have made this their sticking point."

Boehner spokesman Michael Steel argued that the inability to come to a larger deal so far left a short-term extension as an "inevitable" option. "For months, we have laid out our principles to pass a bill that fulfills the president's request to increase the debt limit beyond the next election. We have passed a debt limit increase with the reforms the American people demand, the 'Cut, Cap, and Balance' bill. The Democrats who run Washington have refused to offer a plan," he said in a statement. "Now, as a result, a two-step process is inevitable. Like the president and the entire bipartisan, bicameral congressional leadership, we continue to believe that defaulting on the full faith and credit of the United States is not an option."

Obama has shown himself to be a fan of the commission approach to cutting social programs and entitlements. Shortly after taking office, Obama held a major conference on deficit reduction and subsequently created, by executive order, The National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. The White House made two telling appointments to chair the commission: The first was former Sen. Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.), a well-known critic of Social Security who earned notoriety by suggesting, among other things, that the American government had become "a milk cow with 310 million tits!" Yet Obama's Democratic appointment was even more indicative of whose interests took priority: former Clinton White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles. Bowles is a member of Morgan Stanley's board of directors; an adviser to Carousel Capital, a private equity firm; and a director of Cousins Properties Incorporated, a firm with significant investments in commercial and mixed-use real estate.

Simpson and Bowles, perhaps unsurprisingly, produced a report recommending corporate and high-end tax cuts, along with cuts to Social Security, Medicare, veterans' benefits and a host of other social programs.
The commission needed 14 of 18 members to approve the plan in order for it to advance to Congress for a vote. The commission fell short, but did win a majority.

Proponents of slashing spending won't make the same mistake with a new Super Congress. Only a simple majority will be necessary.

The 11th Commandment is Alive and Well

article by: Michael Reagan


They stood up there on the stage, shoulder to shoulder, and voiced their opinions freely, often disagreeing with each other over the various details, but they did it like the gentlemen and lady that they are; attacking positions on the issues without attacking each other.

My dad, Ronald Reagan, would have been proud to see them strictly observe his 11th Commandment -- that Republicans shall not ever speak ill of their fellow Republicans.
They did not go after each other but kept their eyes on the target, Barak Obama, the architect of this double-dip recession he has inflicted on the nation. He can try to blame George W. Bush, but this illegitimate baby is his and it's time he admits his fatherhood.
 
Liberals, wake up! Barack Obama is a disaster. He is dragging you and the nation down as he attempts to impose his Euro-Marxist agenda on the United States. Rep. Bachmann was right on when she told him, "You are a one-term president."
 
While Obama campaigns for his job, raising huge sums of cash to fund his re-election campaign, tens of thousands of jobless Americans suffer. I can only pray that the 841,000 Puerto Ricans in Florida that Obama was trying to influence by visiting Puerto Rico are smarter than we were in 2008 and vote Republican in 2012.
 
My father believed in keeping your eye on the big picture, and the candidates truly did that the other evening in New Hampshire. They understood that if we are going to make Michele Bachman's words come true we are going to have to be united after the primaries and support fully our nominee, whoever that might be. That is what my dad would have done.
 
To all of you presidential hopefuls, this Reagan says "bravo" and "good job, well done." Now let's get together and go out and win one for America.
 
The future of this great and blessed nation is at stake. America cannot survive another four years of an Obama administration. At this moment he is fighting another undeclared war in a nation few Americans could even locate on a map, and where no real American interests are at stake. Yet he is risking American lives in bombing raids being carried out without a declaration of war or Congressional approval, and spending billions of our tax dollars in a time of recession to pay for this undeclared war.
 
If we are lucky we'll get though the remaining year and-a-half of the Obama misadministration without going bankrupt. Hopefully Congress, now under GOP control in the House and close to it in the Senate, will rein in this out-of-control administration before it wrecks America.
 
And remember, the Gipper is watching. Let's not disappoint him.

