What the (Bleep) Just Happened? (50 page)

Any serious addressing of the spending and debt crisis should also involve a revision of the debt limit law. Because spending is so out of control, we’re hitting the artificial debt-ceiling limits faster than ever. Soon, interest on the debt alone will destroy our economy. As economic writer Stephen Meister has proposed, instead of constantly raising the debt limit, we should be talking about changing the law so that rather than stopping future
borrowing
once the limit is reached, the law would ban future
spending
in excess of receipts—until the limit is raised. By changing the debt limit law to incorporate incentives to curb spending, even temporarily, the skyrocketing debt would at least be brought somewhat under control.

Others have argued for a balanced-budget amendment (BBA) to the Constitution as a way of forcing future Congresses to live within the country’s fiscal means. Unless it’s coupled with an enforceable spending cap of 18 to 20 percent of GDP and real entitlement reform, however, a BBA wouldn’t be sufficient. Let’s say that the government takes in $17 trillion one year through sky-high taxes. It could spend all $17 trillion and still call the budget balanced. Spending restraints and structural entitlement reform must be married to a BBA if it’s to have any chance of enforcing fiscal responsibility. A BBA is necessary and those who support it have their hearts in the right place, but we need to ensure that the kooks and other big spenders don’t rip that heart out and stomp all over it.

A lesson of history: in 1974, Congress, infuriated by President Nixon’s relentless attempts to control spending, passed the ridiculously titled Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act, which actually did the exact opposite. The law blew out the president’s ability to impound congressional spending and empowered Congress to go as hog-wild on spending as possible. Federal spending exploded, helped by new “baseline” budgeting rules that automatically increase spending year over year.

Some, including Ryan, have indicated a desire to try to fix that destructive law rather than attempt a constitutional amendment. If it could be amended to toss baseline budgeting, restore presidential impoundment power, and require two-thirds majority to okay tax increases, the runaway train of spending and debt could be addressed now, without having to wait for a constitutional amendment.

Changing
what
the government spends is tough enough. Changing
how
government spends requires a full attitudinal adjustment. Without solid enforcement mechanisms, future Congresses would not be bound by the new rules, deals could be broken, and the spending and entitlement reforms could fall by the wayside. The irreversible and enforceable spending caps in the Ryan budget would ensure that Washington will only spend and tax what it needs to fill its constitutional duties. If we don’t take real steps to cut spending and reform how government works, America will collapse beneath the weight of its own debt. The welfare state is over, from California to Greece. Now we have to make hard decisions to avert disaster. If those issues are dealt with in a comprehensive, serious, and urgent manner, job creation and economic growth will follow. In order to lift the cloud of uncertainty, government in all its forms must be brought under control. That includes rolling back Team Obama’s job-killing Dodd-Frank financial regulation and oppressive EPA mandates.

It also means finally getting serious about developing our domestic sources of energy. Since the oil shocks of the early 1970s, we’ve had president after president pledge to pursue true energy independence. We’re not even close, despite sitting atop more oil, gas, and coal resources than any other nation on earth. Permitting construction of the Keystone expansion was such a no-brainer in terms of jobs, energy independence, and private-sector investment that of course Obama torpedoed it. It should, however, be one of the first things on the next president’s agenda. In addition, we must press for increased offshore and onshore drilling and exploration, including in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the Bakken oil shale formation, and a resumption of timely permitting. Hydropower and nuclear energy should also be expanded, and the hog-wild dispersion of tens of billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies to “green energy” boondoggles must stop: compete in the marketplace on your own, and either prosper or fold. Hydraulic fracturing or hydrofracking, in which pressurized fluids are used to create fractures on rock formations to release natural gas or petroleum, should also be granted widespread approval. In states such as Pennsylvania where fracking is allowed, tens of thousands of jobs have been created around the industry, which has been found to be environmentally safe. One bill that’s sure to receive a veto from Obama is H.R. 765, also known as the Go Frack Yourself Energy Bill of 2012. Put forth by House Republicans, it calls for natural gas exploration in some of America’s most remote and dangerous terrain … like the scalp of Joe Biden, the rolling turkey-gobbler chins of Michael Moore, the armpits of Barbara Boxer, and the lunar surface of Al Gore’s hairy back.

Also putting the government kibosh on economic growth: public-sector unions that maintain a stranglehold on the taxpayer in every state in the union. If the nation’s fiscal crisis is to be resolved, we need more heroic Scott Walkers and John Kasiches and fewer give-away-the-store Jerry Browns. We need to elect and stand by leaders at the federal and state levels who will take on the entrenched interests, bust up the incestuous relationship between the government unions and the Democrats, and protect the taxpayer.

As this great nation has doled out its economic sovereignty, it’s also voluntarily ceded its physical sovereignty. It is not in the national interest to have a never-ending swarm of illegal aliens pouring into the country unchecked. It is not in the national interest to have our security compromised by a porous border that permits drug cartels and international terrorists to waltz in. It is not in the national interest to have diseases once thought to have been eradicated come walking across our southern border. No foreigner has an inherent right to arrive in the United States to live without first going through the legal channels the American people, through their government, have approved. If you disregard those laws, then you simply have no right to come and stay. But instead of properly enforcing that basic supposition, we’ve made illegal aliens a protected group, and we’ve put up with sanctuary cities, limited deportations and workplace enforcement, and an essentially open border.

We’ve also put up with a failure to demand assimilation and the adoption of the American culture. Today, immigrant populations, both legal and illegal, have been allowed to siphon themselves off from American culture, often resulting in mini-nations within the larger one. They have been aided and abetted by the leftists, who have encouraged foreigners to remain foreign, have supplied them with grievances against America, and have tried to make America conform to them instead of the other way around. The basics of the kook playbook—grievance identification and multicultural celebration—are now applied routinely in our schools and universities. The result has been an America that is divided against itself.

