Debt Mess

Nobody is proposing actual spending cuts

When the history of the Great Debt Limit Debate is written, one of the key villains will be the definition of "cut." For everyone who lives outside the halls of Congress, "cut" means to reduce. But inside Congress, "cut" means to spend less than your baseline projection of future spending. Since spending always tends to rise by at least the growth of nominal GDP, which has averaged about 5.5% for the past 30 years, the baseline that everyone compares their budget proposals to tends to project increased spending of about 5-6% per year.

Over the past 12 months the federal government has spent $3.56 trillion. A typical baseline would project spending to increase about 5.5% a year, reaching some $6 trillion a year by 2021 (budget scoring generally focuses on what happens over the next 10 years). That would equate to total expenditures of $48.4 trillion over the next decade. So when one party proposes to "cut" spending by, say, $4 trillion, what they really mean is that they propose to spend $44.4 trillion over the next 10 years instead of $48.4 trillion. The $4 trillion "cut" they are proposing actually works out to a 4% annual increase in spending, instead of a 5.5% annual increase in spending.

So even the most radical of "cuts" that are being proposed today would still allow government spending to increase by 4% a year. How hard or draconian is that?

I suspect the great majority of Americans would be stunned to realize that if we allowed government spending to increase by only 2% a year, then we could probably balance the budget in about 7 years, without any need to increase tax rates or actually cut anybody's spending. No real cuts and no real tax hikes are needed to balance the budget within a reasonable time frame. Why is there so much sound and fury surrounding this debate?

(My calculations assume that tax revenues as a percent of GDP rise naturally to about 18% of GDP over the next 7 years, which is close to the long-term average and the same level that was achieved a few years after the Bush tax cuts. Tax revenue as a % of GDP always rises during the expansion phase of a business cycle, and we know that the current level of tax rates can generate 18% of GDP if the economy is healthy.)

UPDATE: Prompted by reader "William" as to why it seems so hard for Congress to do something simple like cutting the growth rate of spending to 2% instead of 5.5%, I offer this explanation: The problem with cutting the growth rate of spending is that CBO scores this as a "cut", and the "cut" that would result from a 2% growth rate in spending would be on the order of $8.6 trillion. My guess is that no congressman or senator would want to be labeled as the guy who "cut" such a gigantic amount of spending. Think of all the kids who would starve, the old folks who would die from lack of medicine, etc. In short, it would be too easy for political opponents to brand the cutter as an evil madman, when in fact he was just trying to be reasonably prudent.

Government deficits

There was a recent article in the Wall St Journal that discussed the wage differential between public and private jobs. Public employment is currently about 35% higher than comparable priviate employment, when total pay including benefits is factored in. The biggest difference is in the defined benefit pension benefits that is the hallmark of public employment. Private employment has long ridded itself of defined benefit plans in favor of defined contribution plans. This higher pay in public employment is borne out in employee turnover stats. Private employment turnover is three times that in public employment.
More telling is this statistic. If public compensation is brought down to levels of private employment, the savings in tax dollars would wipe out all the goverment deficits in 2008 and 2009. In Ohio, for example, someone can retire from a job at full pay after 30 years, and get rehired into the same job, and now doubles their compensation!

Healthcare Reform

I offer 6 ideas to better the healthcare system in America.
1. Get lawyers out of healthcare. Make it where if someone brings suit against a doctor or medical institution, and they lose, they pay both attorney bills.
2. Make it possible to buy health insurance across state borders.
3. Expand health savings accounts.
4. Cover pre-existing conditions.
5. Penalize people who do not buy health insurance to bring mostly young people into the risk pools which would lower premiums.
6. Give debit cards to people who cannot afford insurance to buy healthcare or insurance.