Senate Seeks to Create Caesar

Terresa Monroe-Hamilton
NoisyRoom.net
May 11, 2011

While all of America is distracted and focused on the death of Osama bin Laden, our President and his minions have been fast at work laying the groundwork for S. 679: Presidential Appointment Efficiency and Streamlining Act of 2011 to speed through the Senate and then make its way into the House and then to the President to sign. Yes, the other hand is quickly forming into a dictatorial fist that is about to smash our Constitution.


As you will recall, the beginning of the end of liberty in Rome commenced with Augustus Caesar who compromised the authority of the Senate through the force of arms and basically the Senate became a facade. America is poised with this proposed bill, to morph immediately from a Republic into an empire with the privileged eunuchs of the Senate as window dressing and a dictator – the first American Caesar – at the country’s helm.

And leading the progressive charge is Chuck Schumer (D-NY). No big surprise there. Schumer is an elitist Marxist and a first class progressive who hates America almost as much as he loves power. He introduced S. 679 on March 30th, 2011. He was joined by a gaggle of progressives from the left and the right. This is something I have been warning Americans about for a long time. If we are to survive as a nation, we must rid ourselves of ALL progressives or our nation is doomed and freedom will be swept into the dustbin of history. Schumer’s esteemed list of constitutional traitors is as follows:

• Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN)
• Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM)
• Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT)
• Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA)
• Sen. Thomas Carper (D-DE)
• Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME)
• Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL)
• Sen. Mike Johanns (R-NE)
• Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ)
• Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT)
• Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN)
• Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY)
• Sen. John Reed (D-RI)
• Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV)
• Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)

From The Heritage Foundation, here is a succinct explanation of the bill:

The bill reduces the number of presidential appointments that require the consent of the Senate and establishes within the executive branch a Working Group on Streamlining Paperwork for Executive Nominations. Individuals nominated to senior executive offices suffer slow and detailed background investigations and mounds of duplicative paperwork before a President sends their nominations to the Senate. After nomination, many nominees suffer time-consuming inaction or time-consuming and excruciating action as the Senate proceeds (or does not) with consideration of the nomination. The sponsors of S. 679 have identified a valid problem, but proposed the wrong solution. Congress should not enact S. 679.

In essence they want to give the President the sole power to appoint people to positions of his choosing within our government. Obama would be free to do this without the approval of the Senate. Senate approval of such positions is mandated by the U.S. Constitution in Article II, Section 2 under the “Appointments Clause”:

… shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments. (emphasis added)

This bill will do away with the checks and balances that separate an American form of government from those such as Venezuela and Brazil. Already we have power mongers such as Cass Sunstein our Regulatory Czar (more commonly known as the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs and more aptly titled the Office of Government Propaganda) running amok across the US using agencies such as the EPA as a weapon of regulation and control. There is not a single area in our country that Sunstein does not have his claws sunk deep into. It should scare the crap out of Americans, but all I hear are crickets. The silence of capitulation seals our fate as surely as the thunderous applause of approval – so ends the Republic.
More from The Heritage Foundation:

When the delegates of the states gathered in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787 and wrote the Constitution, they distributed the powers of the federal government among two Houses of Congress, a President, and a judiciary, and required in many cases that two of them work together to exercise a particular constitutional power. That separation of powers protects the liberties of the American people by preventing any one officer of the government from aggregating too much power.
The Framers of the Constitution did not give the President the kingly power to appoint the senior officers of the government by himself. Instead, they allowed the President to name an individual for a senior office, but then required the President to obtain the Senate’s consent before appointing the individual to office. Thus, they required the cooperation of the President and the Senate to put someone in high office.

I know Americans have not forgotten about Obama’s string of Czars. Czars that he was supposed to downsize or get rid of. Czars, which in my personal viewpoint, were and still are illegal under the Constitution. But progressives never go away, they just shift… As has done so many of Obama’s Czars.