Many Democrats and Republicans have argued for “a path to citizenship” for illegals already in country that includes proposals from making illegals go to the back of the line for legalization to outright amnesty. None of those plans are necessary, however, when we already have a “path to citizenship” called
legal
immigration. If you would like to come to the United States to live and work, we’re happy to have you, but you must have enough respect for our nation that you will respect its most fundamental laws of entry. Legal immigration takes a long time and isn’t cheap. But it
should
be difficult to get into the greatest republic on earth. And those who navigate that legal path become truly proud Americans, ennobling them
and
the country they’ve chosen.

In order to deal with the illegal alien invasion, a few steps should be taken immediately. The border must be enforced with more border patrol agents and National Guard units. High-tech security fences should be installed. Worksite enforcement should be ramped up. Employers should be required to prove worker citizenship. Immigration data should be readily available to other federal agencies and to the states. Visa compliance efforts should be improved so illegals cannot overstay their visas and fall through the cracks. Violent criminals and ideologues should be expelled and blocked from further entry, as France, Australia, and Switzerland have done. English should be made the official language, and photo identification should be required at every polling place in America before anyone is permitted to vote (despite Attorney General Eric Holder’s efforts to block it). And the states should be permitted to pass their own laws concurrent to federal laws so they may be able to enforce the nation’s immigration laws if the feds will not or cannot do it.

Remember: the Happy Warrior is fighting two wars: a domestic war for freedom and a foreign one for survival. They are interlocking pieces of the same national challenge. Just as we mustn’t tire of the struggle at home, we mustn’t grow weary of the external fight to reestablish American power and influence abroad.

America and the World
. The world is a complex web of vexing problems, complicated issues, terrifying dangers, and unsavory trade-offs. As with our domestic challenges, there are no easy answers. There are simply policies that have a better chance of serving America’s interests than others. When the United States happily embraces and unabashedly exercises its strong, leading role, our interests are better served than when we abdicate that role and allow our friends to flail and enemies to advance. Given our economic constraints, projecting U.S. power will be more difficult. And given the complexities of the issues, there are no paths to guaranteed national security; there are only potentially more effective ones.

A superpower cannot remain so if it willfully cedes its claim to global exceptionalism. “Leading from behind” must be discarded on the pile of other strategies that have hobbled the United States. American primacy must be restored if we are to avoid a global cataclysm sparked by our continuing weakness, both real and perceived. As President Nixon once put it, “There is no substitute for American power.”

The first priority should be to recognize the five elements of kook-dom that have so weakened American influence.

First, one-worldism. This is the kooks’ belief that no nation is superior to any other, that we’re all equally responsible for other nations and peoples, and that a one-world system of governance and economics is morally superior to a system of sovereign states. They also believe that this is the only way to submerge U.S. power once and for all.

Second, redistributionism. This is the kook principle that elements of American greatness should be redistributed around the world to clear a smooth path to one-worldism.

Third, international social “justice.” This is the logical extension of the first two points as they chase global “equality” and “justice.”

Fourth, zero-sum calculus. This is the kook presupposition that if you are deprived of something, then someone else took it from you. And if you have it, then you must be forced to give it up to someone who’s lacking it. When carried out on a worldwide scale, its objective is to stop the growth of the wealthier nations by redirecting their assets to poorer ones.

And fifth is the belief that America is the root of much of the injustice, inequality, and turmoil in the world and therefore should pay for its sins by mortgaging its claim on global dominance. Most of the Obama foreign policy can be explained by these interrelated leftist beliefs. Just as they do domestically, the kooks step in to assume responsibility for all other actors, regardless of how anti-American they are. We have seen repeatedly from Team Obama an assumption of responsibility for the bad behavior of Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood, Syria, the Palestinians, the Taliban, North Korea, Russia, China, Venezuela, and others. They have made the United States assume the burden of responsibility for the conflicts rather than demand responsibility from the other parties. And that has led to a devastating moral equivalence among the United States and other nations and groups and an undermining of our global exceptionalism.

We’ve got to “de-kookify” our national security.

The Happy Warrior’s approach first requires the reestablishment of a central organizing principle for American foreign policy that’s based on U.S. strength and values rather than defeatism and decline. Our security depends on the hard power of a healthy, growing economy and a formidable defense. But it also depends on nurturing democracy, human rights, and liberalization around the world. When we stand firmly for those things, our hard power is infused with moral clarity. Support—moral, diplomatic, political, economic, and, if appropriate, military—should be given to those crying out for greater freedom. Those facing down brutal regimes and terrorists should know that the United States stands with them. American values must once again be made clear and actionable.

The second major priority must be to shore up our military strength. The planned over $1 trillion in defense cuts over the next ten years, from Obama’s announced cuts to the additional ones set to automatically kick in in January 2013, should be stopped. No responsible commander in chief should be willing to allow our defenses to be gutted to such an extent that we will be left irretrievably crippled, unable to defend ourselves, our interests, and our allies, and incapable of projecting power where it’s needed. The Pentagon is not immune from wasteful spending. Smart cuts would involve targeting the significant overspending and waste throughout the Defense Department. As former secretary of the Navy John Lehman has pointed out, we won World War II with fewer than 100,000 civilian defense bureaucrats. Today there are over 750,000. As with the rest of government, the Pentagon has grown bloated. Let’s cut back the unnecessary spending and preserve the sinews of our strength. A strong national security policy begins with a fearsome U.S. military that no enemy of America would be tempted to challenge. In the fierce budget battles ahead, one thing must be made clear: none of the domestic priorities will matter if we’re all dead.