Global Warming NOT

Climate of OpinionThe latest U.N. report shows the "warming" debate is far from settled.Monday, February 5, 2007 12:01 a.m.Last week's headlines about the United Nations' latest report on global warming were typically breathless, predicting doom and human damnation like the most fervent religious evangelical. Yet the real news in the fourth assessment from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) may be how far it is backpedaling on some key issues. Beware claims that the science of global warming is settled.
The document that caused such a stir was only a short policy report, a summary of the full scientific report due in May. Written mainly by policymakers (not scientists) who have a stake in the issue, the summary was long on dire predictions. The press reported the bullet points, noting that this latest summary pronounced with more than "90% confidence" that humans have been the main drivers of warming since the 1950s, and that higher temperatures and rising sea levels would result.

More pertinent is the underlying scientific report. And according to people who have seen that draft, it contains startling revisions of previous U.N. predictions. For example, the Center for Science and Public Policy has just released an illuminating analysis written by Lord Christopher Monckton, a one-time adviser to Margaret Thatcher who has become a voice of sanity on global warming.
Take rising sea levels. In its 2001 report, the U.N.'s best high-end estimate of the rise in sea levels by 2100 was three feet. Lord Monckton notes that the upcoming report's high-end best estimate is 17 inches, or half the previous prediction. Similarly, the new report shows that the 2001 assessment had overestimated the human influence on climate change since the Industrial Revolution by at least one-third.
Such reversals (and there are more) are remarkable, given that the IPCC's previous reports, in 1990, 1995 and 2001, have been steadily more urgent in their scientific claims and political tone. It's worth noting that many of the policymakers who tinker with the IPCC reports work for governments that have promoted climate fears as a way of justifying carbon-restriction policies. More skeptical scientists are routinely vetoed from contributing to the panel's work. The Pasteur Institute's Paul Reiter, a malaria expert who thinks global warming would have little impact on the spread of that disease, is one example.
U.N. scientists have relied heavily on computer models to predict future climate change, and these crystal balls are notoriously inaccurate. According to the models, for instance, global temperatures were supposed to have risen in recent years. Yet according to the U.S. National Climate Data Center, the world in 2006 was only 0.03 degrees Celsius warmer than it was in 2001--in the range of measurement error and thus not statistically significant.
The models also predicted that sea levels would rise much faster than they actually have. The models didn't predict the significant cooling the oceans have undergone since 2003--which is the opposite of what you'd expect with global warming. Cooler oceans have also put a damper on claims that global warming is the cause of more frequent or intense hurricanes. The models also failed to predict falling concentrations of methane in the atmosphere, another surprise.
Meanwhile, new scientific evidence keeps challenging previous assumptions. The latest report, for instance, takes greater note of the role of pollutant particles, which are thought to reflect sunlight back to space, supplying a cooling effect. More scientists are also studying the effect of solar activity on climate, and some believe it alone is responsible for recent warming.

All this appears to be resulting in a more cautious scientific approach, which is largely good news. We're told that the upcoming report is also missing any reference to the infamous "hockey stick," a study by Michael Mann that purported to show 900 years of minor fluctuations in temperature, followed by a dramatic spike over the past century. The IPCC featured the graph in 2001, but it has since been widely rebutted.
While everyone concedes that the Earth is about a degree Celsius warmer than it was a century ago, the debate continues over the cause and consequences. We don't deny that carbon emissions may play a role, but we don't believe that the case is sufficiently proven to justify a revolution in global energy use. The economic dislocations of such an abrupt policy change could be far more severe than warming itself, especially if it reduces the growth and innovation that would help the world cope with, say, rising sea levels. There are also other problems--AIDS, malaria and clean drinking water, for example--whose claims on scarce resources are at least as urgent as climate change.
The IPCC report should be understood as one more contribution to the warming debate, not some definitive last word that justifies radical policy change. It can be hard to keep one's head when everyone else is predicting the Apocalypse, but that's all the more reason to keep cool and focus on the actual science.