With this sweeping bill, over 200 positions will no longer require Senate approval. Obama will dictate who are his powerful lieutenants and who will control America. The Senate will merely be a sham to parrot Obama’s dictates. With this bill, checks and balances will be effectively nullified.

What does that portend you say? One day, your right to own a gun will be gone, just regulated away.

Businesses will be nationalized even more than they are now. Heavy regulation will ensue concerning communications and the Internet. Many, many private businesses will whither and die. You will be told what and how much to eat – food and gas rationing will become the norm. Poverty and squalor will become equal for all as wealth is redistributed to other nations. If there are elections, they will be a joke and pointless.

There will be a few powerful elites and then the masses. Guess which camp you and I will be in?

Our best hope at this juncture is that this abomination will be stopped in the House. We must weed out the progressives and we must win in 2012. This country will not survive another four years of progressive policies. Not as a Republic and not as a free entity anyway.

The bitter irony on display here, is that the same jackals that have barked and snarled and feigned horror at “American Imperialism,” are the very ones who now howl their support for a true American empire.

All hail Caesar!

No Buyers For Treasuries aka "Toxic Waste"

by: Bob Chapman

We believe there will be something similar to a QE3 by another name and the Fed will probably have to create some $2.5 trillion to buy Treasuries, Agencies, and toxic waste and perhaps inject funds into the economy. Japan certainly won’t be a buyer and probably will be a seller. China has indicated that they won’t be purchasers in the future either. The question also arises concerning the continued purchase of these securities by countries in the oil producing Gulf States, which are in turmoil. The three countries make up 45% of Treasury purchases. As we pointed out in previous issues the second half of 2011 should be monstrous. Even if the fed buys all the Treasury and Agency bonds they’ll still have to deal with a lower dollar and high inflation. Then there is high unemployment and raging gold and silver prices. There is also the question of US debt, federal, state and municipal debt, along with wars in the Middle East and North Africa. How many US Treasuries will Japan have to sell and how deeply will its slowdown effect American industry?

As you can see America has much to contemplate.

The creation of monetary inflation will last at least two more years. Its end will only come when the Fed takes its foot off of the pedal. Like almost zero interest rates this policy cannot be allowed to stop. The system cannot function without it. The whole concept of throwing money at a problem simply doesn’t work and the elitists know this only too well.

Monetary and fiscal creations are not the only mistakes being made by the Fed and our Congress. US and world markets are being subjected to non-stop manipulation. This corruption has destroyed all free markets. Stock and bond markets are supported and gold, silver and commodities attacked. Fortunately markets now recognize what the elitists are up too and each time they interfere they lose a little more power. It points up that a criminal syndicate is running our country. These tactics are used to extend the looting period allowing further harvesting of elicit profits. The US and many other nations have been allowed to live beyond their means for many years and that condition is being brought to a conclusion. This, of course, is very true of the US due to the dollar being the world’s reserve currency. That is changing, as nations want this unfair advantage ended, especially in view of the fact that the American government and financial community have so abused their privilege.

The profits of the military industrial complex continue to flourish as we have war after war. We notice that both parties are willing to cut spending on Social Security and Medicare, but they refuse to cut military spending, the most expensive item on the budget at 26%. Our government has billions for Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Ginnie Mae, the FHA, the FICA and the worthless SEC and CFTC, but no cuts for the average American.

As zero interest rates rule one form or another of money and credit creation continues as it has for the past 11 years. The game is the same, it is just the name has changed. The process of wealth destruction is still in progress and only the select few get to keep their ill-begotten riches. The Fed’s balance sheet over the next 1-1/2 years should reach over $5 trillion.

On this process real interest rates will creep higher, toxic securitized mortgage bonds will fall lower, as the housing market sinks to new lows not able to break out of its death spiral.

We find it of great interest but not surprising that the $5 trillion mortgage bond fraud, after three years, has no prosecutions, or even a civil suit. This smacks of evidence that the Fed made some kind of sub-rosa deal with bond buyers, particularly in Europe, to cover their losses. In addition, we believe the Treasury and the SEC were in on the criminal fraud.