Islamic Fascism

THE GATHERING STORM OF THE 21ST CENTURY





Written by Rick Santorum

Thursday, 16 November 2006


[Senator Rick Santorum delivered this speech on October 30, 2006. The Hate America Left was desperate to defeat him for re-election and they succeeded, more proof that they really are on the side of Osama Bin Laden. ---JW]

This summer I gave two speeches that defined the unique challenges that confront the United States as we conduct a new world war. I gave those speeches - one in Washington at the National Press Club, and one here in Pennsylvania at the Pennsylvania Press Club - because I believe that now more than ever we need to study the past, learn from events, and take proactive measures to protect our freedoms at home and provide a safer world in which to exercise those freedoms.

I am here again today talking about this issue because Islamic Fascism continues to rear its ugly head. And because it is being joined by others, becoming a hydra.

The war is at our doorsteps, and it is fueled, figuratively and literally, by Islamic Fascism, nurtured and bred in Iran.

Islamic terrorists planned a mass kidnapping at the Central Synagogue in Prague just a few weeks ago. They intended to carry it out on Rosh Hashanah, when large numbers of Jews would be celebrating the New Year. Once the world's attention was focused on Prague, they intended to make impossible demands, and then blow up the synagogue and all within.

Those people were not marked for death because they supported the war in Iraq, or supported George W. Bush, or sent troops to Afghanistan. They were targeted because they were guilty of being Jews. This is evil.

Islamic terrorists organized an assault on civilian aircraft leaving London, planning to blow up many planes over the North Atlantic. Two of the participants, a husband and wife, intended to take their six-month old baby on a plane with them, and blow him up along with everyone else on board. This is evil.

Islamic terrorists slaughter innocent Iraqi citizens every day. A man in Baghdad recently called his daughter in America to say that "once upon a time, garbage trucks went through the streets to collect refuse. Now they collect beheaded bodies."

Our enemies celebrate these massacres. They use videos of beheadings to recruit new members to their ranks. In recent days, they beheaded an Orthodox priest and crucified a teen-age boy, both guilty of Christianity. This is evil.

Somalia's interim president has appealed for international help in dealing with a powerful Islamist movement that now controls all of southern and central Somalia, a country of enormous strategic importance in guaranteeing oil shipping in the Gulf.

The State Department concurs that the risk is very real, especially because Osama bin Laden listed Somalia as a target in al Qaeda's war against the West. Our Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs says that "Somalia is a safe haven for terrorists...."

Kuwait has just uncovered an Iranian-created network of sleeper cells trained in espionage and sabotage. Many of them were trained in Iran itself and then infiltrated into the Shi'ite community of Kuwait, which is about half the population;

How many Americans realize that Iran declared war on us 27 years ago - in 1979 - and has been killing Americans ever since?

Most everybody has heard by now that Iranian President Ahmadinejad has denied the Holocaust and called for Israel to be wiped off the face of the earth. But that's only the beginning of his mission.

He continued with a rhetorical question: "Is it possible for us to witness a world without America and Zionism?" He answered himself: "But you had best know that this slogan and this goal are attainable, and surely can be achieved."

He is only the latest in a series of Iranian leaders who have vowed death to us and visited death upon us. Our troops in Iraq are killed by Iranian weapons paid for with Iranian money, smuggled into Iraq by Iranian logistics, and utilized by Iranian-trained terrorists.

A couple of years ago you needed a security clearance to know this. Today it is common knowledge. Iran is the centerpiece of the assault against us and the other countries in the civilized world, which is why I fought so hard for passage of the Iran Freedom and Support Act.

I fought for it, and, after years of opposition from the Democrats, some of my own colleagues, the State Department and even the White House, it is now signed into law by President Bush (September 30, 2006).

I fought for it because I do not want my children to suffer through devastating attacks on American soil, and to risk their own lives in the battle against those who brazenly tell us they are planning to destroy what they call Anglo-Saxon civilization - and we call freedom.

This is an unpopular war. I have been ridiculed by the media and my opponents for defining the enemy as Islamic Fascism - they say words don't matter. But words do matter because words are what define the enemy we confront. Words are needed for Americans to comprehend what motivates the deeds that the enemy is planning, so we can effectively defeat them. And defeat them we must.

Ahmadinejad has recruited and is training 52,000 suicide terrorists called the Commando of Voluntary Martyrs. An Iranian Revolutionary Guard intelligence officer bragged that "We have a strategy drawn up for the destruction of Anglo-Saxon civilization and for the uprooting of the Americans and English ... There are 29 sensitive sites in the U.S. and the West. We have already spied on these sites and we know how we are going to attack them."

Our growing challenge, however, is that Iran is not alone in its rhetoric, intent or capacity to threaten the security of the U.S.

It is important for Americans to know that the threat is more complex, and has grown more complex. The enemy that has to be named is greater than Islamic Fascism.

Just last month, in advance of the meeting of the U.N. General Assembly, Iran, Syria, North Korea and more than 100 other nations met in Cuba to discuss a push to broaden the world's definition of terrorism to include the "U.S. occupation" of Iraq and the "Israeli invasion" of Lebanon.

Participating countries drafted a declaration condemning Israel but made no comments about Hezbollah's missile attacks on Israel.

Following this meeting of the non-aligned movement, I introduced a Senate resolution that expressed concern relating to the threatening behavior of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the ideological alliance that exists between the countries of Cuba and Venezuela.

We must support the people of Iran, Cuba, and Venezuela in the quest to achieve a truly democratic form of government.

North Korea's nuclear test made it clear that it threat is not made of mere words. They are now intensifying real military confrontation. When the U.N. resolution condemned the nuclear test, North Korea called it "a declaration of a war" and threatened the United States: "we will deliver merciless blows without hesitation to whoever tries to breach our sovereignty and right to survive under the excuse of carrying out the U.N. Security Council resolution."

North Korea, the world's leading missile proliferator, and Iran are on the verge of starting nuclear arms races in both Asia and the Middle East - both hubs of terrorist networks that reach around the world - which could easily result in nuclear material, perhaps even a weapon, ending up in the hands of a terrorist organization.

But it's not just terrorist organizations we should fear. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who denies the holocaust and called Israel just last week "illegitimate" and "could not survive," said he plans on using "the technical factor" to augment "national security."

Ahmadinejad , like Hitler and Mussolini, intends to conquer the world. This is not a hidden agenda. His goal is to establish a Caliphate. Like Khrushchev, he wants a nuclear arsenal, and he is building the same sort of frightening global alliances that enabled the Soviet Union to put missiles near us.

Look again at the Iranians' strategy. A couple of months ago Ahmadinejad signed a mutual defense pact with his pal, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Two dictators, awash in petrodollars, and besotted with hatred for the United States.

President Chavez, who called President Bush "a devil" at the podium of the U.N., spoke to the applause of those in attendance as he decried America. Calling America an "imperialist power," he says his ambition is to become leader of global alliance of nations to "radically oppose the violent pressure that the (American) empire exercises."

This summer Chavez honored Ahmadinejad at a gala and plans to visit North Korea, at which an "oil-for-missiles deal" may be on the agenda.

The same North Korea that has been building nuclear weapons to put on missiles that can reach our soil.

Did you know that Venezuela is the leading buyer of arms and military equipment in the world today? Did you know that Chavez is building an army of more than a million soldiers and the most potent air force in South America - the largest Spanish-speaking armed force in history?

Did you know that Venezuela will shortly spend thirty billion dollars to build twenty military bases in neighboring Bolivia, which will dominate the borders with Chile, Peru, Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil? The bases will be commanded by Venezuelan and Cuban officers.

This is what the brilliant Carlos Alberto Montaner - a survivor of Castro's bloody regime - calls "a delirious vision of history," and it is driven by a new alliance of dictators from Iran, Cuba and Venezuela.

It is part of the grand design so proudly announced by Ahmadinejad: the destruction of our civilization.

And the sad irony is, we are dependent on the very people who hate us. American imports 60% of the oil we need to fuel our economy. We are underwriting their efforts to undermine us.