We see Warren Buffett doing the same thing that the Chinese are doing and that is dumping US dollars. He has been going to Asia and India to buy companies. This is how they both bet against the dollar. Buffett even says, “I would recommend against buying long-term fixed-dollar investments.” He says over the next 20 years the dollar will lose its value. This is also what we have been preaching over the past 11 years, and that the preferred investment should be gold and silver coins, bullion and shares. Professionals are concerned about the trade deficit and the balance of payment’s deficit, along with the continual creation of money and credit by the Fed. Then there is the horrible budget deficit and the rampant inflation the government continues to lie about.

Even PIMCO, as we all now know, has sold US Treasuries and even shorted them in anticipation of higher real interest rates. Bill Gross, CEO, calls the US a serial abuser of finance deficits with a ridiculous budget. He, like many others, has lost faith in the Fed and the government to run a proper government fiscal and monetary policy. Bill called it the new normal. We call it the road to fiscal and monetary perdition. Confidence is gone and well it should be. We lost confidence in 1960; it obviously takes others longer.

In our minds there is no question the dollar is going lower, perhaps 40% or 50% lower versus other currencies in general. In just the last 15 years it is 50% lower. In the last 40 years it is 98% lower. At this juncture it is our opinion that the Treasury and the Fed want the dollar lower in order to become more competitive. If they are going to do that they had best end their 60% plus reliance on foreign oil and start pumping America’s vast oil and gas reserves. They will also have to end free trade, globalization, offshoring and outsourcing in order to bring those 430,000 firms that have moved to foreign countries.

As the dollar falls against other currencies, all currencies continue to fall versus gold and silver. Over the past 11 years, annually, nine major currencies have fallen more than 20% on average versus gold and silver. If the dollar over the next several years were to lose its status a world reserve currency costs for foreign goods would rise exponentially. The only reason the dollar isn’t lower is that many other currencies have the same problems the dollar has in varying degrees. The dollar is very weak versus the euro at $1.46. Yet, the eurozone countries are exploding in debt and six of their members are candidates for insolvency. Japan, the UK, and parts of Europe have the same problems the US has - a hangover from using the Keynesian economic model. As a result of this misguided policy in ten years federal debt will be close to $20 trillion, up 75% from today. Is that anyway to fiscally run a country? The answer is obviously not. This is why the Fed has to buy 80% of Treasury and Agencies and it is why there is no end in sight to America’s fiscal and monetary problems. Just about everything is being done incorrectly, which tells us again this has been done deliberately in order to bring the US, UK and Europe to their knees economically in order to force the people in these countries to accept World Government. The experiment again is not going to work and chaos and war will again envelop the world. You had best be prepared.

How can investors be positive about dollar denominated investments, when S&P warns government that they had best get their financial house in order or they will lose their AAA rating. They placed the US outlook as negative. The US has to address medium and long-term budgetary problems over the next two years and if they don’t the rating will fall and the US will no longer be the world’s reserve currency.

Monetary policy cannot continue to augment, aid and abet such a profligate fiscal policy, which can easily be changed by cutting military spending by 50% to 13% of the budget. That is not easy to do with the military-industrial complex, Wall Street and banking running the country. Their greed knows no end.

We just saw over the past three years a credit crisis and a crisis of confidence for both the government and private debt sectors, which still hasn’t been permanently addressed. Many major financial firms are still insolvent and carrying two sets of books. If you did that you would end up in jail.

The Fed has become a liability in its quest to protect its owners, the banks, and not the overall economy. It is instrumental in destroying debt quality and continues to destabilize the monetary base. There is no effort to cut military spending only Social Security and Medicare, which retirees and future retirees paid for, but those funds were stolen over the years.