Venezuela is our fourth largest supplier of oil. President Chavez called oil "a geopolitical weapon" and said "I could easily order the closing of the refineries that we have in the United States. I could easily sell the oil that we sell to the United States to other countries of the world ... to real friends and allies like China."

A recent Congressional report found that Hezbollah may, right now, have established bases in Venezuela, a country which has issued thousands of visas to people from places like Cuba and the Middle East, possibly giving them passports to evade U.S. border security.

To make matters worse, Cuba and China, with help from Venezuela, are together exploring and drilling for oil only 50 miles off the US coast. 50 miles off our coast. In an interview on Al-Jazeera, Chavez said working with Cuba is an example of how they will "use oil in our war against neoliberalism."

Radical environmentalists and my opponent [Democrat Bob Casey] won't let us drill 100 miles off our coast, but dictators who hate us are drilling for American oil just 50 miles offshore. Does this make any sense?

And my opponent is sleepwalking into the gathering storm, siding with the left to ban drilling off our coast and banning oil drilling in an area in Alaska no bigger than the Philadelphia airport.

If we really understood the threat at hand, we would not be fighting with one hand tied behind our backs.

We have forgotten our history. We have been here before.

We only entered the First World War after German U-boats sank American civilian and commercial ships on the North Atlantic. World War I was "the war to end war," and with the defeat of the German armies, it seemed that peace was destined to last a long time.

But it did not last even one generation. It did not last because we failed to recognize the evil of fascism, and because we allowed the fascists to grow stronger and stronger, until they felt capable of defeating us.

We left Great Britain alone to face the Nazis for several years, and despite Mussolini's entrance, we only engaged in the Second World War after the devastating Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Germany, Italy and Japan. They had nothing in common, so we weren't willing to see the axis of evil gathering around us.

We entered the Cold War only after Stalin's aggression in the Middle East and Greece. In every case the evil was obvious, the threat indisputable, but the willingness to confront was in every case late and prohibitively costly.

Are we willing to see the storm gathering around us and act before it is too late? Was 9-11 not enough? Have our memories faded? Or will it take something even more devastating?

When Winston Churchill wrote his great history of the Second World War, he began the first volume-"The Gathering Storm"- with a short description: "How the English-speaking peoples through their unwisdom, carelessness, and good nature allowed the wicked to rearm."

We were part of that moment of folly, and we paid a terrible price for it on the battlefields of that war. We are running the same risk today, and we are again acting carelessly, unwisely and we are permitting the wicked to grow stronger and stronger.

Just as we refused to recognize we were at war with a great evil, the European fascists and Japanese imperialists in the late nineteen thirties, so today we shrink from the recognition that we are once again under attack from evil forces - Islamic fascists led by Iran, and the Socialist and Communist rulers of Venezuela and North Korea.

Ahmadinejad is often treated as if he were a stand-up comedian on a late night TV show, some wacko character from far away who really doesn't affect us. This is a way of avoiding the life and death challenge of the war.

We have seen it before. Hitler and Mussolini were also ridiculed - the house painter with the funny moustache, and the bald guy with the fat neck - until the bombs fell in Hawaii and hundreds of thousands of Americans died.

Nikita Khrushchev was ridiculed as a peasant who pounded his shoe on the table at the United Nations, until Soviet nuclear missiles showed up in Cuba, less than a hundred miles from our shores. Then we realized he wasn't so funny.

This is not funny business.

Many Americans are sleepwalking, just as they did before the world wars of the last century. They pretend it is not happening, that it all has to do with the errors of a single American administration, even of a single American president.

Some even pretend that it will all go away if only the Democrat Party is elected in November.

How do they propose to save us from these people? By negotiating at the United Nations? By removing U.N. Ambassador John Bolton office? By relocating American forces from Iraq to Okinawa? By abandoning the Iraqi people to Iranian and Syrian slaughter and domination? By engaging in more direct talks with a nuclear North Korea?

No wonder Mr. Casey won't say anything about the danger from North Korea's nuclear bombs. He can't. He has virtually nothing to say. Except he does have something to say about preparing to defend ourselves against North Korea.