How does any Fed call allowing mortgage debt to expand by $8 trillion or by 115% over six years? They the banks and brokerage houses knew exactly what they were doing and what the consequences would be. Banks employed leverage of 70 to 1 when 9 to 1 was normal and it is still 40 to 1. Obviously the bankers have learned nothing from their failures. In addition, besides us, how could rating agencies and professionals not recognize a Ponzi scheme? That is because S&P, Moody’s and Fitch were part of the criminal enterprise. How could a credit system double debt, most of it was of very poor quality and expect that there would be no fall out? They knew the consequences and did it anyway. In the aftermath there has been no civil litigation and no criminal prosecutions. Why is this? It is because these criminals have bought most of Congress and the court system.

read more at: theinternationalforecaster.com

Obama's Permanent Spending Binge

article by: John B. Taylor

Americans are clamoring for a fact-based debate about the budget, but the numbers they're hearing from Washington are terribly confusing. Here's an example: Speaking at a Facebook town hall meeting here on Wednesday, President Obama sometimes talked about saving $4 trillion, at other times $2 trillion, and he varied whether it was over 10 years or 12 years, never mentioning any one year.


A simple chart, like the one below, would greatly clarify the debate. It shows total federal government spending year-by-year for the two decades starting in the year 2000. Spending is shown as a percentage of GDP, which is a sensible and quite common way to assess trends: When the percentage rises, government spending rises relative to total income or total goods and services produced in our economy.

For the past decade, the chart shows the recent history of government spending. For the next decade—the window for the current budget—it shows three different spending visions for the future.

The uppermost line shows outlays under the official budget submitted by Mr. Obama to Congress on Feb. 14. The lowest line shows the House Budget Resolution submitted by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan on April 5, while the third line shows year-by-year outlays I estimated from the 12-year totals in the new budget proposed by the president on April 13.

The chart clearly reveals a number of important facts that are not coming up in town hall meetings. Most obvious is the huge bulge in spending in the past few years. In 2000 spending was 18.2% of GDP. In 2007 it was 19.6%. But in the three years since 2009 it's jumped to an average of 24.4%.

Second, and perhaps even more striking, the chart shows that Mr. Obama, in his budget submitted in February, proposed to make that spending binge permanent. Spending would still be more than 24% of GDP at the end of the budget window in 2021. The administration revealed its preference in the February budget for a much higher level of government spending than the 18.2% of GDP in 2000 or the 19.6% in 2007.

Third, the House budget plan proposed by Rep. Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) simply removes that spending binge—it gradually returns spending as a share of GDP back to a level seen only three years ago.

When I show people this chart they ask why Washington is even having the debate. They say: If government agencies and programs functioned with 19% to 20% of GDP in 2007, why is it so hard for them to function with that percentage in 2021, when GDP will be substantially higher and with many opportunities for reforms and increased efficiencies? And if GDP and employment grow more quickly, as they would if private investment increased as a result of lower government spending and debt, then that 19% to 20% share of GDP could provide much more in the way of public goods.

Fourth, the chart shows that the second Obama administration budget, submitted a week after the Ryan House budget, is substantially different from the first administration budget. It is highly unusual for an administration to decide to submit a second budget, and the effect of this revision is to move the administration's spending vision closer to that of the House. But it still leaves a big chunk of the spending binge in place.

Fifth, and perhaps most important for economic growth, the chart shows that the House budget effectively deals with the deficit and brings the debt down as a share of GDP without a tax increase. Under the current tax system, revenues as a share of GDP were 18.5% in 2007, so that the budget deficit was only 1.1% of GDP that year. With higher real incomes moving people into higher tax brackets, it is quite likely that under the current tax system revenues will be higher as a share of GDP when the economy fully recovers, perhaps in the 19% to 20% range.

This means that the House budget plan, with spending in the same range, approximately balances the budget with no increase in taxes. This is good news for economic growth. In contrast, balancing the first or even the second Obama budget requires substantial tax increases—more than the administration has yet to propose.

Read this article and more at WSJ Online