He told the Council for a Livable World he opposes building nuclear bunker buster weapons and would halt deployment of national missile defense until, quote, "further research proves the system will work."

Time for research is past. North Korea has been building nuclear weapons to put on missiles that can reach our soil.

It's time to wake up.

Mr. Casey said that "the U.S. should not escalate the drive to place weapons in space and should seek an international ban on such weaponry." I hate to break the news to you, but Iran and North Korea are already escalating things.

My opponent and the anti-war left seems more worried about the tactics we use to catch the terrorists than about the terrorists themselves. They want to "investigate" the NSA surveillance program that, thank God, has allowed us to listen in on calls coming from known terrorists abroad.

I think people are indeed concerned, and they are right to be concerned. About our enemies. Americans are concerned when they learn that ten flights from Britain to America were targeted by Islamic fascists just last month, and, had it not been for the British surveillance, they might have succeeded.

Let me tell you, Mr. Casey, people are concerned when Venezuela is harboring terrorists, many of whom will penetrate our border because of the amnesty bill you support, that puts amnesty before security.

You said you would have voted for the war, but now you say you would vote against it. You said we weren't misled, but now you say that we were lied to.

You are sleepwalking into a nightmare.

It's time to wake up.

From everything I can see, Mr. Casey is unready, unqualified for the high office he seeks at a time when our survival as a free people is at stake.

He is one of many Americans sleepwalking in this nightmare. These horrors no longer shock us as they did on 9/11. They have become part of the background noise of our world. Some even blame our own leaders rather than the savages who do the killing. But I believe that Pennsylvanians are awakening to this threat, and can send a message to the nation and our enemies.

It's time to stop dreaming and start acting. We have to bring the fight to our enemies, and that means we have to do a lot more than respond to their attacks in Iraq. We must go after the regimes that recruit, pay, train and arm terrorists.

I am not - NOT - talking about sending more American troops onto foreign battlefields, or even dropping precision bombs from safe altitudes. I am talking about political and economic warfare, to bring down the terror regimes in Tehran and Damascus. The best way to do that is to support their own people, most of whom are eager for freedom.

That is why I drafted legislation that commits America to support freedom in Iran. A free Iran will be our friend, not an implacable enemy. We know that is true, because public opinion polls taken by the regime itself show that more than seventy percent of Iranians want to choose their own system of government and elect their own leaders.

And we know it is true because the Iranian regime is frantically trying to isolate the Iranian people from contact with the free world. Satellite dishes are torn down, dissidents are arrested, tortured and executed. High speed internet is banned. Surviving vestiges of a free press are shut down.

Those are the actions of a regime that fears its people, and knows that the desire for freedom can destroy the Islamic Fascist tyranny.

A free Iran will change the world, because it will deprive the terrorists of their single greatest source of support, and isolate the likes of Hugo Chavez and Kim Jong Il. Why is a free Iran and Iraq so essential? Because the United States nor any western country will be able on its own to defeat radical Islamic fascism.

We must create an environment where moderate Islam - whether Sunni or Shi'ia or any other strain - combats and suppresses its radical elements. I believe the best way to accomplish this is through democratic self rule.

And although Iran is at the center of this Islamic Fascist mosaic, our engagement must be focused closer to home as well.

Just as we have seen our neighbors' economies grow as well as our own - we need to work diligently to forge free trade agreements with other countries, as we have seen impressive results with free trade agreements in Israel, Canada, Mexico, Jordan, Singapore, Chile, Australia, Bahrain, and Morocco.

Our current partnerships with these countries account for more than $900 billion in two-way trade, which is about 36 percent of total U.S. trade with the world. U.S. exports with FTA partner countries are growing twice as fast as U.S. exports to countries that do not have agreements with the U.S.

As Chavez works to create an anti-American alliance, we have to be even more diligent in protecting our homeland.

We should support immediate programmatic additions to U.S. missile defenses in order to carry out critical national security objectives. I agree with Congressman Duncan Hunter, Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, that we should be capable of addressing the "full range of North Korean missile-based threats to the United States, our deployed forces, and our allies."

We must also pursue energy security. Alongside the political pressure on the Iranians and their allies, we must also stop funding Iran and Venezuela, which is what happens whenever we buy a barrel of their oil. We need to use our own energy resources more effectively, and we must find other fuels.

This is why I have fought, again, against the administration, for funding for a coal-to liquid-fuels plant here in Pennsylvania to both clean up the environment and make us more energy secure. $100 million dollars, here in our own state, to pioneer our way to independence.

That is why I wrote the Empower America Act, which calls for investments of more than $20 billion for research and development, loan guarantees, and grants to create, produce and distribute renewable fuels, cleaner coal, and nuclear energy. It extends tax incentives for the production of renewable energy and alternative fuels, and also for hybrid vehicles.

One of my opponent's favorite talking points is that "we can't drill ourselves out of our energy dependence."

Let me say to Mr. Casey, and his sound bite driven sleepwalking colleagues; the gathering storm demands it. We have no choice. Our men and women in uniform are laboring, sacrificing and dying to protect our homeland, we have no choice. We have no choice but to explore every form of American energy that can make use independent and secure.

We are drilling 3700 wells in western Pennsylvania, including one of the sites of next year's U.S. Open Golf Tournament, and you, Mr. Casey, won't allow less than 1000 wells over 25 years, in a place no one lives?

My bill permits environmentally sensitive production of our own energy resources on the outer continental shelf and on the coastal plain of ANWR. And it encourages the construction of new refineries and expands existing ones, along with biorefineries and additional coal-to-liquid facilities to meet our current needs for motor fuels and enables us to grow in the future.

There are many other things that need to be done in this war, but none of them will happen unless we come to grips with the terrible fact that we are at war, it came to us and it will be with us for some time.

There is no way to escape it, no matter what our policies, and whoever our elected representatives are. There is no escape because our enemies are fully committed to our destruction, and they will not stop until they have either destroyed us, or have been destroyed.

That is our choice: we can win or lose, but we cannot opt out walk away from the greatest threat and most resistant threat this country has ever faced.

That is why I have spent so much time talking about the war during this campaign. It is why I have fought heart and soul to pass legislation that will hurt our enemies and strengthen our country.

If you reelect me, I will press ahead with all my strength and passion, and you will know that you have a United States Senator who sees the world as it is and will fight for our security - rather than repeat slogans written for him by consultants.

This is not a time for politicians who think the world stops at the Delaware River.

Osama bin Laden said "In the final phase of the ongoing struggle, the world of the infidels was divided between two superpowers: the United States and the Soviet Union. Now we have defeated and destroyed the more difficult and the more dangerous of the two. Dealing with the pampered and effeminate Americans will be easy."

Let me tell you. With the right leadership, he's got a surprise ahead. It won't be easy at all. It is a time for leadership to confront the gathering storm, and to defend the people of this state and this nation against terrible enemies. The stakes are too high to sleepwalk. I hope you will join me in this fight. And God bless America.

What I would like to ask President Fox of Mexico

If President Fox is so in favor of open borders, why is it so cumbersome for Americans to bring not only themselves but their belongings to Mexico? Maybe they should be the ones to have more open borders, both for people to move there but more importantly for capital and intellect to go there and seek opportunities and thereby help Mexico join the 21st Century.

Mexico Solution

This from Jack Wheeler's website:


NO MORE EXCUSES FOR MEXICO


Written by Richard Rahn
Friday, 28 April 2006
Why do Mexicans only have one-third the per capita income (on a purchasing power parity basis) of Canadians and only one-fourth that of Americans?
The answer is that Mexicans are relatively poor because have been plagued by semidespotic regimes that have ignored the rule of law and often engaged in destructive economic policies.
Mexicans have been free of their Spanish colonial masters for almost 200 years (almost as long as their American neighbors and far longer than Canadians have enjoyed independence).
Mexico has a better growing climate than Canada, and it is rich in natural resources -- oil, gas, and metals.
Yet Mexican politicians frequently resort to blaming their northern neighbor for their economic woes but would not dare answer the question: "If the U.S. were as poor as Mexico, would Mexico be better off or worse off?"
Too many in the American and world press, and many left-leaning members of the global political class, are willing to buy into the myth that somehow Mexico's self-induced misery is the fault of the U.S.
Let's look at the facts. Economists of almost all political persuasions recognize the "rule of law" and a sound legal system are necessary for economic development and prosperity.
People who live in countries where property rights are insecure, contracts poorly enforced and legal and regulatory verdicts auctioned off to the highest bidder will have few productive economic opportunities.
A recent study by Professors James Gwartney and Robert Lawson published by the Cato Institute provides additional evidence for the importance of sound legal systems. They ranked 100 counties according to consistency of legal structures.
The top 24, led by Switzerland, in 2000 had an average per capita gross domestic product (GDP) of $25,716, and an average annual growth in per capita GDP of 2½ percent per year (1980-2000). On the other end of the scale, the bottom 21 countries only had a per capita GDP of $3,094 and a growth of per capita GDP of only 0.33 percent (1980-2000).
Mexico's rating has been falling in recent years and it is now in the bottom one-third because of persistent corruption in its legal system.
The 2006 Index of Economic Freedom (by the Heritage Foundation and the Wall Street Journal) ranked Mexico 60 out of 157 countries evaluated. There is a very high correlation between the degree of economic freedom and economic prosperity. Mexico has been improving, but it has a long way to go. Its economic growth rate is about half what it should be in its stage of development and its potential.
For instance, Mexico has many state monopolies that should be abolished, the most notorious of which is PEMEX, the famously inefficient and corrupt state monopoly petroleum company.
Mexicans are not even allowed to own subsurface rights on their property, unlike both domestic and foreign property owners in the U.S. Hence, there is little incentive to explore for additional oil and gas or minerals -- which Mexico has an abundance.
This is just one example of the many ways Mexico keeps itself unnecessarily poor.
Mexico does not produce enough jobs at its current growth rates to keep up with the growth of the labor market; hence it "exports" its "excess" labor force to the U.S. Many Mexican politicians explicitly, or at least implicitly, advocate sending Mexican workers to the U.S.
People are most productive in their 20s, 30s, and 40s, and most Mexican emigrants are in these age groups, while the less productive and dependent young and old are left in Mexico. Few seem to understand Mexico's labor export policy is an enormous drain on Mexico's economic potential.
The U.S. cannot stop the illegal immigration from Mexico as long as the Mexican economy continues producing too few jobs. Thus, the U.S. has a strong vested interested in promoting better economic policies in Mexico.
Unfortunately, the campaign speeches of a couple of the major candidates for president of Mexico (the election will be held July 6) advocate policies that would only worsen the situation (more state involvement in the economy and more regulation).
Mexican President Vicente Fox has been slowly moving his country in the right economic direction, but even this minimal progress is in danger of being reversed.
What should be done?
First, the U.S. needs to undertake a balanced program of increased border control and a practical guest worker program (without amnesty) which benefits U.S. employers but also makes them responsible, such as the Vernon Krieble Foundation has proposed.
Second, the U.S. government needs to apply much more diplomatic pressure on Mexico coupled with an economic education campaign there.
Third, companies operating in Mexico and nonprofit groups also need to aggressively push an economic education campaign in Mexico, aimed at persuading the political class to enact pro-growth reforms.
Fourth, we need a Radio Free Mexico to explain to the people of Mexico how a free market really works and how they can create a Mexico prosperous enough so they want to stay.
That's why I'll be joining the Board of Advisors for the Radio Free Mexico project as proposed in To The Point.
Richard W. Rahn is director general of the Center for Global Economic Growth, a project of the FreedomWorks Foundation.